Bridgefy is a Mexican software company with offices in Mexico and California, USA, dedicated to developing mesh-networking technology for mobile apps. It was founded circa 2014 by Jorge Rios, after conceiving the idea while participating in a tech competition called StartupBus. Bridgefy's smartphone ad hoc network technology, apparently using Bluetooth Mesh, is licensed to other apps. The app gained popularity during protests in different countries since it can operate without Internet, using Bluetooth instead. Aware of the security issues of not using cryptography and the criticism surrounding it, Bridgefy announced in late October 2020 that they adopted the Signal protocol, in both their app and SDK, to keep information private.