INDEX / DIRECTORY / SQUARESPACE

Squarespace

Software & Cloud 83 CITED SOURCES UPDATED 2026-08-27
BDS-1000 Score 308 /1000 D Tier D - Moderate
Military ↗ 0.00 Digital ↗ 0.00 Economic ↗ 2.89 Political ↗ 3.50

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Key Findings

  • Economic: Squarespace’s documented Israel/Palestine nexus is primarily indirect and sponsor-level: after Permira’s 17 October 2024 acquisition, the record shows Permira, General Atlantic, and Accel each maintain separate Israel investment footprints, but the audits found no evidence that those holdings sit on Squarespace’s balance sheet or amount to Squarespace operating assets in Israel or the occupied territories.123456
  • Political: Squarespace publicly documents employee-donation matching and broader inclusion programming, but the supplied record did not identify a corporate statement on Israel/Gaza or public recipient-level evidence tying Squarespace’s matching program to Israeli state, settlement, or military-linked organizations.789
  • Settlements: Squarespace supports Israeli-shekel pricing for certain foreign merchants and serves customers in more than 200 countries and territories, yet no public evidence identified a Squarespace-operated office, subsidiary, reseller, merchant relationship, or verified settlement deployment in the occupied territories; the reviewed OHCHR settlement-business updates also do not list the company.1081112
  • Not found: No public evidence identified of Israeli military or security contracts, militarized product lines, Project Nimbus participation, or documented storage/processing of Squarespace customer data in Israel.811121314

Target Profile

FieldDetail
Company NameSquarespace
JurisdictionUnited States; incorporated in Delaware before privatization.8
Headquarters225 Varick Street, New York, New York, United States.8
SectorWebsite creation, hosting, domains, e-commerce, marketing, scheduling, hospitality, and related digital tools.8
OwnershipPrivately held since 17 October 2024 following an approximately $7.2 billion acquisition by Permira funds; Anthony Casalena remained one of the largest shareholders, with rollover positions also documented for General Atlantic and Accel.12
Key Executives / GovernanceAnthony Casalena (founder, CEO, board chair); John Colton (CTO). The last pre-privatization public board roster included Andrew Braccia, Michael Fleisher, Jonathan Klein, Liza Landsman, Anton Levy, and Neela Montgomery; continuation after privatization was not publicly confirmed in the supplied record.1516
Israeli-Nexus SummaryThe audits document no military or digital-security nexus and no verified settlement operations; the remaining nexus is indirect, centering on sponsor-level Israel investment exposure and limited policy/commerce links without verified Israel-specific operational activity by Squarespace itself.1103456

Key Facts:

Executive Summary

Squarespace is a general-purpose digital-services company whose documented business lines include website creation, domains, e-commerce, scheduling, hospitality, marketing, and social-media-presence tools.8 In the supplied record, the company’s Israel/Palestine nexus is not grounded in direct military supply, direct state contracting, or a verified Israeli operating footprint. The strongest documentary links instead arise in the economic and political domains after Permira’s October 2024 acquisition, because Permira and continuing rollover investors General Atlantic and Accel each have separate, documented Israel investment activity at the sponsor level.123456

That evidence remains limited in important ways. The audits found no public evidence that Squarespace itself owns offices, subsidiaries, data centres, logistics hubs, factories, or real estate in Israel or the occupied territories.8917 They also found no public evidence of Israel-specific revenue, tax payments, payroll, sovereign-bond holdings, war-bond activity, trade finance, or underwriting by Squarespace.8 Support for Israeli-shekel pricing exists in Squarespace Commerce for certain eligible foreign merchants, but that capability does not itself establish an Israeli operating presence, a settlement deployment, or a direct commercial relationship with Israeli state entities.10

The record is even more exculpatory in the military and digital domains. Squarespace’s filings and product disclosures describe a civilian self-service platform, not a defense or surveillance vendor.813 The audits found no public evidence of contracts or tenders with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, IDF, police, prison service, or intelligence agencies; no militarized or contract-modified product line; no Project Nimbus role; no verified use of Israeli-origin enterprise or security vendors; and no evidence that Squarespace stores or processes customer data in Israel.811121314 Several apparent “Squarespace” mentions in NGO or UN materials resolved to third-party files hosted on Squarespace infrastructure rather than allegations about Squarespace itself.181920

The resulting profile is therefore moderate rather than acute. The fixed, human-vetted V4 scores assign 0.00 to both Military and Digital, while the company’s exposure is carried by Economic (2.89) and Political (3.50). On that basis, the final BDS-1000 rating is BRS 308, Tier D (Moderate): a documentary record showing indirect sponsor-level and policy-adjacent nexus, but no verified military, security, settlement-operations, or direct Israeli state-service relationship by Squarespace itself.

