Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has acquired Beeper, a multi-service messaging app, for $125 million. This acquisition is Automattic’s second cross-platform messaging solution purchase, following the acquisition of Texts.com last October.
Beeper, known for its iMessage-on-Android solution, was previously referenced by the Department of Justice in an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The Beeper team is currently being onboarded by Automattic, which has expressed excitement about the progress made so far.
The founder of Beeper, Eric Migicovsky, who was also the founder of the Pebble smartwatch and a Y Combinator partner, will now hold the position of Automattic’s new head of Messaging. This role was previously held by Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com, who will continue to work on Beeper.
The teams of Beeper and Texts.com, consisting of 25 and 15 members respectively, will join forces to merge the best features of each company’s product into one platform. The Beeper brand will represent all of Automattic’s messaging efforts going forward.
This acquisition represents Automattic’s significant bet that the future of messaging will be open source and will work across services, rather than being confined to proprietary platforms like Meta’s WhatsApp or Apple’s iMessage. The ultimate plan is to transition users to Beeper’s own chat protocol, an open-source protocol called Matrix, after they have shifted to the Beeper cross-platform app for managing their messages.
Read more at: techcrunch.com