Who Owns NordVPN? Owners, Investors and Where It’s Based (2026)

NordVPN is owned by Nord Security, a privately held cybersecurity company co-founded by Lithuanian entrepreneurs Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas and Jonas Karklys. The VPN itself is provided by nordvpn S.A., a company registered in Panama City, Panama, and Nord Security is based in the Netherlands.

NordVPN isn’t owned by an Israeli, Chinese or Russian company. Its outside investors are four European and American funds, and since 2022 it has shared a holding company with Surfshark. Here’s the full picture, with the sources for each point.

Get NordVPN – Up to 75% Off

NordVPN Ownership at a Glance

Who Founded NordVPN?

NordVPN was started in 2012 by a group of childhood friends from Lithuania. According to Nord Security’s own timeline, it began that year as a Windows VPN configuration, and the first NordVPN app followed in 2013.

Nord Security lists three co-founders: Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas and Jonas Karklys. Okmanas and Sabaliauskas had already founded Tesonet, a Vilnius tech company and startup incubator, in 2008, and NordVPN grew up in that ecosystem. Nord Security itself was set up later as the umbrella company for NordVPN and the products that followed it.

Where Is NordVPN Based?

There are three answers, depending on what you mean by “based”:

• Legally, in Panama. NordVPN’s terms of service name its provider as nordvpn S.A., with an address in Panama City, and say the terms are governed by Panamanian law.
• Its parent company is in the Netherlands. NordVPN’s support centre says Nord Security is based in Europe, in the Netherlands.
• Its roots are in Lithuania. The founders are Lithuanian, the company was started in Vilnius, and much of the team still works there.

Why Panama? NordVPN’s own explanation is that Panama has no mandatory data retention law, so it isn’t required to store logs of what its users do. That matters because a VPN can only hand over data it actually has. Whether it keeps any is a separate question, which independent auditors have now checked six times – see does NordVPN keep logs.

Who Has Invested in NordVPN?

Nord Security was self-funded for its first decade. It has since raised two outside rounds:

• April 2022: $100 million at a $1.6 billion valuation, its first outside investment, led by Novator Ventures with General Catalyst and Burda Principal Investments.
• September 2023: another $100 million at a $3 billion valuation, led by Warburg Pincus, with Novator Ventures and Burda Principal Investments joining again.

None of these funds is Israeli, Chinese or Russian: Novator Ventures and Warburg Pincus are investment firms based in London and New York, General Catalyst is American, and Burda Principal Investments belongs to Germany’s Hubert Burda Media.

Do NordVPN and Surfshark Have the Same Owner?

Yes. In February 2022, Nord Security and Surfshark – another VPN with Lithuanian roots – merged under one holding company. When they announced it, both said they would keep operating independently, with no shared infrastructure or product development plans.

In practice they’re still rivals: separate apps, separate server networks, separate prices. Surfshark covers unlimited devices for less money, while NordVPN offers more servers and more security extras on its higher plans. Our Surfshark vs NordVPN comparison goes through the differences, and who owns Surfshark covers its side of the family.

Surfshark also makes Incogni, the personal data removal service that comes with NordVPN’s top Ultra plan.

Is NordVPN Owned by Israel?

No. Nothing in NordVPN’s ownership is Israeli: the founders are Lithuanian, the company that runs the service is Panamanian, its parent is based in the Netherlands, and its investors are European and American.

The confusion usually comes from Kape Technologies, a different company owned by Israeli businessman Teddy Sagi, with headquarters in London and a development centre in Tel Aviv. Kape owns several well-known VPNs – ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access and ZenMate – but it has no connection to NordVPN.

NordVPN does run servers in Israel: its public server list showed 24 in Tel Aviv when we checked on 29 September 2026. That’s simply one of the places you can connect to, not a sign of who owns it.

Is NordVPN a Chinese or Russian Company?

No. NordVPN has no Chinese or Russian owners or investors: its founders are Lithuanian and its investors are European and American. If you’re travelling to either country, our guides to using NordVPN in China and in Russia cover what to expect there.

What Else Does Nord Security Own?

NordVPN is the best known of a family of products that all carry the Nord name or come from the same company:

• NordPass, a password manager, included with NordVPN’s Complete and Ultra plans
• NordLocker, encrypted cloud storage (1 TB comes with Complete and Ultra)
• NordLayer, a VPN and network security service for businesses
• Saily, an eSIM service for travellers
• NordStellar, threat intelligence for companies
• Coveron, which Nord Security launched alongside Saily and NordStellar

Does the Owner Matter for Your Privacy?

It matters less than what the company can prove. Three things count most:

1. Where it operates. Panama doesn’t force NordVPN to keep user data.
2. What independent checks found. NordVPN’s no-logs policy has been assessed six times: by PwC in 2018 and 2020, and by Deloitte in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. The latest, carried out at the end of 2025 and published in February 2026, again found it in line with NordVPN’s no-logs promise.
3. How it handled problems. In early 2018 an attacker got into one NordVPN server at a rented data centre in Finland through the provider’s insecure remote-management tool. It became public in October 2019, when NordVPN confirmed it and said no user activity logs or credentials were exposed. In 2020 it began moving to colocated servers it owns, running from RAM.

We weigh all of this, along with price and performance, in is NordVPN good, safe and worth it, and you can read what everyday users say in is NordVPN trustworthy according to Reddit.

FAQ

The Bottom Line

NordVPN is a Lithuanian-founded service owned by Nord Security, run from Panama and backed by European and American investors. It shares a parent with Surfshark, has no Israeli, Chinese or Russian owners, and its no-logs promise has been checked by outside auditors six times.

See NordVPN’s current deal – up to 75% off with 3 extra months, and 30 days to change your mind.