Timeline of Relevant Events

DateEvent
2003Squarespace was founded by Anthony Casalena while he was a student at the University of Maryland.16
June 2020Squarespace announced a $500,000 three-year commitment for racial-inequality and justice-reform organizations and described employee donation matching and expanded inclusion programming.7
31 March 2021Squarespace announced its acquisition of Tock to expand its hospitality offering.21
31 December 2023Squarespace’s final public 10-K described a general-purpose digital-services business, reported customers in more than 200 countries and territories, and disclosed no Israeli subsidiary, office, workforce category, military customer, or Israel-specific revenue line.8
May 2024Permira announced an agreement to acquire a majority position in BioCatch, a behavioral-biometrics company with Tel Aviv operations.22
17 October 2024Permira completed its acquisition of Squarespace; Squarespace became privately held, Anthony Casalena remained CEO and board chair, and he rolled over a substantial majority of his equity.1
October 2024Tock was sold to American Express after having been part of Squarespace since 2021.121
August 2026Permira announced an intended sale of BioCatch to Visa, subject to approvals and closing conditions at announcement.23

Corporate Overview

Squarespace’s documented corporate profile is that of a US-founded, Delaware-incorporated website and commerce platform headquartered in New York.816 Its final public-company disclosures described a business spanning website publishing, domains, e-commerce, marketing, scheduling, hospitality, and related digital tools, with offices in New York, Chicago, Dublin, and Aveiro and disclosed subsidiaries in the United States, Ireland, United Kingdom, Australia, Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal.8917 The company’s legal notice states that customers outside the United States contract with Squarespace Ireland Limited.17

The October 2024 take-private transaction is central to the current dossier because it changed the ownership frame without establishing a direct Israeli operating nexus. Permira funds acquired Squarespace on 17 October 2024, while Anthony Casalena remained CEO and board chair and retained a large continuing equity stake; the transaction materials also documented continuing rollover ownership for General Atlantic and Accel.12 The audits note that Permira, General Atlantic, and Accel all maintain separate Israel investment footprints, but found no evidence that those sponsor-level activities translated into Squarespace-owned Israeli entities, Israeli beneficial control, or Israeli-state direction over Squarespace.3456

On Israeli entities, franchise relationships, and settlement presence, the supplied record is negative. No Israeli subsidiary, office, data centre, R&D centre, reseller network tied to the defense sector, or verified franchise or settlement-based operation was identified.891112 Squarespace does allow websites to be purchased through approved third-party resellers and supports merchant-controlled commerce internationally, but the audits did not identify an Israeli defense reseller, an Israeli settlement merchant relationship attributable to Squarespace, or a direct Squarespace-operated commercial presence in the occupied territories.2410

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of a military nexus by Squarespace itself.81113 The reviewed filings describe a civilian software platform rather than a defense supplier, and the audits found no public evidence of contracts, tenders, awards, framework agreements, memoranda, or export-licensing activity involving the Israeli Ministry of Defense, IDF, police, prison service, or border police.811 Squarespace was not identified in the reviewed SIBAT defense directory, and the audits found no militarized product line, no weapons-calibrated AI capability, and no purpose-built military or tactical variant of its products.813

The audits also rejected weaker or wrong-entity leads. A RONET certification-body website carrying a “Made with Squarespace” footer established only ordinary platform use by an Israel-based third party, not procurement by IMOD or military end use.25 Likewise, references to static1.squarespace.com in reports about Maersk or other subjects were treated as hosting artifacts for third-party materials, not evidence that Squarespace was a shipper, arms supplier, researcher, or contracting party.20

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Squarespace’s strongest defense in this domain is substantial. The documentary record shows a self-service, general-purpose web platform with AI terms that prohibit violence-enabling uses, and it contains no verified military customer disclosure, defense contract, export-license record, or militarized product announcement.813 The audits also found no evidence of supply-chain integration with Israeli defense primes, weapons systems, logistics, or base services.8

