Silent Circle Raises $30 Million In Funding, Moves To Switzerland

Privacy-conscious communications provider Silent Circle has raised $30 million (£17.8m) in the latest financing round led by Cain Capital. The company plans to use the money to expand its operations and meet the global demand for Blackphone, its privacy-focused smartphone.

“It is rare to find innovators like Silent Circle bringing multiple uniquely disruptive technologies to market at such an ideal time to capitalize on both ideas and execution,” said Anurag Jain, a noted entrepreneur and one of the investors in the company.

Silent Circle also announced it is moving its headquarters from the Caribbean island of Nevis to Switzerland, and adding Sir Peter Bonfield, the former CEO and chairman of BT, to its advisory board.

Just a few days ago the company launched Silent Text 2, a major update to its secure messaging app that tweaks the encryption algorithms so that the sender and the receiver no longer have to be online at the same time.

Right place, right time

Silent Circle was established in 2012 by a team of cryptography experts which included the author of PGP encryption Phil Zimmerman and the creator of Apple’s whole disk encryption Jon Callas.

The company offers encrypted long-distance calling plans, secure file transfer services and other tools to safeguard user privacy, paid for through a subscription model. It claims it can protect customers against digital surveillance carried out by both cyber criminals and government agencies.

Silent Circle has customers in 130 countries, and its products have been adopted by 11 different governments. The company gained a lot of attention after it announced the Blackphone, a handset expected to provide unparalleled levels of security, designed in partnership with Spanish manufacturer Geeksphone.

The Blackphone runs PrivatOS, a modified version of Android that includes a full suite of Silent Circle applications. It will begin shipping to customers in June. Zimmerman previously said that the aim of the handset is to “uphold the objectives of privacy.”

Silent Circle will be moving the global headquarters from the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis to Switzerland, a country which already serves as the base of operations for the Blackphone project.

“The move to Switzerland is extremely important for us as a company serving a global customer base. Switzerland’s strong privacy laws, legendary neutrality, and economic business advantages will allow us the ability to scale to Silent Circle’s rapid adoption by businesses, governments and individual pro-sumers around the world.” said Vic Hyder, Chief of Revenue at Silent Circle.

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