The Signal Foundation gets $50 Million from WhatsApp Co-Founder to Create the NextGen Open Source Privacy Technology

The Signal Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at creating the Next Generation of Open Source Privacy Technology, gets $50 Million Funding from WhatsApp Co-Founder Brian Acton. Signal is the encrypted messaging application widely used throughout the security community as well as by journalists, activists, and others seeking to thwart government surveillance. The app was developed under Open Whisper System, the organisation founded by Moxie Marlinspike, who also happens to be the creator of the encrypted chat service.

Signal’s Future is Secure and Sustainable

It was quite astonishing perhaps for many to know from Moxie at Disrupt last year that the Signal app was in fact managed within a tight budget. For a brilliant security tool like Signal, which is used by millions and feared by governments worldwide, the show must go on. Now with $50 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, we can be rest assured about the app’s secure future through the newly founded Signal Foundation nonprofit. This means reduced uncertainty on the path to sustainability, and the strengthening of Signal’s long-term goals and values. Moxie applauded that the addition of Acton brought an incredibly talented engineer and visionary with decades of experience building successful products to Signal’s team.

Signal’s Mission to Make Private Communication Accessible and Ubiquitous

The arrangement was announced in a dual blog post by Moxie and Brian on the Signal blog. According to Moxie, Signal has never taken VC funding or sought investment, because they felt that putting profit first would be incompatible with building a sustainable project that put users first. Consequently, Signal has sometimes suffered from lack of resources or capacity in the short term, but they have always felt those values would lead to the best possible experience in the long term. Moxie mentioned that the plan was to broaden Signal’s mission of making private communication accessible and ubiquitous. He also thanked the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation, which he said Signal had relied on heavily over the years as fiscal sponsor.

Winning in the Face of Adversity

The Signal team works out of shared space, no real office and have enforced constraint of limited number of developers so as to produce maximum result within restricted budget. But the hardship has finally yielded results, technically in the form of hearty reward. The best part of the story is that Brian has put in the $50 million from his own funds directly, which is a blessing in disguise.

For Signal, operating as a nonprofit keeps things simple and easy to manage, as they have been for years in ways more than one. Their vision is to offer this service as a public good, cover the cost with donations as well as grants and never feel any pressure to make any money or pay off investors.
In Brian’s part of the blog, he explains that although the goal is to pioneer a new model of technology nonprofit focused on privacy and data protection for everyone, everywhere, they also want to make the Signal Foundation financially self-sustaining. Later, he suggests multiple offerings that align with their core mission are being planned for the future.

New Role for Brian Acton as Part of the Signal Foundation

A computer programmer and Stanford alumnus, Brian announced in September 2017 that he was moving out of WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014. In terms of official roles in the Signal Foundation, Brian will be the executive chairman, while Moxie will remain CEO (and chief developer presumably) of Signal Messenger, its own nonprofit under the Foundation umbrella.

These statements from Brian and Moxie can be interpreted in innumerable ways. Considering Brian coming from the WhatsApp-Facebook conglomerate, there maybe some kind of self sustaining monetization plan underway. But keeping in mind all the good work done by Signal so far, I am much more interested in the more charitable interpretation, which is simply that  there’s a way to make Signal pay for itself without compromising the principles which led to its creation in the first place.

The app is available for Android, iPhone, and Desktop. Users are not likely to see any changes, except for features on the roadmap probably arriving a little sooner than expected. I am expecting Signal to reveal more in the days to come.