WordPress.com owner Automattic plans to acquire Beeper, which develops an iMessage-on-Android solution that was cited by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple. The deal, valued at $125 million, is Automattic's second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution, following its acquisition of Texts.com last October, according to people familiar with the matter.
The acquisition creates a new head of messaging in Texts.com founder Kishan Bagaria Automattic. This role will be filled by Beeper founder Eric Migicovsky, who was previously the founder of Pebble smartwatches and a Y Combinator partner.
Reached for comment, Automattic said it has begun the onboarding process for the Beeper team and is “thrilled with the progress” so far, but did not provide any updates on the organization or what Bagaria's new title will look like. He said he could not share details yet. However, it is said that he plans to stay on to also work on Beeper's development.
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Migicovsky said the Beeper and Texts.com teams will consist of 25 and 15 people, respectively, and will take the strengths of both companies' products and combine them into one platform.
“[Texts.com] “We built a great app that was more desktop-centric and iOS-centric,” he said. “So we're going to incorporate the best of those into the app. But going forward, the Beeper brand will apply to all of Automattic's messaging activities,” he added, “Kishan… We've known him for years. There aren't too many people in the world doing what we do, and it was great to join forces with them.”
The deal, signed April 1, represents a big bet for Automattic. The future of messaging will be open source and work across a variety of services, rather than being tied to proprietary platforms like Meta's WhatsApp or Apple's iMessage. In fact, Migicovsky says his ultimate plan, after moving people to his Beeper cross-platform app for message management, is to use Beeper's proprietary chat internally in his protocol (an open source protocol called Matrix). It is to move to a certain point.
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Automattic previously made a $4.6 million strategic investment in Element (formerly New Vector), another Matrix-based company, and makes an annual contribution to Matrix.org.
Described by Migicovsky as a kind of “spiritual successor” to XMPP, Matrix provides an open source end-to-end encrypted client-server communications system, similar to open source Twitter. servers can cooperate with each other. X Alternative Mastodon. However, instead of focusing on social networking like Mastodon, it focuses on messaging.
Migikowski said the acquisition came about because Beeper is quite expensive to operate and it was time to raise more money or find a buyer. To date, Beeper has raised his $16 million in outside funding, including his $8 million in Series A from Initialized. Other investors include YC, Samsung Next, Liquid2Ventures, his angel Garry Tan, Kevin Mahaffey, Niv Dror, and Group SV Angel.
“I knew Matt. [Mullenweg, Automattic founder and CEO] For years now,” Migikowski said, adding that the WordPress.com founders were passionate about open source technologies like Beeper, where about half of the product is already open source. . “We were looking for a partner who could support this financially. One of the reasons why no one else is building these kinds of apps is that it costs a surprisingly large amount of money to build a really good chat app. Because it costs a lot of money,” Migikowski said.
As for Beeper's products, the company has now briefed the Department of Justice on what happened when Apple blocked Beeper Mini, a new app aimed at bringing iMessage to Android. Due to Apple's move, that solution is no longer updated.
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Android Beeper launches for everyone
The company is instead releasing an updated version of its core app, Beeper, on Android. Unlike the Beeper Mini, which focuses only on iMessage, the main app connects with 14 different services, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram DM, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Discord, Google Messages, and more. Android is the largest platform for users, with 70% using his Google smartphone OS.
With this rewritten version of Beeper, the company is beginning to roll out fully end-to-end encrypted messages across Signal. This will soon be followed by WhatsApp, Messenger, and Google Messages.
Due to Apple's restrictions, iMessage only works if you use an iPhone, and is not a focus for Beeper given the complications seen with Apple's shutdown of Beeper Mini, Migikowski said. But Beeper points to the Justice Department's lawsuit and the FCC's investigation and is hopeful that regulation could change the situation. In the meantime, Beeper supports his RCS and solves his iMessage to Android issues such as low-resolution images and videos, lack of input indicators, and encryption.
With the beta release, the new app includes new icons, an updated design, the ability to start and send instant chats, the ability to add and change chat networks directly on Android (no desktop app required), and everything on your device. Contains a local cache of chats. , full-text message search.
The 10,000 Android beta testers who are already using Beeper will need to manually download the new app from Google Play. Apps do not update automatically.
Additionally, approximately 466,000 people on Beeper's waiting list will be able to try the product. They will join his more than 115,000 users who have already downloaded the app and are currently using it by tens of thousands of people every day. The app runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, ChromeOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux.
The team has overhauled the iOS and desktop apps and expects to have feature parity across platforms within the next few months.
Over time, we plan to add other services to Beeper, including Google Voice, Snapchat, and Microsoft Teams. Beeper also provides a widget API so developers can build on top of his Beeper. Additionally, since Matrix is an open standard, developers can also build alternative clients for his Beeper.
The app will generate revenue through premium subscriptions, with the final price likely to be a few dollars per month, but pricing has not yet been fully determined. Beeper is currently free to use.
Like Automattic, Beeper's team is distributed remotely with employees in Brazil, the UK, Germany, and the US. For now, Texts.com will continue to operate while the team begins integrating his two messaging apps.