Cape: Security at the Mobile Core

Think about the most sensitive communications happening right now. The ones between generals, intelligence officers, heads of state. Or even the ones happening between you and your doctor, your lawyer, your loved one, or your business partner. You'd assume those conversations travel over a highly secured network.

They don't.

They all travel over the same, insecure cellular network.

In 2024, this issue gained mainstream attention when a Chinese state-sponsored group, Salt Typhoon, compromised traditional carrier infrastructure and hacked the communications of senior US government officials, civilians, and 200+ organizations.

The problem is that our cellular network was never designed with hostile nation-states in mind.

Cape started with a different intention. Instead of asking how to secure communications on top of a compromised cellular network, founder John Doyle asked what it would look like to rebuild a telco from scratch with privacy and security as first principles.

Operating as a 'heavy MVNO' (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Cape replaces the vulnerable software layer with its own mobile core and designs its own custom SIMs that are built with privacy and security at its foundation. A Cape user opens their phone and uses it like any other smartphone. The difference is in the network layer: by routing cell phone traffic through its own mobile core, Cape secures the sensitive components of mobile connectivity through unlinkable payment, anonymous authentication, and other privacy-specific features.

Congress agrees that the existing cellular networks are ripe for security innovation. The most recent NDAA includes explicit language requiring federal agencies to adopt capabilities to rotate and obfuscate persistent device identifiers - the precise capability Cape is built around.

That mandate points to a market that extends well beyond government communications to any device operating in a contested environment where the local network is itself a threat. The surface area is large and growing, and it’s why IVP is co-leading Cape's $100M Series C.

The founder who saw it coming

CEO John Doyle is an "n of 1" founder, a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran who spent years as a Green Beret operating in environments where the consequences of compromised communications were up close and personal. After graduating Harvard Law School, he spent a decade at Palantir leading their national security business, where he first learned about the ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS) problem space. He ultimately became passionate about building a product that would secure soldiers and civilians alike against the vulnerabilities inherent to UTS. Enter Cape.

We've spent the better part of a year getting to know John. We flew to New York to work with his leadership team across several sessions, and it became abundantly clear that the conviction in Cape’s impact runs through the whole organization.

A nervous system for everything coming online

What also became clear in those sessions is that government communications is just the entry point. Cellular is the default way the world communicates, and increasingly the default way it operates - drones running combat operations over 4G, naval deployments coordinating across the Pacific, allied forces in regions where the local network is itself the threat. Every connected system that comes online expands the surface area Cape secures.

For IVP, that's what makes this a different kind of investment. Cape isn’t confined to a specific sector - it sits across all of them. It's the connectivity backbone that government, private enterprise,  and everyday consumers all run on, rebuilt from scratch. The more the world depends on cellular, the more Cape needs to exist.