Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership – Unutterable.

Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership

Mullvad is a “proper” VPN that does its VPN job without collecting or selling your data to various partners. It made a bit of splash recently by vocally objecting to the UK’s authoritarian plans to ban under-16s from using social media, which has made it a popular choice on the indieweb and in fedi circles.

The company is owned by two sole shareholders, the founders and CEOs Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Swedish website Flamman revealed that Berntsson donated 5m Swedish Krona (about £389,000) to the far-right Örebro party in 2025.

This makes Berntsson the single biggest donor to the Örebro party (and indeed Sweden’s biggest donor to any party).

When asked to confirm and explain this, Mullvad replied with a pre-canned statement. At the time of writing there’s no statement on their website.

Mullvad is a political company fighting for free speech, free information and privacy, with two equal co-founders, co-owners and co-CEOs who fundamentally disagree on many issues. Daniel's donation to a political party is private and not part of Mullvad's mission. We protect the right to express and access views we disagree with. We welcome anyone sharing these core values, whatever their other opinions. We are happy to refund others who don't, where we can.

This is a standard response from companies whose employees or owners express onerous views, or support fascism. The company is one thing, they are another. The odd tech dullard will pipe up with a you’ve got to uhm separate the art from the artist at this point, but when a tech company is making these sorts of statements, it’s usually misleading and evasive. (And in this case frankly contemptible — claiming to be a “political” company while saying its founder and owner’s funding of fascists is somehow a separate matter takes some nerve.)

Mullvad was founded and is solely owned by Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Like so many tech companies, the founders’ fates are entwined with the company’s. As the sole shareholders, Berntsson and Strömberg benefit directly from the profits it makes.

The money you spend on Mullvad enriches Daniel Berntsson and he spends that money funding the far-right.

This also reflects a cultural problem in the tech world. Because founders are venerated and afforded so much power over their startups, the two are essentially the same thing. While a multinational’s “values” are a meaningless PR exercise, we can say a small start-up’s values are those exhibited by its founder(s), including their politics. In Mullvad’s case, that means it materially supports the far-right and an agenda of remigration; freedom of speech and movement, but just for white Europeans.

FON.