Mullvad's Co-founder Controversy

This post follows the format:

1. Detail the controversy
2. Analyze Mullvad’s response
3. Compare this situation to a similar case (Proton’s CEO)
4. My action as a customer of Mullvad’s services.

« IMPORTANT TO MENTION »

This blog post does not intend to take a political position on the topic. I want to lay out everything about this controversy and try to understand both sides.

You may verify the sources yourself at the end of the page. Because like everything online, trust should be taken with a grain of salt.

Mullvad’s co-founder controversy

Let’s start with the report by Flamman, the Swedish newspaper that conducted the original investigation and interview with Berntsson.

Despite the paywall limiting full access, enough of the article is visible to establish the key facts. Daniel Berntsson, co-founder and co-owner of Mullvad, made a personal donation of five million kronor (SEK)—approximately €450k—to the populist Örebro Party in 2025. In an email to Flamman, Berntsson confirmed that it was a personal donation. ¹

This single donation represented approximately 72% of the Örebro Party’s total income for that year, and according to Flamman, it was the largest single private political donation made to any Swedish party in 2025. To put the figure in further perspective, Mullvad itself reported a revenue of 314 million SEK in 2024, meaning the donation corresponds to roughly 1.6% of the company’s annual turnover—significant for a personal gift, but clearly a private financial decision rather than a company-level expenditure. ¹

« NOTE »

Flamman is a Swedish left-wing, independent socialist newspaper. It was founded in 1906 with ties to the Social Democrats, and later became associated with the Communist Party following a party split in 1917. Since 1990, it has operated as an independent socialist publication with no formal attachment to any political party — today considered broadly sympathetic to the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) rather than the Social Democrats. ²

Nya Dagbladet adds that the donation arrived precisely as the party escalated its bid for the Riksdag—Sweden’s parliament and supreme decision-making body. ³

The Örebro Party has, until now, been exclusively a local and regional party in Örebro County. For the 2026 parliamentary elections, the party has announced its national candidacy, with a specific strategy for entry. ³

Their plan relies on a lesser-known feature of the Swedish electoral system: beyond the standard 4% national threshold, a party can win a fixed parliamentary seat if it clears 12% of the vote in a single constituency, even with negligible national support. The Örebro Party is targeting exactly this route via the Örebro county constituency, where 12% corresponds to approximately 24,000 votes. Should they succeed, it would be the first time in Swedish political history that a party enters parliament via this mechanism. ⁴

According to Flamman, as cited by Nya Dagbladet, Berntsson justified the donation to party leader Markus Allard by citing the party’s “backbone,” clairvoyance, and willingness to solve problems. He also wanted to compensate for what he perceived as dishonest obstruction by media and other parties.

Notably, Berntsson also revealed a tension in his own stated worldview: he told Flamman that his personal ideal is free movement of people, but that years of what he described as failed immigration and integration policy had, in his view, made supporting a remigration-focused party feel necessary. ¹

« NOTE »

Nya Dagbladet is a Swedish online newspaper associated with the National Democrats, a defunct far-right political party in Sweden. It is known for promoting conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial and white genocide, as well as anti-vaccine misinformation, alternative medicine, and pro-Kremlin propaganda regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ⁵

Örebropartiet political campaign

The Örebro Party describes its ideology as “class-conscious populism” — a blend of traditionally left-wing social welfare policies with right-wing, hardline stances on immigration and nationalism. ⁶

Their primary policy pillars are ⁶:

1. Anti-Corruption and Anti-Establishment

   • Lowering Politician Salaries (reducing the wages and benefits of local and national politicians)
   • Ending “Prestige Projects” (municipal art, public sculptures, and large infrastructure projects)
   • The “Transferiat” (a term coined by the party leader to criticize classes of society—including certain politicians, bureaucrats, and welfare-dependent immigrants—who he claims “live off transfers” and drain money from the state)

2. Immigration and “Remigration”

   • Mass Remigration (aiming to deport immigrants, specifically criminals and those reliant on social welfare)
   • “Sweden Belongs to the Swedes” (deporting individuals even if born in Sweden if they “have no natural connection to Sweden”)
   • Assimilation (for immigrants who remain, the party demands strict assimilation and has advocated for the immediate closure of Islamic charter schools)

3. Healthcare and Social Welfare

   • Free Dental Care
   • Anti-Privatization (healthcare, elderly care, municipal education, and public housing)
   • Labor and Housing (increased social housing, subsidies for youth recreation, and the party has voted in favor of trialing a 30-hour workweek with retained salary for certain welfare occupations such as preschool teachers)

