Who owns McAfee? Ownership structure explained (2026)

McAfee has one of the most tangled ownership histories in technology. Few brands have been bought, spun out, floated, and taken private as many times as this one. The name has passed through a chip maker, two of the largest buyout firms in the world, a public listing, and finally a global consortium of private-equity and sovereign-wealth money.

Untangling who owns McAfee means separating the brand from its founder, and separating today's consumer company from the enterprise business that broke away and became Trellix. The person whose name is on the software has not owned any part of it for three decades. The company that sells McAfee-branded antivirus in 2026 is a focused consumer business, privately held and stripped of the corporate arm it once carried.

This article traces the full chain of control, from a 1987 startup through Intel's ownership, the TPG carve-out, a 2020 return to the stock market, and the 2022 buyout that made McAfee private again.

McAfee was founded in 1987 by John McAfee as McAfee Associates, one of the first companies to sell commercial antivirus software. It is headquartered in San Jose, California. The company protects consumers from malware, online scams, and identity theft through products including antivirus software, a virtual private network, identity monitoring, and scam-detection tools.

The business today is purely consumer-focused. It no longer sells the enterprise security products that once made up a large share of its revenue. McAfee has been privately held since March 2022, so it no longer files public financial statements. In its last full year as a public company, McAfee reported net revenue of roughly $2.9 billion across its consumer and enterprise segments combined, before the enterprise unit was sold. The current consumer-only company does not disclose audited revenue figures.

McAfee's ownership has changed hands more often than almost any comparable technology brand. The current owners are the end point of a chain that runs through a founder, a chip giant, several buyout firms, and a public listing.

John McAfee wrote the first commercial antivirus software and founded McAfee Associates in 1987 to sell it. He took the company public in 1992, then resigned in 1994 and sold his remaining shares. From that point on, he had no ownership stake and no operating role in the company that bore his name.

His later life had nothing to do with the business. He became known for cryptocurrency promotion, erratic public behavior, and a long series of legal troubles. He died in June 2021 in a prison cell in Spain, hours after a court approved his extradition to the United States on tax-evasion charges. None of this touched McAfee the company, which had been owned and run by others for 27 years by then.

The corporate entity evolved separately. McAfee Associates merged with Network General in 1997 to form Network Associates, then took back the McAfee name in 2004 as a standalone security company.

In 2011, chip maker Intel acquired McAfee for about $7.68 billion. Intel wanted to build security features directly into its silicon and treat protection as a hardware-level feature rather than a separate download. In 2014, Intel folded the brand into a division it called Intel Security.

The strategy did not deliver the returns Intel expected. Antivirus software sat awkwardly next to a chip business, and by 2016 Intel wanted to refocus on its more profitable data-center products. It decided to spin the security unit back out.

In September 2016, Intel agreed to sell a majority of the security business to private-equity firm TPG. TPG invested $1.1 billion for a 51% stake, with Intel retaining 49%. The deal valued the equity at $2.2 billion and the whole company at about $4.2 billion including debt. When it closed in April 2017, the company took back the McAfee name and became independent again.

Buyout firm Thoma Bravo later bought a minority stake, joining TPG and Intel on the cap table. That gave McAfee three major backers heading into its next chapter: a return to the public markets.

In October 2020, McAfee returned to the stock market. It listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker MCFE, pricing its shares at $20 and raising roughly $620 million in the offering. The listing valued the company at about $8.6 billion. TPG, Thoma Bravo, and Intel remained the largest shareholders, so the float did not change who was really in control.

The public phase was short. Within a year, the company had reshaped itself around consumers and agreed to go private again.

In November 2021, an investor group led by Advent International and Permira agreed to buy McAfee and take it private for more than $14 billion. The group paid $26 per share in an all-cash deal. Other members included Crosspoint Capital Partners, CPP Investments, GIC, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The deal closed on March 1, 2022, and McAfee was delisted from the Nasdaq.

Ahead of that buyout, McAfee had already carved off its corporate arm. In 2021 it sold its enterprise business to Symphony Technology Group (STG) for $4 billion. STG merged that unit with the products business of FireEye and, in early 2022, renamed the combined company Trellix. So the enterprise security operations that once sat inside McAfee now trade under a different name and different ownership. The McAfee brand stayed with the consumer business, which is what Advent and Permira acquired.

Advent International is the lead owner. It is a Boston-based global private-equity firm with a long record of technology and financial-services buyouts, and it holds one of the largest positions in the consortium.

Permira co-leads the group. The London-based firm has backed cybersecurity and software companies before, and it shares control of McAfee with Advent.

