Bright Data (brightdata.com), formerly Luminati: the company, its owners and its history

Bright Data is the company that sold proxies as Luminati until March 2021. Before that it was Hola Networks, the firm behind the free Hola VPN. Its operator, Bright Data Ltd of Netanya in Israel, is the company the Israeli register dates to 16 March 2008. Since 2017 the London investment firm EMK Capital has controlled it through a UK holding company. That company's filed accounts show 253.4 million dollars of revenue for 2025. And Hola is in the family again: on 16 December 2020 the company, then still called Luminati, bought Hola VPN Ltd. Prices and alternatives are on our Bright Data review and alternatives page.

Bright Data at a glance

We read every source on 10 October 2026, and the companies' own pages only from our server in St. Louis. The sources were the Israeli and UK company registers, the group's filed accounts for 2017 to 2025, the US trademark office and its patent records, US court dockets, the American internet registry ARIN, the Internet Archive, and the pages of Bright Data, Hola and EMK Capital.

The story, oldest first

Solid markers are records: registers, filings, court files and archive copies. Hollow markers are claims, in the words of the company or of its owner.

2008: Hola, a network made of its users' connections

The company behind Bright Data entered the Israeli register on 16 March 2008, under the number 514114842. It did not carry the name Bright Data then. US patent records follow the name: it was Hola Networks Ltd until October 2017.

Hola's About page of April 2012 told its founders' story. Ofer Vilenski and Derry Shribman founded KRFTech in 1998 and the home gateway software firm Jungo in 2000. In Hola's words, Jungo "was acquired by NDS (Cisco) for $107M" in 2006. The founders started Hola with 11 million dollars "from world class investors such as DFJ" and Israel's Chief Scientist Fund.

The idea was an overlay network, in which each user's device helps carry other users' traffic. Hola's terms of January 2013 already asked for that: "You consent to other users' use of your network connection to speed up their network." Hola added that it would "typically" use a device's resources only when they were idle.

By January 2016 Hola listed DFJ, Trilogy, Magma, Horizons Ventures and Orange as investors, and a team of 90. Under the heading "Online business intelligence market" it named Luminati.io as "Hola's business SAAS".

2014: Luminati, the paid door into Hola's network

The domain luminati.io was registered on 9 September 2014, and its first certificate was issued on 18 September. In October 2014 its homepage called Luminati "the world's largest anonymity network". Requests ran "through other Luminati users", it said, and the network had "grown to millions".

The contract shows whose network it was. Luminati's agreement of March 2015 carried the title "Hola IP Services Agreement Template". Every version we read from April 2015 to November 2017 opens the same way: "an agreement between Hola Networks Ltd." and the client.

In February 2016 the About page at www2.luminati.io simply showed Hola's own About page. A year later, in January 2017, the Luminati homepage spelled out the link. "Luminati is based on our consumer P2P routing service," it said. "The Luminati service is what makes the Hola consumer network free for millions of users."

The price was set for businesses. In January 2016 the homepage offered 500 dollars a month for 40 GB, and 12.50 dollars for each gigabyte above that.

May 2015: Hola's users learn who else uses their connection

Hola had told its users for years that it shared idle resources. Its FAQ of October 2014 read: "Hola works by sharing the idle resources of its users for the benefit of all." Users who paid for Premium were "never used as a peer".

In the copies we read, the FAQ did not say until 27 May 2015 who else used those resources. On 1 April 2015 it asked business users to write to business@hola.org for a quote. On 27 May 2015 a new line named the paid service: "Commercial use of Hola for business class VPN is available through our Luminati service."

Two days later the FAQ grew four new questions. One asked: "What are the risks of a community powered commercial VPN?" Another read "What is the Hola commercial VPN service?", and its answer was archived on 31 May 2015: "Hola operates a commercial VPN allowing carefully screened corporations to use the Hola network for a fee. The name of this commercial VPN is Luminati".

