Mullvad VPN has built its reputation on minimal data collection and account anonymity. That reputation invites an obvious follow-up question. Who actually owns and controls the company behind it?
The public answer looks simple: a Swedish company, wholly owned by its two founders. The evidentiary answer is more layered. Some parts of the ownership chain are independently confirmed through structured registry data. Other parts rest on the company’s own statements, unverified by any shareholder record, annual report, or beneficial ownership register.
This investigation separates what is independently confirmed from what is company-stated, so readers can weigh Mullvad’s ownership claims with an accurate sense of their evidentiary strength.
Who owns Mullvad VPN
Mullvad VPN is operated by Mullvad VPN AB, a Swedish company (org. no. 559238-4001) based in Gothenburg.
Mullvad describes Mullvad VPN AB as wholly owned by Amagicom AB (org. no. 556783-9807), also based in Gothenburg. LEI relationship data independently identifies Amagicom AB as Mullvad VPN AB’s direct and ultimate accounting-consolidating parent. The exact equity percentage behind that relationship has not been independently verified through a shareholder record or annual report. An accounting-consolidating parent is a defined regulatory category. It is not the same claim as an exact ownership stake, and the two should not be read as interchangeable.
Above Amagicom AB, Mullvad’s Owner’s Directive states that founders Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg each own 50% of the parent company. That is the company’s own account. The exact current economic split, share classes, and voting rights have not been independently verified through a statutory shareholder record.
The corporate structure, in short, is identifiable. The precise equity math behind it is not.
How the ownership structure works
The chain runs in five layers.
- Mullvad VPN: the public-facing product and brand.
- Mullvad VPN AB: the Swedish operating and contracting entity that provides the service.
- Amagicom AB: the parent company. LEI relationship data identifies it as Mullvad VPN AB’s direct and ultimate accounting-consolidating parent.
- Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg: each described in Mullvad’s Owner’s Directive as owning 50% of Amagicom AB. A company statement, not an independently verified shareholder record.
- Ultimate control: not independently established. Shareholder records, voting rights, articles of association, and beneficial-owner data were not retrieved in the underlying research.
One technical detail is easy to misread. Amagicom AB’s LEI record carries a NATURAL_PERSONS exception. That narrowly supports the absence of a reportable corporate accounting parent above Amagicom AB. It does not identify the shareholders by name. It does not prove the 50/50 split. It does not establish exact voting rights. And it does not exclude the possibility of minority equity holders. It is evidence of a category, natural-person ownership, not evidence of a specific arrangement.
How Mullvad’s ownership has changed
Mullvad’s ownership history reflects incremental corporate formalization rather than any known change in ultimate control.
Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg developed and launched Mullvad through Amagicom AB in 2008 and 2009. Amagicom AB was registered on 2009-06-15, establishing the parent company’s formal history. Mullvad VPN AB was formed and registered in late 2019 or early 2020, creating the entity that currently operates the service.
A transfer of operations or assets around this time is claimed but not verified through annual reports or transfer instruments. The exact mechanics of the 2020 restructuring remain unresolved.
Mullvad’s Owner’s Directive was published on 2021-09-16, formally stating the 50/50 ownership claim and long-term owner policy. Between 2023 and 2024, three additional group entities, Eisenia AB, Amagicom Services AB, and Amagicom Invest AB, were formed, expanding the corporate group. LEI records were last updated 2025-08-18, with the parent relationship marked partially corroborated.
No change in ultimate ownership was identified in the evidence reviewed. Current statutory shareholder records were not retrieved, though, so uninterrupted founder ownership was not independently established across the full period.
Who controls Mullvad
Ownership and control are not the same question. The evidence separates cleanly into what is confirmed and what is not.
Board and signatory records: high confidence. Bolagsverket-derived Tier Five databases (allabolag, ratsit, bolagsfakta) consistently report Daniel Berntsson (recorded as Erik Daniel Berntsson) as ordinary board member and Fredrik Strömberg (recorded as Karl Fredrik Strömberg) as deputy board member at both companies, each holding individual signatory authority. Multiple independent registry aggregators cross-corroborate these same records, which is why confidence here is high. They remain registry-derived reports, not directly retrieved statutory filings.
Economic ownership and voting control: moderate to low confidence. The 50/50 founder split is a company statement from the Owner’s Directive. No statutory shareholder record, share class documentation, or voting rights disclosure has independently verified this split, confirmed the absence of minority shareholders, or established how voting power is actually distributed.
Executive management: unresolved. This is one of the more significant open questions. Historical materials from 2016 to 2018 name Jan Jonsson as CEO. No current statutory VD (managing director) registration was located. Public statements and 2026 reporting describe Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg as co-CEOs, but this current statutory status remains partially unresolved. It may reflect a genuine leadership transition. The evidence does not allow that to be stated as confirmed fact.
Board membership, signatory authority, economic ownership, and voting control are distinct concepts. Berntsson and Strömberg’s board and signatory positions are well corroborated. Their economic ownership and ultimate voting control are company-asserted rather than independently confirmed.
