I guess I don't care enough or pay enough attention to what CEOs say, nor know the context in which it was said... (Maybe brown nosing to play nice, idk) but I switched to Proton away from Google and Microsoft because it seemed like a good, complete, little ecosystem of apps. The company themselves based out of Switzerland has some of the best privacy laws to back their claims of remaining privacy-first and not sharing or selling user data.

Does it cost? Sure, probably a lot of that has to do with hosting the infrastructure, but I'm willing to pay for, and recommend to regular friends and family who aren't as paranoid about using "no name" FOSS apps people haven't heard of. I get the incentive of foss, but others won't care to understand its benefits no matter how much you tell them, so Proton is a great "big" name company they can trust.