Whatsapp Co-Founder Brian Acton Is Leaving The Company To Start His Own Foundation

Whatsapp Co-Founder Brian Acton Is Leaving The Company To Start His Own Foundation

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton is leaving the company to start his own non-profit.

Acton, who started at Facebook when WhatsApp was acquired for $19 billion in 2014, is the lesser-known of WhatsApp’s two co-founders. (CEO Jan Koum is the other, and he’s not leaving the company.) Ironically, Acton interviewed at Facebook back in 2009 after leaving a job at Yahoo, but he was not hired.

Acton led engineering internally for WhatsApp, and a source close to the company says he was a big advocate for WhatsApp’s push into encryption. His role won’t be filled by any one employee, according to a company spokesperson. . .