Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, left Facebook in September 2017 and co-founded the Signal Technology Foundation with encrypted communication researcher Moxie Marlinspike in January 2018. The foundation was publicly announced on February 21, 2018, with an initial personal funding of $50 million.

This money is a loan rather than a donation: unsecured, zero interest, with a balance increasing to $105,000,040 by the end of 2018, maturing on February 28, 2068. Acton serves as the executive chairman of the foundation and is involved in daily operations and products, while Marlinspike heads Signal Messenger. Previously, Signal was operated by Open Whisper Systems, with a team of no more than 7 people, never accepting venture capital.

The two have a history prior to the foundation. In 2013, Marlinspike proposed to Acton, who was still at WhatsApp, to integrate end-to-end encryption for hundreds of millions of Android users, making it impossible for network operators, law enforcement, and WhatsApp itself to decrypt messages and calls. This protocol later became the encryption layer for products like WhatsApp, Google Messages, Facebook Messenger, and Skype. Acton was impressed by Marlinspike's technical capabilities and privacy stance.

WhatsApp was founded by Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 and was acquired by Facebook for about $19 billion in 2014. The two sides later clashed over monetization through advertising and data integration. Acton stated he was asked to downplay the intention of account integration during the EU merger review and left with about $850 million in unallocated stock after a dispute over equity ownership; Koum left shortly after, and together they forfeited about $1.3 billion in unvested equity. In March 2018, Acton publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook movement.

The foundation is positioned as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, aiming to make privacy technology a sustainable public good rather than an advertising ledger. Marlinspike stepped down as Messenger CEO in 2022, with Meredith Whittaker becoming the foundation's president, while Acton remains chairman and briefly served as interim CEO of Messenger. In 2024, the foundation's revenue is approximately $29.41 million, with expenses around $38.02 million, still operating at a designed loss, without valuation or shareholders.

In market mechanisms, what is bought is unmonitored communication infrastructure, and what is sold is a platform model that turns chat records into advertisements and archives. Funding shifted from cashing out the WhatsApp acquisition to zero-interest long-term debt, effectively using the cash from a one-time sale of an advertising empire to give the anti-advertising structure a fifty-year runway. Beneficiaries include journalists, human rights organizations, and users with a hard demand for end-to-end encryption; the pressured parties are super apps that rely on monetizing metadata. The loan structure positions Acton as a creditor rather than an owner, preventing the foundation from being rewritten by equity logic.

Supplement: The Freedom of the Press Foundation collected donations before its tax-exempt status was approved. The Signal protocol is open source, and product growth relies on event-driven migration rather than a sales funnel.

Source: Public Information