US investors take over spyware manufacturer NSO Group
Pegasus espionage software: The controversial NSO Group is to come under the control of a US investor group. Hollywood is also rumoured to be playing a role.
(Image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock.com)
The NSO Group, known for its Pegasus surveillance software, is being acquired by a US investor group. The company confirmed this to the online news portal TechCrunch. According to NSO spokesperson Oded Hershowitz, "an American investor group has invested tens of millions of dollars in the company and acquired a controlling interest."
He emphasized to TechCrunch that the investment does not change the fact that the company operates under Israeli control. The headquarters will remain in Israel, and the core operations will continue to be carried out from there. The NSU Group "will continue to be fully supervised and regulated by the relevant Israeli authorities, including the Ministry of Defense and the Israeli regulatory framework," said Hershowitz.
The spokesperson did not disclose the exact investment amount or the identity of the investors. However, there has long been speculation about this. As the Israeli technology news website Calcalist reports, a group led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds is behind the deal. According to Calcalist, the takeover has a history. Simonds was apparently previously on the board of the NSO parent company, but resigned after five months. There are also indications that William Wrigley Jr, an heir to the Wrigley chewing gum empire, is or was possibly involved in the takeover plans.
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Controversies and legal problems
The company is actually on the US Department of Commerce's sanctions list, which prohibits American companies from trading with the spyware provider. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab who has been investigating NSO spyware abuses for a decade, expressed concerns about the acquisition to TechCrunch: "NSO is a company with a long history of acting against American interests and supporting the hacking of American officials." He described Pegasus as "dictator technology" that doesn't belong anywhere near Americans.
According to TechCrunch, NSO had tried to be removed from the US blocklist as recently as May 2025 with the help of a lobbying firm with ties to the Trump administration.
There is therefore a lot of speculation surrounding the NSO takeover. This fits in with the story so far, as the company has been at the center of numerous controversies since it was founded. Over the years, research and journalism groups as well as Amnesty International have documented how the Pegasus spying software has been used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, and politicians in countless countries.
Confrontation with WhatsApp
The dispute with the Meta Group caused a stir in the recent past. At the beginning of May, the company was ordered to pay well over 167 million US dollars (144 million euros) in damages to the messenger service WhatsApp, which belongs to the Meta Group.
WhatsApp sued the NSO Group back in October 2019 because it had allegedly installed the Pegasus spyware on the devices of around 1,400 users, including journalists and human rights activists, through unauthorized access to WhatsApp servers.
The NSO Group defended itself by arguing that its software was used by law enforcement agencies and intelligence services on behalf of foreign governments to combat terrorism and other serious crimes.
(ssi)
