WordPress.com owner Automattic is acquiring multi-service messaging app Beeper for $125 million

WordPress.com owner Automattic is taking up Beeper, the corporate behind iMessage-on-Android, which was cited by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The deal, which sources near the matter said was valued at $125 million, is Automattic’s second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution after purchasing Texts.com last October.

With this acquisition, Texts.com founder Kishan Bagaria Automattic has turn into Beeper’s latest head of stories, a position that may now be filled by Beeper’s founder Eryk Migikowskipreviously founding father of the Pebble smartwatch and Y Combinator partner.

When asked for comment, Automattic said it has begun the technique of onboarding the Beeper team and is “excited with the progress we’re making,” but couldn’t yet share more about organizational updates or Bagaria’s latest title. However, we’re told he’s staying on to work on Beeper as well.

According to Migicovsky, the Beeper and Texts.com teams, consisting of 25 and 15 people respectively, will join forces to take the perfect of every company’s products and mix them into one platform.

“[Texts.com] has created a tremendous app that is more focused on desktop and iOS,” he said. “That’s why we’ll put the best parts of them in our app. But in the future, the Beeper brand will be used across all communications activities at Automattic,” he said, adding: “Kishan… I’ve known him for years – there aren’t many other people in the world who do what we do – and it was great to be able to join forces with them.”

The deal, which closed on April 1, represents a giant step for Automattic: that the long run of messaging can be open-source and run across a wide range of services, fairly than being limited to proprietary platforms like Meta’s WhatsApp or Apple’s iMessage. In fact, Migicovsky says, the final word plan after moving people to Beeper’s cross-platform messaging app is to maneuver them to Beeper’s own chat protocol — an open-source protocol called Matrix — under the hood.

Automattic has created before $4.6 million strategic investment IN Element (previously New vector), one other company based on Matrix and contributing annually to Matrix.org.

Matrix, a type of “spiritual successor” to XMPP as Migicovsky describes it, offers an open, end-to-end encrypted communication system between clients and servers where servers can hook up with one another, very similar to Mastodon’s open Twitter/X alternative. However, as a substitute of specializing in social networks like Mastodon, it focuses on messaging.

Migicovsky said the acquisition got here about since it costs lots of money to run Beeper and it was time to lift more funds or discover a buyer. To date, Beeper has raised $16 million in external funding, including $8 million in Series A funding from a seed company. Other investors include YC, Samsung Next and Liquid2 Ventures, and angels Garry Tan, Kevin Mahaffey and Niv Dror and SV Angel Group.

“I knew Matt [Mullenweg, Automattic founder and CEO] for years,” Migicovsky said, adding that the WordPress.com founder has demonstrated a commitment to open source technology like Beeper, where about half of its products are already open source. “We were looking for a partner who could support it financially. “One of the reasons there aren’t other people building these types of apps is that it costs a surprising amount of money to build a damn good chat app,” Migicovsky noted.

As for Beeper’s products, the corporate informed the Department of Justice about what happened when Apple blocked its newer app, Beeper Mini, which was intended to bring iMessage to Android. This solution is not updated because of this of Apple’s moves.

Beeper for Android launches for everyone

Instead, the corporate provides an updated version its primary application, Beeper, on Android. Unlike Beeper Mini, which focuses solely on iMessage, the principal app connects to 14 services, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram DM, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Discord, Google Messages and more. Android is the most important platform utilized by users as 70% of them use Google’s smartphone operating system.

In this rewrite of Beeper, the corporate is beginning to make fully encrypted messages available on Signal. They will soon be joined by WhatsApp, Messenger and Google Messages.

Due to Apple’s restrictions, iMessage only works if you might have an iPhone in your kit, Migicovsky says, and won’t be a spotlight for Beeper given the complications he saw after Apple shut down Beeper Mini. Beeper, nevertheless, is hopeful that regulation could change the situation, pointing to the Justice Department lawsuit and the FCC investigation. Meanwhile, Beeper supports RCSwhich fixes iMessage for Android issues reminiscent of low resolution images and videos, missing typing indicators, and encryption.

Out of beta, the brand new app features a latest icon, an updated look, opening and sending fast chats, the flexibility so as to add and modify chat networks directly on Android (no desktop app required), local caching of all chats in your device, and full message search.

The 10,000 Android beta testers already using Beeper could have to download the brand new app manually Google Play – won’t be updated routinely.

Additionally, roughly 466,000 people on Beeper’s waiting list will now give you the option to accomplish that to try the product. They will join greater than 115,000 users who’ve already downloaded the app, which is now utilized by tens of hundreds day by day. The app works on Android, iPhone, iPad, ChromeOS, macOS, Windows and Linux.

The team expects to attain feature parity across platforms inside a couple of months after reviewing the iOS and desktop apps.

Over time, they plan so as to add other services to Beeper, including Google Voice, Snapchat and Microsoft Teams. Beeper also offers a widget API so developers can construct on top of Beeper. Additionally, since Matrix is ​​an open standard, developers will even give you the option to create alternative clients for Beeper.

The app will generate revenue through a premium subscription, where the ultimate price might be a couple of dollars per 30 days, but pricing decisions haven’t yet been fully made. Beeper is currently free.

Like Automattic, Beeper’s team is distributed remotely, with employees in Brazil, the UK, Germany and the US. Currently, Texts.com will proceed to operate as teams begin to integrate each messaging applications.