From Talon to Seraphic: How Israeli startups came to dominate browser security
Acquisitions by CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, and large funding rounds at Island and Guardio, underscore the browser’s rise as a critical attack surface.
The $400 million acquisition of Israeli startup Seraphic Security by CrowdStrike on Tuesday was not an isolated transaction. It was the latest data point in a pattern that has quietly reshaped one of cybersecurity’s most contested frontiers: the browser and digital workspace.
Over the past few years, Israeli startups have emerged as the defining force in securing the browser, an attack surface that has grown dramatically as work shifts to SaaS applications, unmanaged devices, and cloud-based collaboration tools. Seraphic’s sale follows Palo Alto Networks’ $625 million acquisition of Talon Cyber Security in 2023 and Fortinet’s purchase of Perception Point in 2024. At the same time, independent players such as Island and Guardio have raised large rounds at multibillion-dollar or near-unicorn valuations, underlining sustained investor conviction rather than a one-off exit cycle.
Together, these deals and financings suggest that Israel has become the industry’s primary laboratory for browser-centric security, an area once considered a niche and now treated as core infrastructure by the world’s largest cybersecurity vendors.
The browser has evolved from a simple access tool into the primary operating environment for enterprise work. Slack, Teams, cloud storage platforms, internal dashboards, and third-party SaaS tools now all converge inside it. That shift has exposed a structural gap: traditional endpoint security tools were never designed to monitor or control activity that lives entirely inside a browser session.
Israeli startups have moved aggressively to fill that gap, but with sharply different approaches.
Talon, founded in 2021, built a dedicated enterprise browser designed to replace consumer browsers entirely. Its strategy was validated when Palo Alto Networks acquired the company for an estimated $625 million, folding Talon into its Prisma SASE platform. The deal followed Talon’s rapid rise, including a $100 million Series A round in 2022 and a workforce of 130 employees split between Israel and the United States.
Seraphic, by contrast, took a less disruptive route. Founded in 2020, the company developed a browser-native software layer that transforms any existing browser into a secure one, without requiring users to change their habits. Its technology operates invisibly, integrating directly into browsers and SaaS desktop applications such as Teams, Slack, Discord, and WhatsApp, while avoiding the complexity of VDI or VPN-based approaches. That architectural choice appears to have resonated with CrowdStrike, which is acquiring Seraphic for around $400 million, its sixth acquisition in Israel and its first since 2024.
Not every exit has been blockbuster-sized. In December 2024, Fortinet acquired Perception Point for an estimated $100 million, a modest outcome relative to the company’s $75 million in funding. Yet the deal was strategically telling. Perception Point specialized in securing collaboration platforms, web browsers, and social channels, areas Fortinet identified as increasingly central to cloud-first enterprises.
At the same time, the sector is far from tapped out.
Island, founded in 2019, has become the category’s most heavily capitalized independent player. The company raised $250 million in a 2025 Series E that valued it at roughly $5 billion, followed by a large secondary round at a similar valuation. With more than 650 employees globally and over 250 in Israel alone, Island has turned the enterprise browser into a standalone category of its own, backed by investors including Sequoia, Insight Partners, Coatue, and Cyberstarts.
Guardio represents a different but related trajectory. Founded in 2018, the company focused deliberately on consumer cybersecurity rather than enterprise buyers. In November 2025, it raised $80 million after reporting three consecutive years of more than 100% annual growth in recurring revenue, with the goal of crossing $100 million ARR as early as 2026. While Guardio began as a consumer protection product, its technology has expanded into adjacent areas, including integration with generative AI platforms to automatically scan newly created websites for malicious activity.
Seraphic’s acquisition by CrowdStrike may therefore mark less an endpoint than a milestone. As browser-based work becomes the default, and as attackers continue to exploit that shift, the quiet dominance of Israeli startups in this layer of cybersecurity looks less like a coincidence, and more like a structural advantage.