The same week a site called "Adios, Hola!" urged people to uninstall the app. It said Hola "operates like a poorly secured botnet" and sends "traffic of strangers through your internet connection". Those are the words of its authors, not a court's. Hola's FAQ answered the risk question its own way: a commercial network lets it "see the source of the request and help law enforcement".

2017: EMK Capital buys in, and Hola's company becomes Luminati

EMK Capital says Bright Data "was acquired by EMK in 2017 in partnership with its founders". The UK and Israeli registers show the structure being built that summer.

IPPN Holdings Ltd entered the Israeli register on 1 August 2017. Two days later IPPN Group Limited was formed in London with three directors: Simon Dexter, Mark Joseph and Edmund Lazarus. Companies House lists Joseph and Lazarus as members of EMK Capital LLP since it was formed in January 2016, and EMK's own site lists all three as partners. On 8 August 2017 EMK Capital GP LLP gained the right to appoint and remove IPPN Group's directors.

On 18 September 2017 another Israeli company was born: Hola VPN Ltd. A week later, on 25 September, IPPN Group paid 100,000,001 dollars into its only subsidiary, which its first accounts call IPPN Limited, for ordinary and preference shares. On that same date Hola Networks assigned its core patent family to a company named Hola Newco Ltd.

Then the old company took the new name. Hola Networks Ltd became Luminati (Israel) Ltd. on 29 October 2017 and Luminati Networks Ltd. on 5 November. The contract on luminati.io followed within weeks. The copy archived on 11 November 2017 still names Hola Networks Ltd.; the copy of 16 December names Luminati Networks Ltd.

Bank debt came next. IPPN Group's first charge, to Investec Bank, was created on 15 December 2017. Six days later IPPN Limited bought back 29.1 million dollars of its own preference shares.

The accounts we read do not state the price paid to the sellers. They do show the group's share of the old Hola company, Bright Data Ltd today: 75.6% of its B shares in 2019 and 2020.

Hola itself carried on as a consumer VPN under the new company. Its terms named "HOLA Networks Ltd." until at least May 2018 and "HOLA VPN Ltd." by September 2018. From at least November 2017 they told users they "may be a peer on the Luminati network".

2018 to 2020: patents, lawsuits and an owner in the contract

Luminati took its patents to court early. It sued UAB Tesonet in Texas in July 2018, and both sides agreed to dismiss that case with prejudice in February 2020. A suit against BI Science followed in November 2018. A mediator reported it settled in February 2020.

The core patents came home in 2019. The family that went to Hola Newco in 2017 sat with that company after it was renamed Web Spark Ltd. in March 2018. On 12 March 2019 Web Spark assigned it to Luminati Networks.

The contract version of 23 July 2019 is the first we read that names the owner. Luminati Networks Ltd. at 3 Hamahshev Street, Netanya, was "owned by IPPN Group Ltd." at Lex House in London. That London address was also IPPN Group's registered office.

New suits came on 6 December 2019, against Teso LT, Metacluster LT and Oxysales, which the court's papers call Oxylabs, and against code200, UAB. A suit against Tefincom S.A., which Luminati's own list labelled NordVPN, followed on 31 December 2019.

December 2020: Hola comes back into the group

On 16 December 2020 the company, then still Luminati Networks Ltd., bought all the shares of Hola VPN Ltd. The group's accounts give the price as 15,352,000 dollars, most of it paid in cash.

Hola had never moved far. The US trademark file for HOLA VPN lists its owner at 3 Hamachshev Street, Netanya. Hola's terms take cancellations by post at "POB 8025, Natanya", the box Bright Data Ltd gives for its own head office. Its FAQ of October 2026 says Hola shares its users' resources "for the benefit of all and for business use by Bright Data".

March 2021: Luminati becomes Bright Data

The new name was prepared ahead of time. The domain brightinitiative.com was registered on 28 January 2020, and the first certificate for brightdata.com dates from 10 December 2020. The domain is far older: it was registered in 2002, and in 2009 it showed the site of an unrelated European data firm called Brightdata.

