Kape Technologies plc

What does Kape Technologies own?

Kape owns VPN brands ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, and ZenMate, plus Mac security company Intego, Restoro utilities, and review properties vpnMentor and Wizcase.

Is Kape Technologies publicly traded?

No. Kape listed on London's AIM market from 2014 but was taken private in 2023 when controlling shareholder Unikmind Holdings, owned by Teddy Sagi, bought out all other shareholders and delisted it.

Who owns Kape Technologies?

Kape is wholly owned by Unikmind Holdings Limited, the Isle of Man investment vehicle of Israeli-British billionaire Teddy Sagi, the founder of Playtech.

When was Kape founded?

The company was founded in 2011 in Tel Aviv as Crossrider, a browser extension monetization platform. It pivoted to consumer cybersecurity in 2016 and renamed itself Kape Technologies in 2018.

Where is Kape headquartered?

Kape is headquartered in London, England, incorporated in the Isle of Man, with its largest development center in Tel Aviv's Azrieli Sarona Tower.

How did Kape acquire ExpressVPN?

Kape bought ExpressVPN in a deal announced September 2021 and completed December 2021 for approximately $936 million, its largest acquisition, financed partly by a $354 million equity placing underwritten by Unikmind.

What is Kape's revenue?

The last publicly reported figure is approximately $623 million for fiscal 2022, before the company delisted. Post-privatization figures are not disclosed.

The company began in 2011 in Tel Aviv as Crossrider, founded by Smueli Achdut and Koby Menachemi. Its original business was a software development kit for building and monetizing browser extensions, a model that security researchers later connected to ad-injection software distributed by Crossrider's customers. That history has followed the company's reputation ever since.

In late 2012 Teddy Sagi acquired Crossrider for approximately $37 million, making it part of his growing internet investments. The company listed on London's AIM market in 2014 at a valuation around $250 million.

The decisive change came in 2016 to 2017: new management pivoted the business entirely away from browser monetization and toward consumer cybersecurity. The browser SDK business was shut down, and in 2017 Kape bought CyberGhost VPN, a Romanian privacy service, as its first security acquisition. In March 2018 the company renamed itself Kape Technologies to mark the transformation.

An acquisition run followed: ZenMate in 2018, Private Internet Access in 2019 for approximately $95 million plus deferred consideration, and in 2021 two deals that reshaped the group. In March 2021 it acquired Webselenese, the operator of review sites vpnMentor and Wizcase, for roughly $149 million, an unusual vertical move that put customer acquisition content in-house. In September 2021 it announced the $936 million acquisition of ExpressVPN, the industry's most valuable consumer brand, completed in December 2021. ExpressVPN brought more than 3 million subscribers and 2020 revenue of $279 million.

The ExpressVPN deal was financed partly by a $354 million equity placing underwritten by Sagi's Unikmind, which already held a majority of Kape shares. In February 2023 Unikmind offered to buy out remaining shareholders, ultimately at $3.60 per share after an increased and final offer in April. ExpressVPN founders Peter Burchhardt and Dan Pomerantz, who held roughly 11.6 percent of Kape through deal proceeds, committed to accept. The buyout completed and Kape delisted from AIM in 2023, ending nine years of public trading.

Post-take-private, Kape continued operating the portfolio, reporting more than 7 million subscribers and approximately 1,000 employees. Without listing obligations, the group has released no audited figures since, with the last public numbers showing fiscal 2022 revenue of approximately $623 million.

The company's ethical profile is dominated by governance questions rather than environmental ones. Two stand out. First, the Crossrider legacy: before the 2016 pivot, the company's browser extension platform was associated in security research with ad-injection software, history that critics raise when evaluating whether a privacy company should be trusted. Second, the Webselenese acquisition gave Kape ownership of vpnMentor and Wizcase, review sites that evaluate the very products Kape sells, a conflict of interest the company says is managed through editorial separation and that has drawn sustained criticism from competitors and industry watchers.

On the positive side, Kape's brands maintain an unusual level of third-party verification: ExpressVPN's no-logs policy has been audited by KPMG, PwC, and Cure53, and its TrustedServer RAM-only architecture represents the category's stronger technical claims. Whether that offsets the structural criticism is an open question the industry continues to debate.

Beyond the Crossrider history and review-site conflict, the 2021 disclosure that then-ExpressVPN CIO Daniel Gericke had previously worked on the UAE's Project Raven surveillance program produced the company's sharpest product-trust controversy. Gericke paid a US Department of Justice penalty and cooperated with investigators; ExpressVPN initially retained him, defending his expertise, and he departed in 2023.

Israeli ownership and Tel Aviv development presence have also periodically surfaced in geopolitical discussions of who controls Western consumers' privacy software, a scrutiny point rather than a documented violation.