Tailscale Inc.

Tailscale Inc. was founded on March 23, 2019, by Brad Fitzpatrick, Avery Pennarun, and David Carney, three engineers with deep roots in open source and Google. Fitzpatrick created LiveJournal, Memcached, and OpenID; Pennarun co-authored the influential Google paper "The Tail at Scale"; Carney brought his own engineering expertise. The company's name comes directly from that paper, which explored how a few slow outliers can drag down an entire system. Tailscale's mission: eliminate that "tail" of network latency and unreliability through a mesh VPN architecture.

Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Tailscale builds a software-defined mesh VPN that runs on WireGuard encryption. Instead of routing traffic through a central server, devices connect directly to each other, which cuts latency and boosts security. Setup takes minutes, not days. Users manage everything through a web dashboard that handles identity, access controls, and device management. The core codebase, including the tailscaled daemon and CLI tool, is open source on GitHub, which has earned it a loyal following among developers, homelab enthusiasts, and IT teams.

The company has grown rapidly since its founding. The Globe and Mail reported in November 2025 that Tailscale is one of Canada's fastest-growing tech companies, with "vast cash reserves" that could fuel further expansion. In February 2026, Tailscale launched Aperture, an open-alpha product for identity-linked governance of AI tools and agents, and partnered with LM Studio to introduce LM Link, which provides encrypted point-to-point access to private GPU hardware assets. A month later, the company made its first acquisition, buying Vancouver-based Border0 to address the surge of AI agents flooding enterprise networks. Tailscale's technology has become the VPN of choice for many AI companies, according to The Globe and Mail, and it continues to gain mainstream attention through guides in AppleInsider and Six Colors. [edit]