Artmotion Ltd. is a Swiss-based data housing provider. It operates two data centers near the Swiss Alps that are designed for security-seeking businesses,[1] motivated by the country's political neutrality and ironclad privacy laws.[2][3]
History
Artmotion was founded in 2000 by Mateo Meier, who is also the current CEO of the company.[4] In 2003, Artmotion acquired Cyberhost, a Swiss Cloud hosting services provider. Since 2011, the Swiss data center provider Everyware Ltd. holds 25% of Artmotion's shares.[5] Artmotion increased its capital in 2015.[6]
Artmotion acquired 58% of shares in Citadelo and became a shareholder and board member in 2020. However Artmotion and Citadelo continued to operate as separate companies.[7][8] Artmotion also owns a stake in Citadelo Switzerland.[9]
NSA PRISM scandal
After the 2013 PRISM leak, several cloud computing companies faced criticism for their lack of security, especially those based in US.[10][11] Artmotion, among other Swiss-based cloud computing providers gained the most out of this scandal.[12] Mostly due to the country's stringent data privacy laws, their customer base increased and the company had their revenue increased 45 percent in a month following the scandal.[13][14]
According to the CEO Mateo Meier, except in a few European countries like Luxembourg and Switzerland, personal privacy is difficult to service in this modern world.[15] Switzerland is not a member of European Union, hence it is exempt from pan-European agreements to share data with member states, as well as the United States.[16]
