Who Owns Your VPN? Kape Technologies and the Consolidation of the Industry

Type "best VPN 2026" into a search engine and you'll get a list that, on the surface, looks like genuine competition: ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, maybe a few others rotating through the top spots. What most of those lists won't tell you is that three of those "competing" brands are owned by the same parent company. This isn't a conspiracy theory or an obscure fact buried in a filing — it's public information, disclosed in corporate records and acknowledged by the brands themselves. It's just rarely mentioned in the comparison articles that send you to buy one of them.

The Company: Kape Technologies

Kape Technologies PLC is a publicly listed cybersecurity company on the London Stock Exchange (ticker: KAPE). As of 2026, it owns and operates three major consumer VPN brands: ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and Private Internet Access (PIA), plus the smaller ZenMate brand. That's not a minor overlap — it means a meaningful share of the VPNs recommended across the review industry ultimately report to the same corporate parent.

Where Kape Came From

Kape wasn't always a privacy company. It began in 2012 as Crossrider, founded by Israeli entrepreneur Teddy Sagi, and built its early business developing browser-extension technology that was widely associated with adware — software that injects ads and tracking code into a user's browsing experience, often bundled with other downloads. Crossrider went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2014. In 2016, the company's management pivoted away from that business entirely and began rebuilding around privacy and cybersecurity products, formally rebranding as Kape Technologies in 2018.

From there, Kape's acquisition timeline is a matter of public record:

• 2017: Acquired CyberGhost VPN for approximately €9 million.
• 2018: Acquired ZenMate.
• 2019: Acquired Private Internet Access (PIA), then operated under London Trust Media.
• 2021: Acquired ExpressVPN for approximately $936 million — one of the largest acquisitions in VPN industry history.
• 2024: Kape went private under Unikmind ownership, alongside reported layoffs across its portfolio.

That last acquisition drew particular scrutiny at the time, in part because of a separate, unrelated news item that broke the same week: US officials disclosed that ExpressVPN's then-Chief Information Officer had previously been involved in a UAE government hacking operation targeting American citizens, in a role predating his time at ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN has not been shown to have engaged in wrongdoing as a company, and the individual in question is no longer with the company, but the timing meant Kape's biggest acquisition and a serious personnel controversy became public knowledge in the same news cycle.

Does Common Ownership Actually Matter?

This is the fair question, and it deserves a fair answer rather than outrage on one side or dismissal on the other. Here's what's true on each side of it:

The case for "it's not a problem": Each Kape-owned brand operates with its own separate infrastructure, its own privacy policy, and its own independent audit schedule. ExpressVPN has undergone 27+ independent audits (KPMG, PwC, Cure53, F-Secure) and had its no-logs claim tested in a real 2017 server seizure by Turkish authorities that turned up nothing. CyberGhost has passed three Deloitte audits (2022, 2024, Q4 2025) and was actually the first VPN to publish quarterly transparency reports, a practice it started in 2011, years before Kape acquired it. PIA has passed three Deloitte audits of its own and had its no-logs claim tested in two real US court cases (2016, 2018) that predate Kape's ownership. None of these three brands have a documented case of Kape-level interference compromising their individual privacy architecture.

The case for "it's worth knowing": When you compare "ExpressVPN vs CyberGhost" or "PIA vs ExpressVPN" expecting two independent companies competing for your business, you're actually comparing two products from the same balance sheet. If you're trying to diversify your trust across multiple unrelated companies — for instance, using one VPN for sensitive work and a completely separate one for everyday browsing, specifically to avoid any single company having visibility into all of your activity — picking two Kape brands doesn't achieve that goal, even though it looks like it does from the outside.

It's also worth noting Kape isn't the only example of this kind of consolidation. Nord Security, the company behind NordVPN, merged with rival Surfshark in 2022. The two continue to operate separate apps and separate infrastructure, and Surfshark's own audit trail (Deloitte, Cure53, SecuRing) doesn't appear to have suffered for it — but it's the same underlying pattern: two brands that look like competitors sharing one corporate home.

How to Check Who Owns a VPN Before You Buy

There's no single public database that tracks VPN ownership comprehensively, but a few practical steps get you most of the way there:

Read the "About" or "Company" page. Reputable providers disclose their parent company somewhere on their site, even if it's not front and center. Kape, Nord Security, and Ziff Davis (which owns IPVanish and StrongVPN) all publish this information.

Check the privacy policy's legal entity name. The company listed as the data controller in a privacy policy is often the actual operating entity, which can reveal a parent company relationship even when the marketing brand suggests independence.

Search "[VPN name] owned by." For any major provider, this turns up the acquisition history within the first few results, since ownership changes at this scale are reported by tech press when they happen.

The Honest Bottom Line

Common ownership isn't automatically disqualifying. ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and PIA all maintain genuinely strong, independently verified privacy practices under Kape, and Surfshark's practices haven't visibly weakened since the NordVPN merger. But "these are competing options" and "these are competing brands under one balance sheet" are different claims, and only one of them is true for a meaningful chunk of the VPN market in 2026. If ownership diversity matters to your own decision-making — and for some buyers, it genuinely should — independently owned options like Mullvad, IVPN, Windscribe, ProtonVPN, and PureVPN give you providers that don't share a parent company with each other or with the Kape or Nord Security families.

Kape Also Owns VPN Review Websites

This is the part of the ownership story that rarely gets mentioned in "best VPN" roundups, and it's worth stating plainly: Kape Technologies doesn't just own VPN brands, it also owns VPN review websites. Sites including Wizcase and vpnMentor disclose, in their own fine print, that they operate "in partnership with Kape Technologies PLC," which also owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and PIA — the same brands those sites rank and review. Both sites state that their reviews are written according to independent editorial standards and that rankings may take common ownership into account, but the structural conflict of interest is real: a review site owned by the same parent company as three of the products it reviews has an obvious incentive that a genuinely independent review site doesn't.

