ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B

By Andrew Sullivan

In our continued interest to be transparent about the details of the agreement regarding Ethos Capital’s acquisition of Public Interest Registry from the Internet Society, earlier today we disclosed the purchase price of the transaction: $1.135 billion.

The Internet Society will receive this as a fund that it will invest as an endowment, and will use the earnings that come from this investment to fund its work to fulfil its mission on a broader scale.

This funding is sufficient to provide the Internet Society with broadly equivalent annual earnings we currently receive from PIR. And through responsible, well managed investment, we believe this fund will provide a comparable level of funding to the Internet Society in perpetuity.

In this way, we will be able to continue to operate to deliver efforts that are aligned with our focus of expanding the reach of the Internet, and making it stronger. The Internet Society will build a new governance structure for the new endowment mechanism that delivers this money, which will be treated as a separate supporting organization in the same way PIR is today.

Governance structures for the endowment will be proposed following consultation with experts in non-profit endowment management. Once options are put forward, the Internet Society will run an open consultation process with the community to determine the most appropriate governance structure to put in place.

Through this funding mechanism and the investments that we will be able to make through the endowment, the Internet Society will no longer be reliant on one revenue stream from one company, in one industry.

Our mission is to support and promote the development of the Internet around the world — an Internet that is open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy. Our agreement with Ethos Capital will allow us to accelerate our initiatives based on more sustainable, dependable funding, to enable us to commit to longer-term investments and to do much more to ensure that the Internet is there for everyone.

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