Ethos Capital is an American

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

investment firm founded in 2019 for the purpose of gaining control of the

.org The domain name .org is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) of the Domain Name System (DNS) used on the Internet. The name is truncated from ''organization''. It was one of the original domains established in 1985, and has been operated by th ...

internet domain name and capitalizing upon it using a portfolio of data-monetization startups. Although that effort failed, company founders

Erik Brooks Ethos Capital is an American private equity investment firm founded in 2019 for the purpose of gaining control of the .org internet domain name and capitalizing upon it using a portfolio of data-monetization startups. Although that effort failed ...

and

Fadi Chehadé Fadi Chehadé (Arabic: فادي شحادة) (born 1962) is an information technology executive, founder of RosettaNet and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ICANN. Through Ethos Capital, he unsuccessfully tried to gain control over the .org ...

went on to use the vehicle to buy domain name registrar

Donuts A doughnut or donut () is a type of food made from leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and fra ...

and registry services provider

Afilias Afilias, Inc. is a US corporation that is the registry operator of the .info, .mobi and .pro top-level domain, service provider for registry operators of .org, .ngo, .lgbt, .asia, .aero, and a provider of domain name registry services for countri ...

from Abry Partners, where Brooks had been managing partner. In 2022,

and

were merged into a single company,

Identity Digital Identity Digital Inc. is a company with affiliated entities that operate in the domain name industry, including a domain name registrar and registry services provider. The company acquired the registry operator and back-end registry services divisio ...

. Most of the press coverage of Ethos has focused on allegations of insider dealing between former

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

CEO Chehadé (who registered the domain name ethoscapital.org in May 2019, one day after price caps were lifted from the .org domain) and current employer Ethos Capital, and the unraveling of a complex web of interlocking control and ownership between domain name registries, registrars, and ICANN, which nominally regulates the domain name industry.

References

External links

* {{official, ethoscapital.com Investment companies of the United States Private equity firms of the United States American companies established in 2019