Right now, it's the same as ubuntu: personal funds of the founder. Afaik as I know plan is to use an affiliate-deal but Jon Von Tetzchner said the business mod

Right now, it's the same as ubuntu: personal funds of the founder. Afaik as I know plan is to use an affiliate-deal but Jon Von Tetzchner said the business model is not based on understanding a user’s online behavior and profiling users to monetize. The focus is on providing superior experience and not maximizing profit per user. For example vivaldi has partnership with phillips to work with their phillips Hue wireless lighting, and deals with ebay and booking.com on click on link basis.