The main evidence limit is that public procurement sources are not exhaustive. The audits expressly note that Israeli defense procurement can include non-public tenders and exempt procurements, so the absence of a public record is not proof of universal absence.11 Even so, no Squarespace-specific military record was identified in the reviewed materials.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of a digital-security nexus involving Israeli state, military, intelligence, police, prison, or settlement technology provision by Squarespace.8111214 Squarespace’s public materials describe a hybrid infrastructure model using company-owned hardware in third-party data centres and services from AWS and Google Cloud, while public storage guidance states that Squarespace and affiliated products store data in Tier III data centres across the United States.814 The audits found no public evidence that Squarespace workloads or customer data use Israeli cloud regions, and no public evidence that Squarespace operates or leases data-centre infrastructure in Israel.814

The audits also found no public evidence that Squarespace licenses or integrates a verified Israeli-origin enterprise or security vendor, participates in Project Nimbus, provides offensive-cyber capabilities, or deploys AI, analytics, or surveillance technology to Israeli security bodies.81814 Squarespace’s analytics, fraud, and security disclosures describe ordinary platform functions but do not establish an Israeli-origin surveillance or biometric supplier.814

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Squarespace’s strongest defense here is again the lack of any verified Israeli digital-security relationship. Public sources support that the company stores data in the United States, uses globally distributed infrastructure, and does not publicly identify Israel as a storage or processing jurisdiction.14 The audits also found no NGO, UN, or academic investigation establishing a Squarespace technology relationship with Israeli state or settlement actors.1112181920

The limits are familiar: public disclosures do not provide a complete internal subprocessor or vendor inventory, and the company does not publish account-region selections or full CDN architecture.14 That means indirect relationships cannot be excluded absolutely, but none were verified in the supplied record.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

The economic-domain score is driven by indirect ownership and market-access facts rather than by direct Israeli operations. After Permira’s 17 October 2024 acquisition, Squarespace became a privately held company owned through Permira-affiliated acquisition entities, while Anthony Casalena, General Atlantic, and Accel retained documented continuing equity positions.12 Separately, Permira maintains an Israel leadership function under Tel Aviv-based Ran Maidan and has held Israeli investments; General Atlantic lists a Tel Aviv office; and Accel publicly markets an Europe-and-Israel investment fund and identifies Israeli portfolio examples.3456

The audits, however, repeatedly qualified that these are sponsor-level facts, not direct Squarespace balance-sheet exposure.123456 No public evidence identified that Squarespace itself owns factories, offices, data centres, logistics hubs, accelerators, real estate, or subsidiaries in Israel or the occupied territories.8917 No public evidence identified of Israel-specific Squarespace revenue, sovereign-bond holdings, insurance, lending, trade finance, or underwriting activity.8 Commerce documentation supports Israeli-shekel pricing for stores whose connected bank accounts are in certain supported non-Israeli jurisdictions, and Squarespace serves customers in more than 200 countries and territories, but those features do not establish a direct Israeli operating nexus.108

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Squarespace’s strongest defense in the economic domain is that the supplied record does not document an Israeli operating footprint by the company itself. No Israeli subsidiary, office, workforce, tax registration, “strategic market” designation, settlement merchant relationship, or Israel-specific revenue line was identified.8917 The OHCHR settlement-business updates also do not list Squarespace, albeit only on a document-scoped basis.1112

The main qualification is that sponsor ownership still matters for the dossier because the final V4 methodology attributes some weight to proximity through ownership and governance, even absent direct operating evidence. That is why the score is non-zero but moderate: the nexus is indirect and documentary, not a verified case of Squarespace itself running Israeli or settlement assets.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

The political-domain record is limited but not empty. Squarespace publicly documents employee donation matching and broader inclusion programming, including support for employee-selected nonprofit and social-impact organizations up to $/€600 annually.7 At the same time, the reviewed press releases, SEC disclosures, and corporate pages did not contain a company statement addressing Israel, Gaza, Palestinian civilian harm, the 19 July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion, or the November 2024 ICC arrest-warrant period.819 The audits also found no public evidence of federal lobbying registrations, FEC filings, or an Israel/Palestine-specific content or retail-policy carve-out by Squarespace itself.82624

