I’m a regular Proton user, but with the recent regulatory changes in Switzerland, the more I dig into this, the more I have to ask myself: Seriously? How is this even possible?
In 2025, Proton launched Lumo, a so-called privacy-focused AI. Its servers are being moved to Germany and Norway instead of Switzerland, supposedly to avoid legal surveillance risks. They claim to have allocated around 100 million CHF just for Lumo’s infrastructure, R&D, and launch.
But here’s the kicker: Proton plans to invest over 1 billion CHF across all its products and expansions by 2030. That includes upgrades to Proton Mail, VPN, Drive, Pass, and general infrastructure, plus R&D.
And yet, Proton only has around 500 employees, including 159 engineers. For a company of this size, financing hundreds of millions, or over a billion CHF, purely from internal cash flow is, frankly, WTF ?!
So who is actually footing the bill for these grandiose plans? Subscription revenue? External investors? Or some opaque mix of both?
The real question is: if Proton increasingly depends on outside funding or strategic partnerships to chase these massive ambitions, can it really claim to be independent and safeguard user privacy, or is that just empty marketing spin?
Source : https://proton.me/blog/lumo-ai
I thought it was a joke many moons ago when ppl claimed proton as a honeypoy. Then I tried most of their services and felt it was closer to a 50/50 chance. Fast-forward a few years, I'm not gonna say it's a duck but it quacks in a similar fashion for sure
How so? I'm a Proton user and I find the service to be fine so far.