Who owns Proton VPN? Proton AG, the Proton Foundation and Swiss law

Proton VPN belongs to Proton AG, a Swiss company based at Route de la Galaise 32 in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva. Since June 2024 its controlling shareholder is the Proton Foundation, a non-profit registered in Geneva. No holding company sits above Proton AG.

Proton AG, the company behind the VPN

Proton AG is the entity named on the VPN's paperwork, and it tops the Proton group. Scientists who met at CERN founded it in 2014; Andy Yen serves as CEO, alongside co-founders Jason Stockman and Wei Sun. The first product, Proton Mail, was paid for by ordinary backers: over 10,000 people contributed more than $500,000 in a crowdfunding campaign. In 2017 the VPN arrived. Proton states that the service runs on its own bare-metal servers and dedicated networks, so the firm that operates it also owns the hardware.

Who owns Proton AG

Proton publishes its shareholder list on its own ownership page.

No venture capital investor appears on that list.

What the Proton Foundation actually controls

The foundation cannot itself be bought, since nobody holds shares in it. Its key power is a veto: any change of control of Proton AG requires its consent, so a hostile takeover by a VPN conglomerate or a big tech firm is off the table by design. Its charter obliges it to serve the Proton community in perpetuity, and it receives 1% of Proton's revenue in years when finances allow, handing out over $5 million in grants so far. Proton AG stays a for-profit business funded by paid subscriptions; details are on the Proton Foundation page. Andy Yen is both CEO of Proton AG and a member of the foundation's board of trustees, which also includes Tim Berners-Lee, Carissa Véliz, Antonio Gambardella and Dingchao Lu.

Brands under the same roof

A single Proton account ties VPN, mail, storage and passwords to one operator, and the plans bundle several products together.

Unlimited, priced at $7.99 a month on the two-year plan, covers the most.

Tesonet, Nord and other ownership rumours

Old forum threads still connect Proton with Tesonet, the Lithuanian group associated with Nord Security. Check them against what Proton publishes: foundation, employees, FONGIT, users. Neither Tesonet nor Google appears anywhere there. Our overview of VPN owners lets you compare Proton with services run by larger groups.

What Swiss ownership means in practice

Swiss law decides what Proton must hand over: the company releases limited data only under a binding order issued by a Swiss authority, and it claims to contest doubtful requests, publishing a transparency report plus a warrant canary. Switzerland is outside the 5, 9 and 14 Eyes surveillance alliances, which is why our privacy sub-score awards it the full two points on that criterion. For GDPR matters the EU representative is Proton Europe sarl, located in Luxembourg. Shared ownership also means an incident or billing dispute in any Proton service lands on the same company that runs your VPN, and the privacy policy names Zendesk, Stripe, PayPal, Chargebee and Atlassian as third-party processors that handle some of your account data, for example support requests and payments. In 2025 Switzerland considered changing its surveillance law so that VPN services could be forced to collect user data, and Proton said it would leave if the change passed.

Proton VPN ownership FAQ

Is Proton VPN owned by Google or a VPN conglomerate?

No. Shares sit with the Proton Foundation, staff, FONGIT and users.

Who is the CEO of Proton?

Andy Yen, a co-founder from the original CERN group.

Is Proton VPN a non-profit?

No. Proton AG runs as a for-profit company; its controlling shareholder happens to be a non-profit.

Where are Proton VPN's servers?

On hardware Proton owns: bare-metal servers on dedicated networks, covering more than 140 countries.

Proton VPN ownership in brief

Proton AG operates the VPN. A non-profit foundation holding most of its shares can veto any change of control, while employees, FONGIT and users hold the rest. Swiss law governs data requests, and the service scores 6.12 of 10, sitting 2nd in our ranking.