Kape bought the VPNs. Then it bought the comparison sites.

Open three tabs to compare ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access. The names differ. The colors differ. The parent company does not. All three belong to Kape Technologies, a business whose most revealing product may be the choice it presents to shoppers. Kape also owns Webselenese, the publisher behind vpnMentor, where some of those shoppers go for advice.

That arrangement puts Kape on both sides of an unusually intimate transaction: deciding whom to trust with your internet connection. Its brands sell privacy by subscription. Its publishing business helps people navigate the market. The combination explains more about Kape than a list of server locations ever could.

Kape’s website says it serves more than seven million paying customers. Most encounter the company through an app bearing another name. This is a consumer software group whose distribution skills matter alongside its security engineering. The corporate name stays backstage; the brands do the talking.

A browser business changes direction

Kape began in 2011 as Crossrider, founded by Koby Menachemi and Shmueli Achdut. Their original business helped developers build browser extensions. In December 2012, Globes reported its sale to Teddy Sagi for $37 million. Menachemi, the chief executive, was still dealing with a software bug around the sale. Even an exit has a support queue.

The advertising chapter left baggage. Google’s 2015 research into ad injection named Crossrider among businesses involved in distributing software in that ecosystem. The finding belongs to that period and that business. It does not establish that today’s VPN products perform the same activities. It does explain why the old name keeps returning in discussions of the new one.

The strategic turn began in 2016. CyberGhost followed in 2017; Crossrider became Kape in 2018. Contemporary reporting described a shift toward cybersecurity through research, development and acquisitions. The record establishes a deliberate business change, rather than a single dramatic conversion moment. Selling consumer protection became the organizing idea.

The $936 million purchase

Kape assembled its position in stages. Intego added Mac security in 2018. Private Internet Access joined in 2019. Webselenese arrived in March 2021. Then came the purchase that changed the scale of the company: ExpressVPN, announced that September for approximately $936 million and completed in December.

The price was not one enormous check. The announced agreement combined $354 million in cash, $237 million in shares and $345 million in deferred cash. ExpressVPN’s founders would become shareholders in the enlarged group. Kape was acquiring customers and engineering while spreading the payment across different forms and dates.

The resulting accounts require careful reading. Reported revenue rose from $230.7 million in 2021 to $623.5 million in 2022, a 170.3% increase. On a pro forma basis, growth was 18.9%. The larger percentage captures a changed group as well as business growth; it should not be mistaken for a sudden tripling of demand for an unchanged portfolio.

Subscriptions made the acquisition logic plausible: 86.8% of 2022 revenue was recurring. Kape also reported a £190.1 million equity raise during 2022 and modified bank facilities of $425 million. Those are separate financing measures, not another acquisition price. This was a capital-intensive route to a subscription business, backed by investors and lenders.

The shortlist has an owner, too

Webselenese makes the strategy more distinctive. Buying a VPN adds a product. Buying a comparison publisher adds contact with people who are actively deciding which product to buy. Kape describes Webselenese as a source of consumer privacy and security content; the commercial attraction is being present before the subscription begins.

vpnMentor’s own disclosure is unusually useful reading. It acknowledges common ownership with ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access. It also says rankings and reviews may take ownership and affiliate commissions into account. Elsewhere, it describes hands-on testing and says it does not accept payment to write positive reviews.

Those statements can coexist, but readers should understand the incentives. A review can contain real testing while sitting inside a commercial relationship. Common ownership is a reason to examine methodology and compare outside assessments; it is not, by itself, proof that a particular test result is false.

“proof is better than trust”

Kape’s published guiding principles

For operators studying Kape, the transferable lesson is to understand how customers find you. Distribution can be worth owning. The condition is that the audience continues to find the advice useful and credible. If readers discount the recommendation because of its financial connections, ownership of the audience’s attention becomes less valuable.

Privacy, with a household address

The products have ordinary jobs. A traveler wants to protect a connection on an unfamiliar network. A household wants VPN coverage across devices. A Mac owner wants protection against malicious software. These needs explain why Kape keeps both VPN brands and Intego, rather than expecting one tool to solve every security problem.