The legal rename took effect on 14 March 2021. The trademark file gives 17 March 2021 as the first use of the BRIGHT DATA name. That day brightdata.com still served the Luminati homepage, whose description spoke of "72M IPs"; by July its title read "Bright Data (formerly Luminati)".

The contract did not change its date. A copy on luminati.io archived on 8 March 2021 and a copy on brightdata.com archived on 11 April 2021 both read "Last Updated February 9, 2021". The first names Luminati Networks Ltd., the second Bright Data Ltd.

The company explained the change in a post of September 2021. "Luminati" had "pre-existing negative associations", it wrote, and "for some people" the name evoked the "Illuminati". Prices, it added, were "not going up as a result".

2021 and 2022: buying out partners, borrowing, paying out

In 2021 the group's share of Bright Data Ltd rose from 75.6% to 93.75%. The accounts record 73,549,000 dollars of new share capital that year and an equal "acquisition of non-controlling interest". By the end of 2022 the share was 96.03%, and it was still 96.03% at the end of 2025.

Two purchases followed. On 20 May 2021 the group bought "all the assets of Oculus" for 9.22 million dollars. On 28 September 2022 it bought Market Beyond Ltd, an Israeli company, for 17.7 million. Market Beyond now shows in the Israeli register as liquidated after a merger.

In 2022 the group took a bank loan of 129.2 million dollars, repayable in one sum on 9 February 2027. On 9 February 2022 two charges in favour of GLAS Trust Corporation were registered against IPPN Group. That year IPPN Group paid dividends of 102.4 million dollars to its Jersey parent.

The same accounts give the size of the business. Average staff grew from 100 in 2019 to 348 in 2021 and 454 in 2025. Operating profit was 8.3 million dollars in 2019 and 55.6 million in 2025.

2023 to 2025: two platforms in court, and the AI money

Meta sued Bright Data in January 2023 over scraping of Facebook and Instagram. On 23 January 2024 Judge Edward Chen granted Bright Data summary judgment on Meta's contract claim. A month later Meta dropped its other claim by a joint stipulation.

X Corp. sued in July 2023. Bright Data answered with counterclaims in December 2024, and on 27 June 2025 both sides told the court the case "has been compromised and settled". The judge closed it on 1 July 2025.

Revenue moved from 147.4 million dollars in 2023 to 157.1 million in 2024 and 253.4 million in 2025. The 2025 report credits "higher sales of both existing and newly launched products, particularly in the field of AI". On 20 November 2025 its chief executive wrote that annualized revenue exceeded 300 million dollars, "on track for $400 million in revenue mid 2026".

The network claim grew faster than the money. The homepage said "over 40M Residential IPs" in July 2019, "72M IPs" in 2021 and "72 million+" until January 2025.

By July 2025 it said "150M+ global IPs from real-peer devices", and by October 2026 "400M+". The homepage said "Trusted by 20,000+ customers worldwide" in captures from January 2024 to July 2026, and "Trusted by 50,000+ customers worldwide" on 10 October 2026, a figure its chief executive had already used in March 2024. We measured none of these numbers.

2026: a dividend, a rule for residential buyers, a new lawsuit

On 26 June 2026 Bright Data Ltd declared 157 million dollars of dividends on its A and B shares. The maturity of the bank loan moved from February 2027 to February 2029.

For residential zones created after 7 July 2026, its own documentation allows only "verified companies" that pass a review by a person. Older zones keep working.

On 17 August 2026 Round Hill Music and related funds sued Suno, Inc. and others in the federal court in northern California. Summonses went to Bright Data Inc. and Bright Data Ltd. on 20 August. The complaint's title lists direct and contributory copyright infringement, circumvention of protection measures, and removal or alteration of copyright management information. The group's accounts say the case concerns "a proxy customer with a lifetime value of approximately $25,000". It was open on 10 October 2026.

