Toronto-based corporate virtual private network (VPN) startup Tailscale has made its first acquisition as it aims to improve its application security layer.
Tailscale announced on Tuesday morning that it has purchased Border0, a Vancouver-based privileged access management (PAM) security platform. PAM helps companies manage who or what has access to sensitive digital infrastructure, like production systems or databases.
Border0’s entire seven-person team is joining Tailscale, which is expanding its engineering footprint in Vancouver with a larger office.
Tailscale spokesperson Will Moore told BetaKit in an email that the company already had “foundational PAM-style capabilities,” but that Border0 adds deeper application-layer access and authorization on top of that foundation.
“The acquisition helps us move faster on building out a more complete and modern PAM offering,” Moore said. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Border0’s entire seven-person team is joining Tailscale, including Border0 founder Andree Toonk, who becomes the director of engineering to focus on building out Tailscale’s privileged access management capabilities, Moore said.
Moore added that, with the acquisition, Tailscale is expanding its engineering footprint in Vancouver with a larger office. While Moore said Tailscale doesn’t have a hiring target for the city, the company is looking to increase its headcount globally from 250 to 400 employees over the next year.
Founded in 2019 by former Google software engineers, Tailscale helps companies and individuals secure and control their data with its zero-configuration VPN, which can be installed on any device, manages firewall rules for users, and works from anywhere. One of Tailscale’s key selling points is its software’s accessibility, which enables people and teams to securely access network services without the long setup times and complexity of traditional VPNs.
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It’s this accessibility that meshes so well with Border0, Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun said in a blog post.
While Tailscale’s platform handles system access features like connectivity, identity-based permissions, and network layer auditability, Pennarun said that Border0 brings protocol-aware controls, session visibility, and approval workflows.
Once you move from ‘Can this machine reach that machine?’ to ‘Who should be allowed into this database, cluster, or admin interface, for how long, and with what visibility into what happened after they got there?’, the problem changes shape a bit,” Pennarun wrote.
“Those are exactly the kinds of things that are hard to bolt on later, and even harder to do well without making the whole system miserable to use,” Pennarun added.
Tailscale’s customer base has grown rapidly since 2024, partly due to the explosion of agentic AI. The new market has found significant value using Tailscale’s platform to act essentially as an air traffic control system for agents accessing and acting on corporate data. Last April, Tailscale raised $160 million USD ($230 million CAD) in Series C funding to grow its team and keep up with the “surprising number” of AI companies using its software.
Following the purchase of Border0, Moore didn’t rule out future acquisitions from Tailscale, but said the company is focused on building with the Border0 team for the time being.
Feature image courtesy Tailscale.