ExpressVPN offers apps across major desktop and mobile platforms. Its Lightway protocol is open source. Private Internet Access also publishes open-source apps, while CyberGhost operates as a separate consumer VPN brand. Shared ownership does not make their interfaces, features or operating arrangements interchangeable. Customers still buy a particular service.

Aircove moves the VPN into a physical object: a Wi-Fi router. The household version and portable Aircove Go extend the idea beyond installing an app on each supported device. The hardware still needs an active ExpressVPN subscription for VPN service. Buying the box does not buy a lifetime connection.

The portfolio’s edge is breadth, distribution and the ability to fund specialized development across brands. Competition remains substantial. NordVPN and Surfshark also share a holding company, while Proton VPN and Mullvad offer other ownership and product choices. Counting logos is a poor way to count independent businesses.

A bug puts the promise on trial

In 2024, ExpressVPN provided a more instructive story than another marketing claim. A reviewer reported unexpected DNS behavior when using split tunneling on Windows. Split tunneling lets selected apps use different network routes. Under affected conditions, some DNS requests could escape the intended VPN path.

ExpressVPN temporarily removed the feature from its Version 12 Windows app, investigated and released fixes. It estimated that fewer than 1% of its Windows users were affected and said other protections, including encryption, were not affected. Those are the company’s assessments, not a reason to dismiss the failure.

In April, it published a Nettitude audit addressing remediation. The sequence offers something practical to copy: act on an external report, restrict the affected feature, explain the conditions, then have the fix examined. A connected indicator alone cannot prove that every relevant part of an app behaves correctly.

Subsequent assurances need equally careful labels. In June 2025, ExpressVPN announced a KPMG assessment covering its TrustedServer system and privacy claims as of February 28 that year. An assessment has a scope and a date. It supplies evidence about defined controls, not an indefinite guarantee covering every future release.

After the stock-market exit

Ownership tightened in 2023. Unikmind, Sagi’s investment vehicle, increased its offer to $3.60 per share; the offer became unconditional in April. Kape’s timeline records its delisting in May. The public-market chapter ended, while the consumer brands continued selling subscriptions.

Charles Butler, appointed chief executive in November 2023, now leads the group at corporate level. Kape describes his remit in terms of strategy, capital structure and governance. Its current leadership page names Or Ifrah as chief financial officer. That division of responsibilities suits a business built through acquisitions.

The company publishes principles centered on honesty, privacy, service, freedom and autonomy. Its 2022 report described a Women at Kape employee resource group and new conduct policies. These are concrete statements and initiatives; they are not a substitute for evidence about daily working life across its brands.

The VPN grows a bundle

By March 2026, ExpressVPN was presenting a five-product privacy suite: the VPN, ExpressKeys, ExpressMailGuard, Identity Defender and ExpressAI. Access depends on subscription tier, and Identity Defender is aimed at US users. The expansion takes the group into passwords, email exposure, identity risk and the material people give to AI systems.

ExpressAI began rolling out on March 31, initially to ExpressVPN Pro users. The company says it uses confidential computing and encrypted conversation storage to keep chats inaccessible to it and model providers. It also reports an external Cure53 assessment. These are specific architecture and assurance claims to examine, rather than a blanket reason to entrust sensitive information to any chatbot.

The commercial inference is straightforward: more useful services give subscribers more reasons to renew. The counterweight is complexity. Each additional product introduces another interface, support burden and promise to maintain. The bundle earns its place when people actually use those protections.

Before you click Connect

Kape is useful to understand because it makes the machinery of consumer privacy visible: acquisitions, software, recurring payments and the recommendations that connect them. For a buyer, the sensible next step is to compare the particular app’s audit scope, device support, subscription terms and ownership disclosure.

A VPN can protect traffic between your device and its server and change the IP address websites see. It cannot erase the identity you reveal by signing into an account or repair a compromised device. Kape’s broader product range recognizes that privacy has several parts. The buyer’s task is to decide which parts need paying for.