ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN was founded by Peter Burchhardt and Dan Pomerantz as a straightforward consumer VPN service incorporated in Florida. The product was technically sound but unaudited, with no independent verification of its no-logs claims. The VPN market was small and fragmented with minimal regulatory attention. Separately, Crossrider (the future parent company) was founded in 2011 and acquired by convicted fraudster Teddy Sagi in 2012, planting governance risks that would only materialize later.

ExpressVPN reincorporated in the British Virgin Islands in late 2014, gaining genuine privacy protections but also placing itself beyond most consumer protection jurisdictions. The VPN market was growing rapidly as privacy awareness increased. Meanwhile, the Google-Berkeley study in 2015 publicly named Crossrider as a major ad injection affiliate, and the Crossrider IPO in September 2014 raised $75 million under Teddy Sagi's controlling stake — setting the financial foundation for the later VPN acquisition spree.

ExpressVPN reached its reputational peak: TrustedServer RAM-only infrastructure launched, PwC conducted the first independent no-logs audit, and the company co-founded the VPN Trust Initiative. The Turkey server seizure had validated its no-logs claims under real-world law enforcement scrutiny. However, the Kape consolidation engine was already in motion — CyberGhost (2017), ZenMate (2018), and PIA (2019) were acquired — and Reuters had just exposed Project Raven in January 2019, revealing that ExpressVPN's future CIO Daniel Gericke worked as a UAE hacker-for-hire.

The September 2021 acquisition by Kape Technologies for $936 million triggered a governance and trust crisis. The DOJ simultaneously fined CIO Daniel Gericke $335,000 for Project Raven, Edward Snowden warned users to leave, employees protested internally, and Gizmodo told readers to stop using the service. Kape's earlier acquisition of vpnMentor and Wizcase for $149 million gave it control over both VPN products and VPN review channels. The competitive conduct dimension spiked as four VPNs and two review sites fell under one entity.

The first full year under Kape ownership saw the review site rankings manipulation become public — vpnMentor and Wizcase gave all top positions to Kape-owned VPNs while removing competitors. The DNS leak bug was silently introduced in May 2022. ExpressVPN launched the Aircove router, creating its first hardware lock-in vector. India server removal demonstrated willingness to resist data retention mandates, but the Keys password manager launch would later become an unbundling vector.

Teddy Sagi took Kape private through Unikmind Holdings at ~$1.5 billion, delisting from the London Stock Exchange on May 31, 2023 and eliminating all public reporting requirements. Within weeks, approximately 180-200 employees were laid off. Founder Peter Burchhardt and CTO Daniel Gericke both departed, removing the last independent voices from ExpressVPN's leadership. The privatization pattern — acquire at premium, delist, slash costs, extract value — became unmistakable.

ExpressVPN's enshittification has intensified through multiple simultaneous vectors. A $50 million class action over deceptive auto-renewal practices, tiered pricing that unbundled previously included features, and legacy router firmware discontinuation pushing users toward proprietary Aircove hardware all demonstrate extraction acceleration. A second round of undisclosed layoffs occurred in 2024. The company now faces active litigation, declining user trust, and growing recognition that a privacy company owned by a convicted fraudster with adware origins may be fundamentally compromised.