This isn't unique to Kape, either. It's a broader pattern worth watching for across the review industry generally: affiliate commissions create one layer of incentive (a site earns money when you click through and buy), and common ownership between a review site and a reviewed product creates a second, deeper layer on top of that. Neither incentive automatically makes a review dishonest, but both are worth knowing about when you're reading a "which is better" comparison, especially one that conveniently favors the reviewer's own corporate family.

Kape's Financials and Recent Changes

Kape was publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange for years before going private in 2024 under Unikmind Holdings ownership, a move that came alongside reported layoffs across its portfolio of brands. The company's roots trace back to Teddy Sagi, an Israeli entrepreneur who acquired the original Crossrider business in 2012 — a detail some ownership trackers note when describing Kape's ties. Kape has publicly stated that its current business bears no resemblance to Crossrider's early adware-adjacent operations, and there's no current evidence tying Kape's VPN products themselves to that earlier history beyond the shared corporate lineage.

ZenMate, the fourth and smallest brand in Kape's VPN portfolio, is far less prominent than ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, or PIA, and receives comparatively little independent review coverage or audit attention relative to its three larger siblings — worth knowing if you encounter it while shopping, since the audit and transparency track record documented throughout this piece applies most directly to the three flagship brands.

A Practical Checklist Before You Buy

If ownership diversity genuinely matters to your decision — not just as an abstract principle, but because you have a specific reason to want unrelated companies handling different parts of your online life — here's a practical way to apply everything above:

Step one: identify the actual operating brand you're considering (ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, PIA, NordVPN, Surfshark, IPVanish, StrongVPN, PureVPN, VyprVPN, and so on).

Step two: check which parent company owns it, using the acquisition timeline in this piece or a quick search of "[brand name] owned by" for anything more recent than what's documented here.

Step three: if you're deliberately trying to split trust across two or more providers, confirm they don't share a parent. Mullvad plus IVPN, for instance, achieves genuine ownership diversity. ExpressVPN plus PIA does not, even though they present as two separate purchasing options.

Step four: when reading a comparison or ranking article anywhere online, not just here, check that site's own disclosure or "about" page for an ownership relationship with any of the products being ranked, the same way you'd want us to be transparent with you.

Why We're Telling You This

vpnreview.co earns affiliate commissions when you sign up through links on this site, and we're upfront about that in the disclosure at the top of every review. What we don't have is a shared parent company with any VPN brand we review, including the ones covered in this piece — which is precisely why we're able to write about Kape's structure, including the review-site ownership overlap, without it creating the same conflict of interest described above. Knowing the difference between an affiliate relationship (which nearly every VPN review site has, including this one) and a corporate ownership relationship (which only some do) is the single most useful piece of media literacy you can bring to VPN shopping in 2026.

Comparing Kape's Portfolio to Nord Security's

It's worth directly contrasting Kape's three-brand VPN portfolio against Nord Security's two-brand structure (NordVPN and Surfshark), since they represent genuinely different consolidation stories despite both resulting in "competing" brands sharing a parent. Kape's brands entered its portfolio through outright acquisition of previously separate companies: CyberGhost, ZenMate, PIA, and ExpressVPN were all independent before Kape bought them, one by one, over roughly four years. Nord Security and Surfshark, by contrast, merged as two already-successful, purpose-built VPN companies joining forces, rather than one company acquiring smaller competitors piecemeal. The practical result for a buyer is similar either way — two "competing" brands under one roof — but the corporate history behind each consolidation differs in ways that matter if you're weighing how much to trust the process itself, not just the current outcome.

Kape's total VPN subscriber base across its three flagship brands has been estimated at well over 7 million paying subscribers in recent industry coverage, giving some sense of scale: decisions made at the Kape corporate level have downstream effects across a genuinely large share of the overall paid VPN market, not just a niche corner of it.

The Bigger Picture for VPN Shoppers

None of this is meant to steer you away from Kape-owned brands outright — ExpressVPN and CyberGhost both earn genuinely strong marks throughout this site's own reviews, audits and all. The goal of this piece is simpler: giving you the same ownership picture a well-informed industry insider already has, so a "which VPN is better" comparison reads differently once you know two of the options being compared write their parent company's name on the same annual report. Transparency about structure doesn't have to mean distrust of the product — it just means an informed decision instead of an accidental one.

A Timeline You Can Reference

To recap the full acquisition history in one place: Crossrider was founded in 2012 by Teddy Sagi and went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2014. The company pivoted away from its adware-adjacent browser-extension business in 2016 and rebranded as Kape Technologies in 2018. CyberGhost was acquired in 2017 for roughly €9 million, ZenMate followed in 2018, Private Internet Access was acquired in 2019, and ExpressVPN was acquired in 2021 for approximately $936 million. Kape itself went private under Unikmind Holdings ownership in 2024, alongside reported layoffs across its brand portfolio. That is nine distinct corporate events across twelve years, each individually reported and verifiable, that collectively produced the three-brand VPN portfolio described throughout this piece.

Keeping a timeline like this in mind is a useful habit for VPN research generally: ownership changes are usually reported once, get buried in tech-news archives, and are rarely revisited by review sites afterward — which is exactly why a dedicated, standalone explainer like this one is worth bookmarking and revisiting whenever you are evaluating a new VPN purchase.

That level of documented detail is rare in an industry where most ownership changes are reported once and forgotten — but it is exactly the kind of detail worth having on hand the next time a comparison article presents two Kape-owned brands as genuine competitors.

Frequently Asked Questions