Co-founder

David Carney: Tailscale co-founder

David Carney helped start Tailscale in 2019.

David Carney is a co-founder of Tailscale, the WireGuard-based mesh VPN company in Toronto. He worked as an engineer at Google before the company was founded in 2019.

He earned a BASc in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2001. Co-founder Avery Pennarun graduated in the same program and year.

Tailscale raised a US$12m Series A in November 2020 and a US$100m Series B in May 2022 at about US$1bn. In April 2025 it raised a US$160m Series C led by Accel.

More than 20,000 businesses paid for the product in 2025. Total funding across the three rounds is about US$272m.

Read the full Tailscale founder story

What did David Carney study?

David Carney earned a BASc in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo in 2001, the same degree and year as Tailscale co-founder Avery Pennarun.

What is David Carney's role at Tailscale?

Carney is a co-founder of Tailscale. He was a Google engineer when the company started in 2019.

How big is Tailscale?

Tailscale raised a US$160m Series C in April 2025 and had more than 20,000 paying business customers that year. Its US$100m Series B in 2022 valued it at about US$1bn.