The 2025 accounts were filed at Companies House in September 2026, signed for the board by Mark Joseph.

Who Bright Data is connected to

The table answers a common question: Bright Data is not part of the Tesonet group that our page on who owns your proxy provider maps. In court it has faced UAB Tesonet since July 2018 and the Oxylabs companies since December 2019.

In court and in filings

The patents. The 2021 verdict rested on three Luminati patents, numbers 10,257,319, 10,484,510 and 10,469,614. The jury found none of the asserted claims invalid. The patent office's appeal board later reviewed four patents of one family, including the first two, and found the challenged claims unpatentable. The Federal Circuit affirmed that decision on 1 August 2025, and the Supreme Court denied review on 23 February 2026. The group's 2024 accounts also record 5 million dollars of income "in respect of a settlement payment for a patent infringement claim"; they do not name the payer.

Meta. Judge Chen's order of 23 January 2024 runs to 37 pages. Its core finding reads: "the Facebook and Instagram Terms do not bar logged-off scraping of public data; perforce it does not prohibit the sale of such public data." In an open letter of March 2024 Bright Data's chief executive called Meta "a former web scraping customer of ours".

X. By the group's accounts, the judge dismissed X's claims in May 2024 and then let parts of an amended complaint go ahead. Bright Data's counterclaims followed in December 2024. The stipulation of June 2025 says only that the case "has been compromised and settled". The accounts call the settlement confidential.

The music case. Round Hill's complaint makes claims; nothing in it has been tested in court yet. The docket shows the summons to both Bright Data companies on 20 August 2026 and no ruling so far.

What Bright Data sells today, in short

Bright Data sells residential, ISP and datacenter proxies, scraping APIs that bill per request, and ready datasets. On 10 October 2026 one gigabyte of residential traffic listed at 8 dollars with no plan, or 4 dollars for the first three months with a promotional code. Plans of 499, 999 and 1,999 dollars a month lower the list rate to 7, 6 and 5 dollars a gigabyte.

The fine print that bites is the rule of July 2026. A new residential account needs a registered company, a company email domain, funds on the balance and a KYC review by a person; Gmail or Outlook accounts do not qualify. The price tables, the KYC steps and five alternatives priced the same day are on our Bright Data review and alternatives page.

On where its residential addresses come from, Bright Data says they belong to "100% real people who opted in". Its SDK for app makers "pays a fixed daily rate, on top of your existing revenue". Its trust centre lists a "Clear consent screen" and a "2-click opt-out" among the terms for its SDK. Its own apps include BrightVPN and EarnApp, whose site leads with "Passive Income". We did not install any of them.

Its gateway names point to rented cloud servers. On 10 October 2026, brd.superproxy.io resolved to addresses at DigitalOcean and Vultr. That says where the entry points run, and nothing about the homes and phones behind them.

What customers report over time

The review count grew about eightfold in six years. Trustpilot's live page refused our server on 10 October 2026, so March 2026 is the newest figure we hold.

Is Bright Data legit?

On the records, it is an established business. The operating company has existed since 2008, its group has filed audited accounts for every year since 2018, and it employed 454 people on average in 2025. Its names are registered trademarks in the United States, and its contract names the company, the address and the law that applies.

Two things belong next to that. The first is the origin of its network: Hola's free users were the exit nodes, and in the copies we read Hola's FAQ named Luminati only from May 2015. The second is its court record, which cuts both ways. It beat Meta's contract claim and won a jury verdict, and it lost the challenged claims of four patents at the patent board.

If you are looking elsewhere

• If you want a provider outside the EMK group, our Bright Data review and alternatives page prices five residential networks on the same day.
• If you have no registered company, Bright Data's residential network has been closed to new accounts like yours since 7 July 2026. HProxy sells $0.50/GB for one gigabyte of Lite with no plan and no company check at sign-up, and the balance never expires.
• If you want to check a provider's proxies yourself, our free proxy checker tests HTTP and SOCKS addresses without an account.

