Tor Project pauses joint promotion with Mullvad over a co-founder's political donation

The Tor Project has paused joint promotion with Mullvad VPN after a political donation by one of the company's co-founders, but it will keep working with Mullvad on the Mullvad Browser. "We are not terminating the relationship but are setting clear boundaries", Tor wrote in a statement on October 9. The decision follows criticism from parts of Tor's community over a donation that Mullvad co-founder Daniel Berntsson made in 2025.

The donation

Berntsson, who co-owns and co-runs Mullvad with Fredrik Strömberg, gave 5 million Swedish kronor (about $514,000) of his own money to Örebropartiet, a local populist party from the city of Örebro that campaigns for strict limits on immigration and for "remigration", sending immigrants back to their countries of origin. The Swedish magazine Flamman found the gift in the party's income report and reported it this summer. According to Flamman, it made up 72% of the party's income for 2025 and was the largest single private donation to a Swedish party that year. Berntsson confirmed it and called it personal.

Mullvad said the donation "is not part of Mullvad's values or mission". Strömberg, the company's other chief executive, told TechRadar: "I don't like that he made this donation." Some customers announced they were cancelling their subscriptions, and some reported that Mullvad refunded the unused part of their payment.

What Tor changes

Tor, which is also testing its own VPN app for Android, says it decided after talking to its community, surveying staff and running a financial analysis with several scenarios. Proactive co-branding and joint promotion with Mullvad are paused. Tor also reviewed how it describes and endorses the Mullvad Browser on its own channels, and changed wording that suggested broader alignment between the values of the two organisations.

Technical work continues under what Tor calls a "narrowly scoped agreement". The Mullvad Browser, launched in 2023, is a version of Tor Browser built to be used with a VPN instead of the Tor network. Tor says the collaboration has made its own codebase easier to maintain and audit, gives it feedback from users beyond its core audience, lets it test features with less risk before they reach Tor Browser, and puts another free, open-source privacy tool in people's hands. The project admits the compromise will not satisfy everyone and costs it some trust among its community.

Why it matters for VPN users

Nothing in the dispute concerns Mullvad's technology. The company's no-logs policy and its anonymous, number-based accounts are unchanged. The issue is the one every VPN customer faces: by paying for a VPN you trust its owners, and you also fund them. For Mullvad, a company that sells itself on taking a stand for privacy and free speech, a co-owner's politics became part of that choice. Tor's answer was to keep the code collaboration and drop the shared branding.