Grammarly
Verified“US company, Ukrainian-built engine.”
- Valuation
- $13B
- Users
- 40M+ daily
- Founded
- 2009
- Data home
- AWS US-East
17 = midpoint of Control 14 & Data 19
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 13 sourced facts across 11 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 3 open questions hold confidence at 82% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
12
Incorporated and operated in the United States. The named data controller in the privacy policy is Superhuman Platform Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, CA; the predecessor Grammarly, Inc. was a Delaware corporation. There is no EU operating entity acting as controller — VeraSafe is only the Article 27 EU/UK representative. EU law reaches the company only via GDPR's extraterritorial scope plus the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and Standard Contractual Clauses, not via EU establishment or enforceability against an EU entity. Solidly in the 0-30 'run outside the EU' band.
Why 12? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Data controller is a US entity
Grammarly Privacy Policy · as of 2026-06-12
Predecessor entity incorporated in Delaware
OpenGovUS / state registry listing · as of 2026-06-12
EU/UK coverage is via DPF + SCCs, not EU establishment
Grammarly Privacy Policy · as of 2026-06-12
Control & Ownership
16
Privately held and US-controlled. Founders Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko and Dmytro Lider are Ukrainian-born (Lytvyn and Shevchenko are billionaires retaining large stakes), but the company is US-domiciled and US-run under CEO Shishir Mehrotra. Lead institutional capital is US/UK: General Catalyst (US, $1B in 2025), Baillie Gifford (UK), and BlackRock (US) anchored the $13B round. No EU voting control and no EU economic majority; not listed anywhere (private). Scores low in the foreign-control band, with a few points for the founders' personal stakes — though Ukraine is not the EU regardless.
Why 16? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Ukrainian-born founders, US-domiciled company
Grammarly About page · as of 2026-06-12
Lead investors are US/UK, not EU
BusinessWire / Grammarly $13B round · as of 2026-06-12
$1B non-dilutive financing from US fund (2025)
Sacra / TheRecursive · as of 2026-06-12
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
12
User data — including the text you write, which is the whole product — is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the US East region (Northern Virginia). Grammarly publishes no EU data-residency option; transfers of EU/UK/Swiss data to the US rely on the Data Privacy Framework and SCCs. As a US-controlled service on a US hyperscaler in a US region, it carries full US CLOUD Act / FISA exposure. This is the weakest dimension — clearly in the 0-20 US-hosting band.
Why 12? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
No EU data-residency region offered
Grammarly Security / Privacy FAQs · as of 2026-06-12
Operations & People
30
Operationally US-centered with a large Ukrainian engineering footprint. HQ is San Francisco; the CEO (Shishir Mehrotra) is US-based; other offices are New York and Vancouver; reporting and valuation are in USD. The standout is a substantial Kyiv, Ukraine engineering hub that builds the core product. That earns more than a pure-US shop, but Ukraine is an EU candidate/associate country, not an EU member, so it does not count toward EU operations. Mixed, leaning foreign-centered with a non-EU European labor base.
Why 30? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
HQ and CEO in San Francisco, USA
Superhuman media resources · as of 2026-06-12
Offices: San Francisco, Kyiv, New York, Vancouver
Wikipedia (Grammarly) · as of 2026-06-12
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
3 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
Exact founder/insider equity and voting percentages after the 2021 round and 2024-2025 acquisitions (Coda, Superhuman).
Could nuance the ownership score, but all known holders are US/UK/Ukraine — none EU — so the EU verdict is unaffected.
- ?
Whether any enterprise tier now offers EU/regional data residency not disclosed on public pages.
Would raise the infra score for enterprise customers, though the default and consumer product remain US-hosted.
- ?
Current total headcount split between US and the Kyiv hub after the Superhuman/Coda integration.
Affects how 'Ukrainian' operations really are; a larger Kyiv share strengthens the non-EU-European labor story but not EU status.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
SEAL targets cloud/infrastructure providers; this is an analogous sovereignty mapping for an applications/SaaS vendor, not a certification.
Strategic
US-headquartered, US-controlled AI productivity platform (Superhuman Platform Inc.); strategy and capital set outside the EU.
Legal & jurisdictional
US/Delaware entity; EU reach only via GDPR extraterritoriality + Data Privacy Framework and SCCs, no EU controller.
Data & AI
User text processed and stored on AWS US-East; no EU data residency; full US CLOUD Act/FISA exposure.
Operational
SF/US leadership and reporting, but a substantial Kyiv (Ukraine) engineering hub — non-EU European labor base.
Supply chain
Core dependency on a single US hyperscaler (AWS) and US-based model/AI tooling.
Technological
Genuine in-house NLP/AI built largely by the Ukraine engineering team, though run on US infrastructure.
Security & compliance
GDPR-aware (DPF cert, SCCs, AES-256, BYOK for enterprise, pen-tests), but compliance is transfer-based, not EU-resident.
Environmental sustainability
No EU-specific sustainability or data-center energy disclosures reviewed.
EU alternatives
German-made grammar/style checker (Potsdam); EU-hosted, GDPR-native, self-hostable open-source core — the closest direct EU substitute.
Cologne-based; EU-incorporated and EU-operating writing/rewriting AI with EU data processing — strong sovereign option.
Mature writing assistant, but Canadian (Druide) — useful only if a non-US, non-EU alternative is acceptable; not an EU substitute.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
Report Incorrect Data
Found an error in this company's profile? Help us improve our data by submitting a correction.
Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology