WhatsApp was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, with the latter departing the company back in 2017 several years after Facebook had acquired the company. Now it looks like WhatsApp’s other co-founder, Jan Koum, will also be leaving the company according to an announcement he shared on Facebook.According to Koum’s announcement, “It’s been almost a decade since Brian and I started WhatsApp, and it’s been an amazing journey with some of the best people. But it is time for me to move on. I’ve been blessed to work with such an incredibly small team and see how a crazy amount of focus can produce an app used by so many people all over the world.”
It is unclear as to why Koum is leaving apart from what he publicly shared, but for those wondering if this could have anything to do with Facebook’s data privacy scandal that prompted Acton to speak up, The Washington Post’s sources have told them that Koum’s decision to leave was months in the making before the scandal had even hit.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since responded to Koum’s post where he said, “I will miss working so closely with you. I’m grateful for everything you’ve done to help connect the world, and for everything you’ve taught me, including about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp.”