Hollywood Producer Buys Notorious Pegasus Spyware Maker

The Israeli spyware company NSO Group — best known for creating the Pegasus malware — has been acquired by a group of U.S.-based investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds. The deal, reportedly valued in the tens of millions of dollars, marks a major shift in ownership for one of the world’s most controversial cybersecurity companies.

A Hollywood-Led Takeover

Robert Simonds, known for producing films such as Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Pink Panther, Hustlers, and Ferrari, is leading the investment group purchasing NSO Group. Though details about the other investors remain undisclosed, the acquisition is said to be nearing completion, pending regulatory approvals.

Israel’s Defense Export Control Agency (DECA), part of the Ministry of Defense, must authorize the deal before it can move forward. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also expected to review it.

An NSO spokesperson confirmed that while the company’s ownership will change, its core operations and headquarters will stay in Israel. The firm will remain under Israeli regulatory oversight, which includes close monitoring of its export and sales of surveillance technologies.

Financial and Legal Turmoil

NSO Group has faced serious financial struggles in recent years. The company lost a long-running legal battle with WhatsApp, which accused NSO of using its servers to deliver Pegasus spyware to thousands of users.

Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, was awarded $167 million earlier this year. NSO also remains entangled in a separate lawsuit with Apple, which alleges that Pegasus was used to compromise iPhones and target users globally.

These court losses, coupled with global backlash over the company’s surveillance practices, have hit NSO hard. In 2021, the U.S. government placed the company on its trade blacklist, banning American firms from doing business with it after revelations that Pegasus had been used to spy on U.S. government officials abroad.

NSO has since lobbied unsuccessfully to be removed from that list.

The Expanding Reach of Spyware

Pegasus, NSO’s flagship spyware, can infect smartphones without requiring the target to click anything — a so-called “zero-click exploit.” Once installed, it can access private messages, emails, photos, and even activate a device’s microphone and camera without detection.

Researchers at Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have linked Pegasus to surveillance campaigns against journalists, activists, and political opponents in countries including Mexico, India, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.

Use of commercial spyware has quietly expanded among U.S. federal agencies since the beginning of the Trump administration, raising concerns about government oversight and accountability. With NSO now shifting to American ownership, privacy experts fear that the company could try again to enter the U.S. law enforcement market.

For consumers, the sale underscores a growing global problem: advanced digital surveillance tools designed for counterterrorism are increasingly being turned against ordinary people. Whether this new ownership brings reform or simply a new chapter in NSO’s troubled history remains to be seen.