ProtonMail Raises $2M USD

PRESS RELEASE

March 18th, 2015 (Geneva, Switzerland)

ProtonMail, a leader in email security and privacy, is announcing today that it has secured $2M USD in a financing round led by Charles River Ventures (CRV) and the Fondation Genevoise pour l'Innovation Technologique(FONGIT). The company will use these funds to further invest in the development of new features and to scale infrastructure to meet the growing demand for the service.

ProtonMail launched its beta service in May 2014. Explosive demand overloaded its servers within 48 hours, forcing the company to seek funding to support the rush of new users. This latest round of funding comes on the heels of the more than $550,000 raised by the Swiss startup in July 2014 from over 10,000 crowdfunding supporters, which set a record for a software technology project.

ProtonMail is now used worldwide by business professionals, journalists, activists, and individuals who value privacy in their communications. While ProtonMail is still in beta, more than 350,000 users have already signed up for the service. The company’s innovative email service distinguishes itself with its ease of use that allows anyone, regardless of tech skill, to benefit from end-to-end email encryption.

"This funding will allow us to finally bring ProtonMail’s automatic end-to-end email encryption to the mainstream," says ProtonMail Co-Founder Andy Yen. "We are happy to have found partners who understand our long term vision of online privacy and can help us succeed."

With support from FONGIT, ProtonMail will be moving into new offices in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva and expanding its datacenters in Switzerland, where the service is hosted under the protection of strict Swiss privacy laws.

"As an organization backed by the State of Geneva, our mission is to support valuable companies in leveraging the unique assets of Switzerland and Geneva, such as the robust framework for security and privacy," says Antonio Gambardella, Director of FONGIT, "We see tremendous potential in ProtonMail and look forward to supporting the company as it grows."

"The past decade has been marked by a massive erosion of privacy and we’re working to reverse this trend,” says Andy Yen. "Encrypted communications is the future and ProtonMail is committed to making online privacy a reality again for all Internet users."

About ProtonMail

ProtonMail is a service offered by Proton Technologies AG (Switzerland). Led by a core team of top scientists from CERN, Caltech, Harvard, and ETH Zurich, the company specializes in building the secure and private online communications platforms of the future. Every day, the ProtonMail team, brought together by a shared vision of protecting civil liberties, works to advance internet security and privacy. ProtonMail is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, near CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) where the founders met in 2013.

For more information, please visit:

https://protonmail.ch

Contact:

Kevin Huang

Media Relations

[email protected]

About FONGIT

Fondation Genevoise pour l'Innovation Technologique (FONGIT) is a private, non-profit foundation, whose mission is to empower entrepreneurs to successfully transform innovation and technology into a growing sustainable business, delivering economic and social value in Geneva, Switzerland. FONGIT is a start-up incubator currently supporting more than 40 innovative and high-tech ventures. FONGIT benefits from financial support from the State of Geneva and from the Swiss Federal Commission for Technology and Innovation.

For more information, please visit:

http://fongit.ch

Contact:

Antonio Gambardella

Director

[email protected]

About CRV

For more than 40 years, CRV has been investing in companies that touch the lives of millions every day. Our team, based in our offices in Silicon Valley and Boston, is made up of entrepreneurs and operators who have worked at companies big and small. CRV focuses on Series A investments and has been involved in some of the biggest tech companies and exits in the last few years, including Twitter, Yammer, Zendesk, and more. More recently, the firm has invested in some of the fastest-growing sectors in consumer and enterprise tech.

For more information, please visit:

http://crv.com

Contact:

Kim Morioka

Administrative Assistant

[email protected]