Co-founder of WhatsApp Brian Acton (Brian Acton) is going to leave the company. About his decision, he told in a publication in Facebook. Acton will officially leave WhatsApp in November, and transfer their responsibilities to other developers.

"I decided to open a non-profit organization with a focus on the features of non-profit companies, technologies and communications," wrote Acton. - I've been thinking about this for a while, and now it's just time to concentrate and accomplish the intended. I will share details in the coming months ".

Forbes estimates Acton's net assets at $ 6.5 billion. According to Recode, he ran a team of WhatsApp development engineers.

Acton launched the messenger in 2009, along with the current CEO Jan Koum (Jan Koum). Over time, WhatsApp has become one of the most popular services for communication around the world. He has 1.3 billion active monthly users and 1 billion daily users.

In 2014, Facebook bought an instant messenger for more than $ 16 billion.

A week ago WhatsApp began to monetize the service, giving enterprises new opportunities to communicate with their customers. One day the company assured that it would never start selling advertising, but in the summer of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) hinted at the possible emergence of commercial ads in the service. On the main page of Facebook Messenger, ads began to appear in July.