On territory and policy adjacency, Squarespace permits merchant-controlled commerce internationally, including shekel pricing in certain configurations, but no settlement-specific market policy or verified occupied-territory operating presence was identified.101112 The supplied record also notes that apparent Squarespace mentions in UN, HRW, and Al-Haq materials resolved to hosted third-party documents rather than political advocacy or operational participation by Squarespace.181920

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

Squarespace’s strongest defense is that the political-domain evidence does not show a corporate political campaign, a public pro-state advocacy position, a settlement policy, or a disclosed donation stream to Israeli state, military, or settlement-linked organizations.789 The company’s public posture in the supplied record is largely silence on the conflict plus generic platform governance and employee-focused philanthropy.26247

The main limit is that private-company transparency is incomplete after October 2024, and publicly available recipient-level data for employee-matching flows are not present in the supplied record.17 That gap means the dossier cannot convert general donation-matching capacity into a harder claim about specific beneficiaries. The political score must therefore be read as reflecting adjacency and governance context, not verified ideological or state-directed advocacy by Squarespace.

Named Entities and Evidence Map

BDS-1000 Score (V4)

DomainIMPV-Domain Score
Military0.000.000.000.00
Digital0.000.000.000.00
Economic4.507.004.502.89
Political3.507.009.003.50

The fixed V4 outcome is driven by the political domain as V_MAX, with economic exposure providing the secondary lift. In documentary terms, the score reflects sponsor-level Israel investment proximity and limited policy/commerce adjacency, while the military and digital domains remained at zero because the audits found no verified direct nexus. Per the method, this is a scale-free, evidence-only, human-vetted scoring system based on Impact, magnitude, and proximity rather than on company size alone.

Methodology Note

End Notes


If you want, I can also produce a tightened revision aimed at a specific corpus house style once you point me to the target directory or an adjacent approved dossier example.

Footnotes

  1. https://www.squarespace.com/press-releases/2024/10/17/permira-completes-acquisition-of-squarespace ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  2. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1496963/000114036124041205/ny20030653x16_sc14d9.htm ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  3. https://www.permira.com/news-and-insights/announcements/ran-maidan-joins-permira-as-head-of-israel ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  4. https://www.generalatlantic.com/contact/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  5. https://www.generalatlantic.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/General-Atlantic-Service-Company-L.P.-Part-2A-of-Form-ADV-The-Brochure.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  6. https://www.accel.com/news/our-commitment-to-exceptional-teams-across-europe-and-israel ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  7. https://www.squarespace.com/about/inclusion-and-impact ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  8. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1496963/000149696324000010/sqsp-20231231.htm ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19 ↩20 ↩21 ↩22 ↩23 ↩24 ↩25 ↩26 ↩27 ↩28 ↩29 ↩30 ↩31 ↩32 ↩33 ↩34 ↩35 ↩36 ↩37 ↩38

  9. https://www.squarespace.com/about/company ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  10. https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205811248-Supported-countries-and-currencies-for-Squarespace-Commerce ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  11. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session31/database-hrc3136/23-06-30-Update-israeli-settlement-opt-database-hrc3136.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  12. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4091616/files/A_HRC_60_19-EN.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  13. https://www.squarespace.com/aiterms ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  14. https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012540827-Where-does-Squarespace-store-my-data ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11

  15. https://www.squarespace.com/about/team ↩

  16. https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001496963/e15dbc3d-6cf1-4658-8688-5eb6b73256a0.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. https://www.squarespace.com/imprint ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  18. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4088356/files/A_HRC_59_23-EN.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  19. https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/israel1118_web_0.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  20. https://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/2025/03/11/ensuring-genocide-report-1741690872.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  21. https://www.squarespace.com/press-releases/2021/3/31/squarespace-acquires-tock-the-online-reservations-takeout-and-events-platform-to-advance-hospitality-offering ↩ ↩2

  22. https://www.permira.com/news-and-insights/announcements/permira-to-acquire-majority-position-in-biocatch-at-13bn-valuation ↩ ↩2

  23. https://www.permira.com/news-and-insights/announcements/permira-agrees-sale-of-biocatch-to-visa ↩ ↩2

  24. https://www.squarespace.com/product-specific-terms/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  25. https://www.ronet-ics.com/about ↩ ↩2

  26. https://www.squarespace.com/terms-of-service/ ↩ ↩2