Signal Goes From Non-Profit To Profit With $50M Investment

Moxie announced Wednesday (Feb. 21) that it is launching the Signal Foundation with the support of Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, who is investing in the new non-profit.

In a blog post, Moxie said that Acton is investing $50 million in the foundation to accelerate and broaden Signal’s mission, which is to make private communication accessible and ubiquitous.

“In case you missed it, Brian left WhatsApp and Facebook last year, and has been thinking about how to best focus his future time and energy on building non-profit technology for public good,” wrote Signal. With Acton’s funding, the Signal Foundation will boost the size of its team, increase its capacity and be more ambitious in its future vision. “This means reduced uncertainty on the path to sustainability and the strengthening of our long-term goals and values. Perhaps most significantly, the addition of Brian brings an incredibly talented engineer and visionary with decades of experience building successful products to our team,” Signal wrote.

Meanwhile, Acton said in the same blog post that the mission of the Signal Foundation is to create open source privacy technology that protects free expression and enables secure communication around the globe.

“As more and more of our lives happen online, data protection and privacy are critical. This isn’t just important for select people in select countries. It’s important for people from all walks of life in every part of the world,” Acton wrote in the blog post. “Everyone deserves to be protected. We created the Signal Foundation in response to this global need. Our plan is to pioneer a new model of technology non-profit focused on privacy and data protection for everyone, everywhere.”

He noted that the best way to achieve that goal is via a foundation structure that is free from the limitations faced by a for-profit. Acton said the ultimate goal is to make the Signal Foundation self-sustaining from a financial perspective.