Cape, a pioneering privacy-first mobile carrier, has raised $61M in financing rounds led by A* and Andreessen Horowitz. XYZ Ventures, ex/ante, Costanoa Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Forward Deployed VC, and Karman Ventures also participated in the financing.
Cape will use the capital to build a nationwide mobile network that provides premium wireless coverage which, unlike traditional carriers, masks personal identifying information like names, numbers, and locations.
The financing announcement comes as top U.S. officials raise the alarm on lax cybersecurity by the major telecommunications carriers, which leave them vulnerable to compromise by foreign actors. Hackers can use telecommunications networks to collect personal information, pinpoint users’ locations, and plant spyware, jeopardizing freedom of the press, human rights, and national security. Russia’s use of cellular networks to hack NATO officials and target Ukrainian troops has shown the relevance of these vulnerabilities to modern conflict.
Cape’s founder and CEO, John Doyle, first recognized the weaknesses of cellular networks as head of tech giant Palantir’s national security business. He saw that the threat applies not only to government organizations but also to every person who uses a smartphone. Founded in 2022, Cape partners with leading public, private, and academic research institutions to create a robust cellular network that protects users from present-day cybersecurity threats.
People trust their phones to hold their most personal information, but the moment their phone attempts to connect to a cellular network, that information is exposed to potential compromise. This vulnerability makes mobile networks gold mines of identifying data for hackers to exploit. Telecom breaches leaked the private information of more than 74 million customers in the United States just last year.
Even when data is not hacked, it is routinely monetized in what has become a multibillion-dollar industry. In 2020, the FCC levied $200 million in fines against America’s four largest carriers for selling user location data without adequate controls. Just months ago, investigations revealed that authorities purchased trillions of domestic phone records from a major US carrier as part of a warrantless surveillance program.
In contrast, as one of the only independent, full-network Mobile Virtual Network Operators in America, Cape is able to provide premium cellular service without the privacy sacrifices inherent in typical phone plans. Customers get best-in-class spam protection, hardened account security, a stringent firewall, and malicious signaling protection.
Cape will also provide superior reliability as the first consumer cellular service to be built on top of UScellular’s enterprise-grade multicarrier full MVNO Revolution infrastructure. Combining 12 separate national and regional cellular networks, it forms the country’s densest overlapping coverage to maximize resilience.
Kevin Hartz, General Partner of A
Telecom is one of the largest and most antiquated industries on the planet. Cape’s privacy-first architecture meets a growing need in the market for secure communications across consumers, businesses, and government.
John Doyle, Cape CEO
These are not only life and death questions for our nation’s defenders, but are also increasingly on the minds of everyday people, whose phones are with them through nearly every moment of their day. We are tackling an enormous set of problems that exist due to the rise of smartphones and mobile networks as a primary avenue to accessing the Internet. We can’t leak what we don’t have. That’s privacy by design, and it’s how we enable connection without compromise.
Kim Kerr, senior vice president, enterprise sales and operations for UScellular
We’re excited to work with Cape to deliver a wireless experience that keeps people connected securely wherever they are.
Katherine Boyle, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Cape’s technology is an answer to long-standing, critical vulnerabilities in today’s telecom infrastructure that impacts everything from homeland security to consumer privacy. The team is the first to apply this caliber of R&D muscle to rethinking legacy telecom networks, and are well placed to reshape the way mobile carriers think about their subscribers – as customers instead of products.