What we could not find out

1. Who holds the 3.97% of Bright Data Ltd outside the group. The accounts show minority interests and A and B shares, not the holders. Whether the founders own part of the Jersey parent is not in any record we read either.
2. The price EMK paid in 2017. The accounts show 100,000,001 dollars of equity paid in, a bank charge and early redemptions, not the price paid to the sellers.
3. Who owned Hola Newco Ltd, later Web Spark Ltd., which held the core patents from 2017 to 2019. Neither name is in the current Israeli register.
4. Where the Texas patent cases stand after the appeals ruling of August 2025, and what Automotive Networks Corporation's suit is about.
5. How many devices run Bright SDK or Hola as peers today. Hola says it has over 160 million users; no record we read counts the peers.

We did not buy a Bright Data plan or send traffic through its network; this page rests on reading only. Accounts, prices, claims and court dates change, and we will check these records again by 10 January 2027.

Sources

• Israeli Registrar of Companies, open data on data.gov.il: Bright Data Ltd (514114842), IPPN Holdings Ltd (515699510), Hola VPN Ltd (515719813), Market Beyond Ltd (515145498), and the changes file. Read 10 October 2026.
• UK Companies House: IPPN Group Limited (10897981), overview, officers, persons with significant control, charges, filing history, accounts for the periods to 31 December 2018 to 2025, confirmation statements of 2021 and 2022; EMK Capital LLP (OC403928). Read 10 October 2026.
• US Patent and Trademark Office: LUMINATI (87248334), BRIGHT DATA (90674381, 97102362), SUPER PROXY (88765815), SP (88770591), BRIGHTVPN (79361249), HOLA VPN (88432407, 88432422); patent assignment records on US 8,560,604, 9,241,044, 10,257,319 and 10,484,510. Read 10 October 2026.
• US courts, through CourtListener and the courts' own sites: E.D. Texas 2:18-cv-00299, 2:18-cv-00483, 2:19-cv-00395 (jury verdict of 5 November 2021), 2:19-cv-00396, 2:19-cv-00414; N.D. California 3:23-cv-00077 (order of 23 January 2024), 3:23-cv-03698 (stipulation of 27 June 2025), 5:26-cv-08507; D. Massachusetts 1:25-cv-11461; Federal Circuit 23-2144 (opinion of 1 August 2025) and 21-1667; Supreme Court docket 25-779. Read 10 October 2026.
• ARIN: organisation ON-71 and its networks. Read 10 October 2026.
• Internet Archive: luminati.io from 2014 to 2021 (homepage, License Agreement, About), brightdata.com from 2009 and from 2021 to 2026 (homepage, License, About, residential pricing), hola.org from 2012 to 2020 (About, FAQ, EULA), adios-hola.org (29 May 2015), and the Trustpilot pages of luminati.io and brightdata.com. Read 10 October 2026.
• Bright Data: homepage, About page, "Luminati Networks" page, "Why We Changed Our Name From Luminati Networks To Bright Data" (12 September 2021), posts of 24 January and 19 March 2024 on Meta, "Data for AI is fueling massive growth at Bright Data" (20 November 2025), trust centre pages on sourcing and KYC, Master Service Agreement (16 June 2026), residential pricing page and residential network access policy. Read 10 October 2026.
• Hola: FAQ and end user license agreement. EMK Capital: portfolio page "Bright Data" and people page. Bright SDK, EarnApp and Bright Initiative homepages. Read 10 October 2026.
• Verisign, Public Interest Registry and the .io registry for brightdata.com, hola.org and luminati.io; certificate logs (crt.sh); GitHub organisation records. Read 10 October 2026.
• Our own checks from the box: the addresses and networks behind brd.superproxy.io and zproxy.lum-superproxy.io, where luminati.io forwards, and the answer of Trustpilot's live page, 10 October 2026.