Mullvad VPN faces customer exodus over co-founder's political donation

Key Takeaways

• Mullvad VPN co-founder Daniel Berntsson donated SEK 5 million ($519,000) to populist party Örebropartiet, the largest private political donation in Sweden in 2025
• The donation represented 72% of the party's annual income and has triggered customer cancellations and online criticism
• Mullvad insists the donation was personal and unrelated to company values, but the backlash raises questions about founder politics and enterprise vendor risk

Mullvad VPN, the Swedish privacy-focused service known for its strict no-logging policies, is losing customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson donated SEK 5 million ($519,000) to Örebropartiet, a populist party running in Sweden's 2026 national elections. The donation, revealed by Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman, was the largest private political contribution to any Swedish party in 2025 and funded 72 percent of the party's annual income.

Berntsson broke a seven-year blogging silence this week to explain his donation, publishing posts titled "Immigration," "Political individualism," and "Moral individualism." The posts followed weeks of customer criticism that had already been building across forums and blogs.

Why are customers cancelling Mullvad subscriptions?

The backlash centers on Örebropartiet's immigration policies. The party advocates for "large-scale remigration," policies designed to encourage or compel immigrants to leave Sweden. For a VPN company whose entire brand rests on privacy, anonymity, and protecting vulnerable users, some customers see the donation as a betrayal of those values.

Finnish blog Moonwriting published a post titled "I'm done with Mullvad." Another blog, Unutterable, went further with "Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership." A Hacker News discussion thread on the donations has drawn 1,784 comments.

Mullvad has defended itself by drawing a line between personal and corporate actions. In a post on X, the company said: "It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't."

What is Örebropartiet?

Örebropartiet started as a local party in Örebro County before expanding to contest Sweden's 2026 parliamentary election. Its platform mixes left-leaning and hard-right policies in ways that don't map neatly onto traditional political spectrums.

On the left: free preschool, free public transport, free dental care, reduced politicians' pay, and a 30-hour working week. On the right: sharply reduced immigration and the remigration policies that have drawn criticism. For enterprise buyers evaluating vendor risk, the party's mixed platform matters less than the fact that Berntsson's donation was large enough to be catalogued separately by DonationWatch in its Swedish political funding data.

Mullvad's privacy reputation and the trust problem

Mullvad built its reputation on extreme privacy measures. Founded in 2009 in Gothenburg, the service uses numbered accounts instead of email addresses. It charges a flat €5 per month with no discounts, eliminating payment trails that could link users to accounts. In 2023, Swedish police raided Mullvad's offices but reportedly obtained no customer data because of the company's privacy architecture.

The company also co-developed the Mullvad Browser with the Tor Project, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR. These credentials made Mullvad a default recommendation in privacy communities. That recommendation is now contested.

Mullvad is jointly owned and run by two CEOs: Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. The company's name, reflected in its mole logo, is Swedish for "mole." Whether Strömberg shares Berntsson's politics is unknown, but the ownership structure means Berntsson's personal actions directly affect a company with no outside shareholders to dilute founder influence.

What does this mean for enterprise VPN decisions?

Enterprise IT buyers rarely evaluate VPN vendors based on founder politics. They look at logging policies, jurisdiction, encryption standards, and compliance certifications. But Mullvad's situation highlights a gap in typical vendor assessments: ownership structure and founder control.

For organizations operating in regulated industries or with ESG mandates, the question is whether a founder's personal donations create reputational or compliance risk. There's no standard framework for evaluating this. Mullvad's defense, that personal donations are separate from company values, is legally accurate. Whether it's practically sufficient depends on each organization's risk tolerance.

Alternatives exist. NordVPN and ExpressVPN have larger marketing budgets but are headquartered in Panama and the British Virgin Islands respectively, raising their own jurisdictional questions. ProtonVPN, based in Switzerland, emphasizes transparency reports and open-source clients. Each has tradeoffs that go beyond founder politics.

The bigger question: can a privacy company survive founder controversy?

Mullvad's technical privacy architecture remains sound. The 2023 police raid demonstrated that even with physical access, Swedish authorities couldn't extract user data. The service's encryption and no-logging claims have been independently audited. Nothing about Berntsson's political donation changes the code or infrastructure.

But privacy tools depend on trust beyond technical verification. Users choose Mullvad partly because they believe the people running it share their values. That belief is harder to maintain when a co-founder funds policies that some users consider antithetical to privacy's purpose.

The Hacker News thread, with its 1,784 comments, suggests this debate won't resolve quickly. Some commenters defend the separation of personal politics from company operations. Others argue that in a two-founder company with no outside shareholders, the separation is illusory.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Mullvad VPN donate to a political party?

No. Co-founder Daniel Berntsson made a personal donation of SEK 5 million ($519,000) to Örebropartiet. Mullvad as a company did not make the donation, though Berntsson is a co-owner and co-CEO.

Is Mullvad VPN still safe to use?

Mullvad's technical privacy architecture, including no-logging policies and anonymous accounts, remains unchanged. The controversy is about founder politics, not the service's security or privacy capabilities.

What alternatives exist to Mullvad VPN?

Major alternatives include ProtonVPN (Switzerland-based, open-source), NordVPN (Panama-based), and ExpressVPN (British Virgin Islands-based). Each has different jurisdictional and pricing considerations.

What is Örebropartiet?

Örebropartiet is a Swedish political party running in the 2026 national elections. It combines left-leaning policies (free preschool, 30-hour work week) with hard-right immigration policies including "large-scale remigration."

How much of Örebropartiet's funding came from this donation?

Berntsson's SEK 5 million donation represented 72 percent of the party's annual income for 2025, making it the largest private political donation to any Swedish party that year.

Source: www.theregister.com