Seems to be owned by an ad-tech company, the same one that bought (but later divested from) the Waterfox browser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System1 ("System1 is an American Internet advertising company")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25716158 ("Startpage.com: Privacy-oriented search engine (startpage.com)"—88 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338321 ("Waterfox sold to System1, an ad company that bought a majority of Startpage (reddit.com)"—92 comments)

It's really great, though for the time I've been using it, sometimes ads from the google side go through it.

Very cool, thanks for sharing.