Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Security Firm AnchorFree Lands $52 Million From Goldman Sachs

If you haven’t heard of AnchorFree, then there’s a pretty good chance you’re just not the type of person who worries about using open Wi-Fi hotspots and the security implications that tend to arise from that.

Today, AnchorFree announced that Goldman Sachs has made a $52 million Series C investment. Prior investors include RENN Capital. The investment brings its total capital raised to $63 million.

AnchorFree makes Hotspot Shield, a simple VPN tool that’s in use by some 60 million people around the world. It’s the creation of David Gorodyansky and Eugene Malobrodsky, who started the company in 2005 just after finishing college.

During the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, the company recorded more than a million downloads of the product in a single night. It’s now in use in 190 countries. The point of the capital raise is simple: Push the number of users higher still. There are, after all, some 1.6 billion people using the Internet.


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Moore’s Law means that more and more things can be done practically for free, if only it weren’t for those people who want to be paid. People are the flies in Moore’s Law’s ointment. When machines get incredibly cheap to run, people seem correspondingly expensive.

— From Jaron Lanier’s new book, “Who Owns the Future?” excerpted on Wired.com