Who owns Hola VPN? Company, jurisdiction and related brands

Company and founders

The service is run by Hola VPN Ltd., registered in Israel; its documents list a PO box, POB 8025, in Netanya. Israel is not part of the 5/9/14 Eyes alliances. Hola was founded by Ofer Vilenski and Derry Shribman, who already had two companies behind them: KRFTech and Jungo, which NDS bought in 2006 for roughly $107 million. They began developing the peer-to-peer network idea in 2008, and in late 2012 Hola Networks Limited launched it for users. Besides the VPN, the same brand also offers Hola Browser.

The connection with Bright Data

The most important related company appeared in 2014 as a Hola division called Luminati Networks. It sold business clients access to the devices of Hola's free users as exit nodes, at $20 per gigabyte. This became widely known in May 2015, when the founder of 8chan reported an attack on his site through the Hola network. Vilenski then confirmed the scheme and said it had always been part of the terms of the free version, and Hola added to its FAQ that its free users serve as exit nodes for Luminati's clients. In 2017, the London private equity firm EMK Capital bought a majority stake in Luminati; according to the Israeli press, it paid $125 million for 75.6% of the shares. In 2021, Luminati was renamed Bright Data.

What this means now

Bright Data is named directly in Hola's documents: some free products make the user a node in its network, while the paid Premium plan exempts them from this. The company operates under Israeli law, keeps logs for up to 12 months and states that it discloses them upon a legal requirement, a subpoena or a court order. For more on the risks, see our page is Hola VPN safe, and the owners of other services are collected in our section who owns VPNs.