Surfshark, the Netherlands-based VPN and online privacy company, acquired a majority stake in Optery, a US startup that removes people's personal information from data brokers, people-search websites and search engine results. Surfshark announced the deal on September 7, 2026.
Terms were not disclosed, and the companies did not say what share of Optery Surfshark now owns.
Optery will continue to operate independently inside the Surfshark group, with its own team, product, customers and technology. It sits alongside Incogni, Surfshark's existing data-removal service, and Ironwall, a removal service that Surfshark bought in 2024.
What Optery built
Optery was founded in 2020 and went through Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch. Its founders include chief executive Lawrence Gentilello and chief technology officer Chen Atlas. Dekel Barzilay, its vice president of research and development, was named alongside them in the company's 2023 funding announcement. Y Combinator lists Optery as opt-out software that removes private information from the internet.
The service scans hundreds of data-broker and people-search sites, the businesses that collect and sell names, home addresses, phone numbers and other personal details, to find where a person's information is exposed, and then files requests to have it removed. Users get a free exposure report with screenshots of each listing, while paid plans handle the removals for them.
Optery also sells to companies, helping IT and security teams remove employees' personal information from the web to cut the risk of attacks on the business, and offers an API for developers. Surfshark singled out its scanning technology, screenshot reporting and wide coverage of US data brokers.
“At Surfshark, our goal is to empower people to take full control of their digital lives. With Optery on board, we’re further expanding our personal data protection capabilities and unlocking exciting new potential for innovation.”
Why Surfshark is buying
Surfshark's products include VPN services, antivirus software, scam protection and specialised privacy tools. It said personal information increasingly turns up in search results, databases and AI-generated summaries, and that data brokers' trade in such information feeds scams, identity theft and phishing.
The company said Optery's knowledge of the US market would complement the international reach of Incogni. It plans to share knowledge and technology across Optery, Incogni and Ironwall while keeping them as separate businesses, with the aim of covering more data brokers, improving the removal of information from search engines and building new privacy tools faster.
Surfshark described Optery as its second strategic acquisition. The first, Ironwall, focuses on removal services for government employees, public officials and executive teams.
The founders and the funding
Optery's best-documented funding is a seed round. In May 2023 it raised $2.7 million in additional seed funding led by Bayhouse Capital, with Global Founders Capital, Goodwater Capital, Pioneer Fund, Soma Capital, TRAC and Y Combinator also taking part. That brought its total funding to $6 million at the time, according to FinTech Global.
In that announcement the company said tens of thousands of users relied on it to keep their personal data off the internet. Its Y Combinator profile lists a team of 55 people and gives San Francisco as its location.
Gentilello called joining Surfshark a milestone that reflected a shared commitment between the two companies. Neither side said whether the founders retained a stake in Optery or how long they would stay with the business.
A growing data-removal market
Surfshark is headquartered in the Netherlands and has offices in Lithuania, Poland and the United States. Its privacy portfolio now includes Incogni, Ironwall, Optery and HeyPolo.
For Optery's existing customers, Surfshark said the startup would keep its own team, customers, products and technical architecture, and the companies framed the deal as making every removal service in the group more effective rather than merging them.
Darius Belejevas, chief executive of Incogni, said the group's aim has been to give people full control over their digital footprint. With three removal services under one owner, Surfshark now covers consumers, US public servants and executives, and Optery's mix of individual and business customers.
