[3] In November 2011, Mike Janke called Phil Zimmermann with an idea for a new kind of private, secure version of Skype.

Zimmermann agreed to the project and called Jon Callas, co-founder of PGP Corporation and Vincent Moscaritolo.

[4][5] The company was founded in the Caribbean island of Nevis, but moved its headquarters to Le Grand-Saconnex[6] near Geneva, Switzerland in 2014 in search of a country with "stronger privacy laws to protect its customers' information.

[10] In March 2015 there was a controversy when Information Security specialist and hacker Khalil Sehnaoui identified that Silent Circle's warrant canary had been removed from their site.

[11] In January 2017 Gregg Smith was named CEO with a renewed focus on serving the large business space as well as Government entities.

At the same time Tony Cole, VP and Global Government CTO of FireEye, was named to the Board of Directors.