Corporate virtual private network provider Tailscale raises $100M

Corporate virtual private network provider Tailscale Inc. today announced it has raised $100 million in new funding to expand product-led growth and scale out its go-to-market and strategic partner initiatives.

CRV and Insight Partners led the Series B round, with Accel, Heavybit and Uncork Capital also participating. Including the new funding, Tailscale has raised $115 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase.

Founded in 2019 by ex-Googlers Avery Pennarun (who built Google Fiber), David Crashaw, David Carney and Brad Fitzpatrick (who built LiveJournal), Tailscale pitches itself as offering a secure network that just works. Tailscale’s VPN requires zero configuration and can be installed on any device in minutes. The service manages firewall rules and works from anywhere.

The company argues that there has traditionally been a deep disconnect between connectivity, ease-of-use and security best practices. Tailscale’s solution is claimed to eliminate this tension by making private network connectivity fast, effortless and seamless while allowing security teams to rest easy with end-to-end encryption, no single point of failure, near-instantaneous setup and zero configuration.

Tailscale’s solution integrates with existing identity services, including Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Okta, for seamless authentication. The service delivers zero trust for Secure Access Service Edge, Identity and Access Management and Privileged Access Management. The service also integrates with cloud-native tooling that developers depend on, such as Syncthing, VScode and Caddy Server, and offers remote development integrations with GitPod, Coder, Materialize, GitHub Codespaces and Indent.

The three-year-old company claims year-over-year growth of 1,200% and is sustaining at least 20% growth quarter-over-year in active monthly users, though it didn’t release specific figures. Notable customers include Tock Inc., 0xide Computer Co., ISX Financial EU Plc, Dusty Robotics Inc., VeraBank N.A. and The Cobalt Co.

“Protecting access to devices, networks and critical systems is the first wall of defense for organizations against bad actors, but ensuring this level of security without getting in development teams’ way remains a bottleneck for so many organizations,” Reid Christian, general partner at CRV, said in a statement. “Tailscale clears this bottleneck for every developer, on every device and every application, making it simple to enforce granular access controls while keeping security teams compliant.”

Photo: Tailscale