In a Facebook post earlier today, the co-founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton announced his intentions to leave the company. Acton founded the messaging company with the current CEO, Jan Koum in 2009.
In the post, he stated that he will start a "non-profit focused at the intersection of nonprofit, technology and communications."
Here"s the Facebook post below:
Acton, a graduate of Stanford University, met Koum when he worked at Yahoo till 2007, thereafter the pair left to form their company.
WhatsApp, which began as a small instant messaging platform, quickly gained users due to its ease of use, speed, and the allure of using the internet rather than mobile networks to send messages. The use of the internet for communication and mobile numbers as a user login detail helped the app gain traction in developing countries where SMS was expensive.
In February 2014, Facebook announced its purchase of WhatsApp for $19 billion, giving Acton a net worth of about $6.5 billion. Since then, various features have been introduced to the messaging app such as voice calling, a new status feature, end-to-end encryption for chats, WhatsApp web and others. The messaging app also announced earlier this year that it had over a billion users daily.
As of writing, Neither Facebook nor WhatsApp has made a statement regarding Acton"s departure.