Cape Named Winner in Fast Company’s 2026 World Changing Ideas Awards

Ultra private & secure cell carrier earns world-changing recognition as consumer awareness of mobile privacy risk reaches tipping point

ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cape, a privacy-focused global telecom, today announced it was named a winner of Fast Company's 2026 World Changing Ideas Awards. Now in its ninth year, Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards honors products, concepts, companies, and policies that are designed to make the world safer, cleaner, more sustainable, and more equitable. Cape joins this list of companies tackling the most pressing issues of today for its successful efforts to provide a more private and secure mobile experience to consumers, enterprises, and government agencies across the nation.

Consumers appear resigned to compromising their privacy as the cost of using their smartphones, but would welcome an alternative. According to recent Harris Poll data commissioned by Cape:

• 59% of Americans believe what mobile carriers do with their data is completely out of their control;
• 71% of Americans have accepted that using a mobile device means accepting privacy risk;
• 65% of Americans say they’d be willing to leave a major carrier for a more secure alternative.

Cape believes private and secure communications are key ingredients to free expression and one of the cornerstones of a free society. To this end, Cape’s innovations protect government operations from foreign interference, secure businesses against data breaches, and shield individuals from unauthorized access, ensuring a level of privacy and security in communications that many believed wasn’t possible.

Cape’s technology has been adopted and become indispensable to the highest risk communities, including journalists, activists, victims of stalking and domestic violence, and military servicemembers. Notably, the company saw its highest number of weekly requests from journalists and activists for its free Cape cell service program with the Electronic Frontier Foundation just before the No Kings protest in March of this year.

“There are app-level solutions like VPNs and encrypted chat apps, but all of them ride atop an underlying network, and you can't solve digital privacy without addressing the vulnerabilities that live at the cellular network layer. This can only be done by redesigning a telco from the ground up, with privacy and security as first principles,” said John Doyle, CEO & Co-founder of Cape. “We’re a core infrastructure player across every sector–government, consumer and enterprise–because everyone should be able to stay connected without compromising their privacy and security.”

The award builds on Cape’s recently announced $100M Series C co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and IVP, which brought its total funding to $191M. The company also recently announced support for Surveillance Watch and a new collaboration with Kagi to make it easier for users to assemble the privacy stack for their digital life. This builds on top of Cape’s existing commitments with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ongoing collaboration with Proton.

Cape is available nationwide. You can learn more and sign up at cape.co.

About Cape

Cape is a privacy-focused global telecom offering device and mobile network solutions to government, enterprises, and consumers. Its mission is to ensure communication is private, secure, and resilient. The company has raised $191M from investors including Bain Capital Ventures, IVP, A*, Andreessen Horowitz, 01 Advisors, 137 Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Definition, ex/ante, Point72 Ventures, Fifth Down Capital, Forward Deployed VC, Karman Ventures, and XYZ Ventures. Research partners include leading cybersecurity institutions including the Air Force Research Laboratory, the University of Maryland, and others.