The remaining backers are financial investors rather than operators. Crosspoint Capital Partners is a cybersecurity-focused firm founded by veterans of the industry. CPP Investments manages the Canada Pension Plan. GIC is a Singapore sovereign-wealth fund. A subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority rounds out the group. These are patient, long-horizon investors, which fits a mature consumer subscription business rather than a high-growth startup.

Day-to-day leadership sits with Greg Johnson, who became president and chief executive in June 2022, shortly after the take-private deal closed. He joined from Intuit, where he ran a large consumer division. His background is consumer brands rather than enterprise security, which matches the company's narrowed focus on households.

Real control, though, rests with the owners. As a private-equity-backed company, McAfee's board is dominated by representatives of Advent and Permira, the two firms that lead the consortium. Strategic decisions, capital structure, and any future sale or listing run through those investors, not through public shareholders. There are no public shares, so there is no dispersed ownership to balance the sponsors.

The founder's connection is purely historical. John McAfee held no stake, no board seat, and no role for decades before his death, and his estate has no claim on the company.

Because the buyout brought foreign investors, including a Singapore sovereign fund and an Abu Dhabi state entity, into a company holding data on millions of American consumers, the deal drew review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The transaction cleared that process and closed in 2022, but the scrutiny reflects a broader concern about foreign ownership of consumer-security firms.

John McAfee's name remains attached to the brand even though his later life was defined by legal disputes, tax-evasion charges, and his death in Spanish custody. The company has spent years managing the reputational gap between its consumer-trust products and the founder's public image. That association is a marketing and brand risk rather than a legal one, since the company and the man were fully separate for decades.

As a private company, McAfee discloses very little about its finances, subscriber numbers, or performance. Buyers, competitors, and researchers have far less visibility than they did during the public phase. That opacity is normal for a private-equity-owned business, but it makes independent verification of the company's health difficult.

The ownership structure explains what McAfee is today. Under Intel, it was a hardware company's software experiment. Under TPG and the public markets, it was a broad security firm spanning consumers and enterprises. Under Advent and Permira, it is a focused consumer subscription business, and the enterprise arm that once diluted that focus now lives inside a separate company called Trellix.

Private-equity ownership shapes the incentives. Advent and Permira did not buy McAfee to hold it forever. Buyout firms aim to improve a business and then exit, through a sale or a return to the public markets, usually within several years. That points toward tight cost discipline, steady subscription revenue, and pressure to grow the parts of the product that keep customers renewing, such as identity and scam protection. The consortium's pension and sovereign-wealth members can be patient, but the lead sponsors still need an eventual exit.

For customers, the practical effect is a company built entirely around consumer protection, competing on subscription bundles rather than corporate contracts. That puts McAfee up against other privacy and security brands sold to households, including services like the products behind who owns NordVPN and the privacy tools behind who owns Proton. Anyone weighing a headline deal figure like the $14 billion take-private can test what such a number implies with a business valuation calculator, and mapping how McAfee stacks up against those rivals is the kind of exercise a competitive analysis template is built for.

For investors and dealmakers, McAfee is a case study in how a single brand can be repackaged many times. Each owner bought a different version of the company, and each sold or floated it once the fit no longer worked. The multiple ownership changes, and the foreign-investment review that came with the last one, are the kind of structural risks worth logging in a risk register template before backing a business with a history this complex.

McAfee is owned by a private-equity-led investor group headed by Advent International and Permira. The group also includes Crosspoint Capital Partners, CPP Investments, GIC, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. It took McAfee private in a deal that closed in March 2022.

No. McAfee was listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker MCFE from 2020, but it was taken private and delisted in March 2022. It has been a private company since then.

No. John McAfee founded the company in 1987, resigned in 1994, and sold his remaining stake at that time. He held no ownership and no role for the rest of his life. He died in 2021.

McAfee and Trellix were once the same company. In 2021, McAfee sold its enterprise security business to Symphony Technology Group, which merged it with FireEye's products business and renamed it Trellix in 2022. The McAfee name stayed with the consumer business. Today McAfee sells to households, while Trellix sells to corporations, and they have separate owners.

The 2022 take-private deal was valued at more than $14 billion, with investors paying $26 per share in cash. That followed a 2011 purchase by Intel for about $7.68 billion and a 2016 carve-out that valued the company at roughly $4.2 billion.

Yes. Intel acquired McAfee in 2011 for about $7.68 billion and rebranded it as Intel Security in 2014. In 2016 and 2017, Intel sold a 51% majority stake to TPG and kept 49%, before the company later returned to the public markets and then went fully private.