WhatsApp founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jan Koum announced his decision to quit in a Facebook post. The decision comes nearly four years after his messaging app was acquired by Facebook for $22 billion.
“I’m leaving at a time when people are using WhatsApp in more ways than I could have imagined. The team is stronger than ever and it’ll continue to do amazing things. I’m taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate frisbee,” he said in the post.
The mobile-messaging tool, which has been kept separate from Facebook’s main social network, its Messenger app and other businesses, has about 1.5 billion users worldwide. The news received a quick response from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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“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,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp.”
The Washington Post had earlier reported that Koum is exiting the company after clashing with Facebook over its approach to personal data and encryption. He also plans to leave Facebook’s board. The other co-founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, also left recently — and joined a chorus of voices calling for people to delete Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Koum and Acton, both former Yahoo employees, launched WhatsApp in 2009.