4. Foreign Policy

   • EU and NATO (expressed euroskepticism and opposition to NATO, with leaving both on the table)
   • Arms Production (massively increasing domestic weapons production and becoming a major arms exporter to boost the economy rather than relying on NATO)

Mullvad’s response to the controversy

The day after Flamman’s report, Mullvad published a statement describing itself as a “political company” strictly focused on fighting for freedom of speech, information, and privacy. They emphasized a culture of tolerance, stating they protect the right of people to express views they disagree with and welcome collaboration regardless of opinions, noting that the “founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.” They clarified that Daniel’s private political donation “is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission,” and offered an unconditional refund to any customer who no longer wished to remain one for philosophical reasons. ⁷

Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.

Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don’t agree with. We protect the right of everyone…

— Mullvad.net (@mullvadnet) on June 27, 2026

On Mullvad’s official About page, Daniel Berntsson is listed as one of the founders “who are (alongside Fredrik Strömberg) actively involved in the company.” He also appears in the team list. ⁸

Comparison to Proton’s CEO controversy

In December 2024, Andy Yen, Proton’s CEO, posted on his personal X account praising the incoming Trump administration’s appointment of Gail Slater to head the DOJ’s antitrust division—framing it as a sign that Republicans had become more willing than Democrats to take on Big Tech. The post went viral and generated significant backlash in January 2025, intensified when Proton’s official Reddit account chimed in with what appeared to be a corporate endorsement of the sentiment. ⁹

Great pick by @realDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin. pic.twitter.com/0XVVO2ffcH

— Andy Yen (@andyyen) on December 4, 2024

These two situations share some surface similarities: right-leaning political associations, significant backlash from the privacy community, and rapid PR responses distancing the company from the founder’s politics.

They differ in important ways:

• Financial Donation vs. Social Media Commentary:

  Berntsson made a substantial financial contribution from his personal wealth. Yen made verbal comments on social media praising a specific policy appointment.

• Private vs. Corporate Channels:

  The Mullvad donation was a private transaction, uncovered and reported by investigative journalists. Proton’s controversy was messier: the official Proton Reddit account posted what appeared to be a corporate endorsement, stating, “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.” ¹⁰ Proton deleted the post within hours, clarifying it was not an official statement, and Yen attributed the episode to an internal miscommunication rather than company policy.

• Fringe vs. Mainstream:

  The Örebro Party is a small, fringe, local party with no parliamentary presence. The Republican Party is one of the two major governing parties in the United States.

My personal actions about this situation

I’ve been a loyal customer for more than two years. Mullvad is transparent, regularly audited ¹¹, consistently priced ¹², and technically excellent. DAITA is genuinely unique. The service does what it promises, without friction.

This situation is uncomfortable—I won’t pretend otherwise. But sitting with it for a moment, I think the honest version of my discomfort is more specific than “I’m financing something I oppose.”

Berntsson donated his personal money, from his personal wealth, to a party his co-founder disagrees with. Mullvad, the company, responded quickly, drew a clear line, and offered unconditional refunds. That’s a more substantive and transparent response than most companies manage in comparable situations. If I’m being rigorous, the causal chain between my €5/month and any political outcome is long, indirect, and already done—the donation happened regardless of what I do next.

What lingers isn’t really a financial question. It’s a trust question. Part of what makes Mullvad appealing, especially for a privacy tool, is the sense that the people behind it share a certain set of values. Learning that one of its co-founders holds views, and acts on them financially, that I find troubling does shift something—not because he’s wrong to have private political opinions, or wrong to spend his money on them, but because it changes the texture of the relationship.

Whether that shift is enough to matter is something I genuinely haven’t resolved. I can see a reasonable person concluding it isn’t—that a technically excellent, privacy-first service run by two people who explicitly disagree with each other on politics is, if anything, a healthier arrangement than most alternatives. I can equally see someone concluding that they’d rather not sit with the ambiguity, and choosing a different provider.

Both of those seem like defensible positions to me. What I’m less convinced by is the idea that this controversy reveals something fundamentally broken about Mullvad as a company. It reveals something about one of its co-founders as a private citizen. Those are different things, and collapsing them too quickly does neither the company nor the situation justice.

I’ll finish my current subscription. Beyond that, I’m genuinely undecided—and I think that’s the most honest thing I can say.