The wider Amagicom corporate group
The Amagicom group is reported to include eight companies in total: Amagicom AB itself plus seven group entities. Four of these have direct registry-derived support: Mullvad VPN AB, Eisenia AB, Amagicom Services AB, and Amagicom Invest AB.
Three additional entities have been reported in independent coverage but were not directly registry-confirmed in the underlying research: Glasklar Teknik AB, Karlstad Internet Privacy Lab AB, and Tillitis AB. These should be treated as reported, not confirmed, group relationships.
Does Mullvad operate independently?
Shared board membership and shared signatory arrangements across Mullvad VPN AB and Amagicom AB indicate centralized governance at the leadership level. No workforce, infrastructure, financial, or shared-services analysis was conducted to establish the degree of operational integration or independence between entities in the group. This question remains unresolved rather than answered in either direction. Confidence here is low to moderate.
What the ownership structure incentivizes
The evidence base does not support detailed conclusions about strategic incentives beyond what is directly documented. What can be said is narrower and more specific.
Daniel Berntsson’s political donation, reported and discussed in 2026, was personal in nature. Reporting and the company’s own response indicated that Mullvad VPN AB, Amagicom AB, and Tillitis AB did not fund or support the donation. Its relevance to this investigation is limited to what it suggests about founder-level incentives, and the reputational exposure that can come with a concentrated ownership structure. It is not evidence of corporate policy or funding.
Ownership transparency
Mullvad has published a formal Owner’s Directive stating its ownership structure and long-term policy intent, a more proactive disclosure than many companies in this space provide.
Transparency and independent verification are not the same thing, though. The Owner’s Directive is evidence of stated policy and intent. No articles of association, shareholder agreement, or constitutional record was reviewed that establishes it as legally binding, irrevocable, or enforceable. It should be read as a public commitment, not a legal guarantee.
Criticisms and unresolved questions
No evidence-based ownership criticism beyond the items already discussed was identified in the research reviewed. The material tensions in the evidence are these.
Historic materials name Jan Jonsson as CEO, while 2026 sources describe the founders as co-CEOs. This may reflect a genuine transition, but current statutory status is unconfirmed. The company’s own claims, 100% parent ownership and an exact 50/50 founder split, are stated with more precision than the independent records currently support. The reported eight-company group total is plausible, but not all seven group relationships carry equal evidentiary support. A centralized board and signatory structure suggests coordinated governance, but operational independence between entities has not been tested.
What remains unresolved: exact economic ownership percentages and share classes; voting rights and beneficial ownership; current statutory CEO/VD status; annual reports and any debt or financing arrangements; the precise mechanics of the 2020 restructuring; whether the Owner’s Directive carries any enforceable legal status; and direct registry confirmation of Glasklar Teknik AB, Karlstad Internet Privacy Lab AB, and Tillitis AB as current subsidiaries.
STACK View
Mullvad’s ownership structure is identifiable at the entity level and murkier at the level of exact control.
What is well supported: Mullvad VPN AB is operated under Amagicom AB, whichLEI data independently identifies as its direct and ultimate accounting-consolidating parent. Board and signatory records consistently place founders Berntsson and Strömberg in governance roles across the group.
What is not independently supported: the exact ownership percentages at either level of the chain, the precise voting rights attached to that ownership, current statutory executive registration, and the enforceability of the company’s own stated ownership policy.
This is not a case of contradictory or suspicious evidence. It is a privacy company that discloses more than many of its peers, while the deeper verification, shareholder registers, annual reports, articles of association, simply has not been retrieved or made available. The gap between what Mullvad states and what has been independently verified is real. On the evidence available, it does not suggest concealment. It suggests incomplete documentation.
Reader conclusion
Mullvad VPN AB is the current operator. Amagicom AB is identified by independent LEI data as its accounting-consolidating parent. Bolagsverket-derived commercial databases consistently report Daniel Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg in board and signatory roles. The company describes them, though this has not been independently verified, as equal 50/50 owners of Amagicom AB.
Confidence is high for the entity identities and the accounting-parent relationship. Confidence is moderate for the company-stated ownership split and group structure. Confidence is low or unresolved for exact equity percentages, voting control, current statutory CEO status, and the enforceability of the Owner’s Directive.
Whether this should materially affect a reader’s trust in Mullvad depends on what matters to that reader. The founders appear to remain personally and visibly involved in governance, a meaningfully different picture than an opaque or externally controlled ownership structure. But readers should hold the company’s precise ownership claims, 100% parent ownership and an exact 50/50 founder split, as company-stated positions rather than independently confirmed facts.
The single biggest unresolved question is whether Amagicom AB’s ownership and voting control are actually distributed exactly as the Owner’s Directive describes, and whether any minority equity holders exist outside the two named founders. Until statutory shareholder records or an annual report become available, this remains an open question rather than a settled one.
For readers evaluating Mullvad against comparable providers, see Is Mullvad Private? and Who Owns Proton VPN?