Brian Acton (born February 17, 1972) is an American business executive and

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

serving as the executive chairperson of

Signal Technology Foundation The Signal Technology Foundation, commonly known as the Signal Foundation, is an American non-profit organization founded in 2018 by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton. Its mission is to "protect free expression and enable secure communication, se ...

, which he co-founded with

Moxie Marlinspike Moxie Marlinspike is an American entrepreneur, cryptographer, and computer security researcher. Marlinspike is the creator of Signal (messaging app), Signal, co-founder of the Signal Technology Foundation, and served as the first CEO of Signal M ...

in 2018. Acton also serves as interim chief executive officer (CEO) of Signal Messenger LLC. He was formerly employed at

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

. In 2009, Jan Koum and Acton co-founded

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

, a mobile messaging application which was acquired by

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

in February 2014 for US$19 billion. Acton left WhatsApp in September 2017 to start the Signal Foundation. According to ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' (2020), Acton is the 836th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $2.5 billion.

Early life and education

Acton grew up in

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, later moving to

Central Florida Central Florida is a Regions of the United States#Florida, region of the U.S. state of Florida. Different sources give different definitions for the region, but as its name implies it is usually said to comprise the central part of the state, in ...

, where he graduated from Lake Howell High School. Acton received a full scholarship to study engineering at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, but left after a year to study at Stanford. He graduated from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1994 with a degree in computer science.

Career

In 1992, Acton became a systems administrator for

Rockwell International Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avioni ...

, before becoming a product tester at

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

and

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

. In 1996, he joined Yahoo Inc.

Yahoo!

Two years after Acton joined Yahoo, Jan Koum was hired as an infrastructure engineer shortly after he met Acton while working at

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

as a security tester. Over the next nine years, the two worked together at Yahoo. Acton lost millions in the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

of 2000. In September 2007, Koum and Acton left Yahoo! and took a year off, traveling around South America. They both tried to get jobs at Facebook, but weren't hired.

In January 2009, Koum bought an

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and realized that the then seven-month-old App Store was about to spawn a whole new industry of apps. He visited his friend Alex Fishman and talked about developing an app. Koum almost immediately chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like "what's up", and a week later on his birthday, Feb. 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. In 2014, Koum and Acton sold WhatsApp to Facebook for approximately US$19 billion in cash and stock. ''

'' estimated that Acton held over 20% stake in the company, making his net worth around $3.8 billion. In 2016, Acton led a funding round for Trak N Tell and raised $3.5 million along with two other investors. In September 2017, Acton left WhatsApp. Acton told ''Forbes'' that he left over a dispute with Facebook regarding monetization of WhatsApp, and voluntarily left $850 million in unvested options on the table by leaving a few months before vesting was completed. He also said that he was coached by Facebook executives to mislead European regulators regarding Facebook's intention to merge Facebook and WhatsApp user data.

Signal

Acton left WhatsApp in September 2017 to start a new foundation, the Signal Foundation, which is dedicated to helping people have access to private communication through an encrypted messaging app. Signal is widely used by journalists and human rights activists. In February 2018, it was announced that Acton was investing $50 million into

Signal A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

. This funding was a loan from Acton to the new non-profit Signal Technology Foundation. By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured and carries nil interest. On March 20, 2018, ''

'' reported that Acton had publicly tweeted support for the #DeleteFacebook movement, in a "new level of public backlash"."WhatsApp Cofounder Promotes #deletefacebook Amid Cambridge Analytica Scandal"
Kathleen Chaykowski, ''Forbes'', March 21, 2018 In November 2019, the journalist

Steven Levy Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and editor at large for '' Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 boo ...

asked Acton why he decided to make his feelings so public. Acton said he felt that it was time because there was pressure unfolding against Facebook. Acton is currently a board member of the Signal Foundation.

Other activities

Philanthropy

In 2014 Acton and his wife Tegan started the foundation Wildcard Giving, with three sister foundations: Sunlight Giving, Acton Family Giving and Solidarity Giving. The couple started Sunlight Giving in 2014, a family foundation supporting the basic services of low-income families with young children ages 0–5. It also provides support for safe spaces and organizations working for food security, housing stability, and healthcare access. The foundation supports low-income families with children age five and below living in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Sunlight Giving has $470 million in assets. It granted $6.4 million in 2015, $19.2 million in 2016, and $23.6 million in 2017. This private foundation helped to fund ''Magnify Community'', a non-profit organization with the goal of redirecting philanthropists' givings to nonprofits. Also in 2014 Acton helped establish Acton Family Giving and Solidarity Giving. In 2019 ''Forbes'' reported that Brian Acton and his wife had given more than $1 billion to charitable causes over their lifetimes.

Personal life

He is married to Tegan Acton and resides in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

References

External links

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Brian Acton
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Acton, Brian 1972 births 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American philanthropists American billionaires American computer businesspeople American computer programmers American software engineers American technology company founders Apple Inc. people Businesspeople from Michigan Lake Howell High School alumni Living people Stanford University School of Engineering alumni University of Central Florida alumni University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni WhatsApp people Yahoo! employees