Technology News: Automattic, the owner of WordPress, acquires messaging app Beeper for $125 million

Automattic Inc., the company known for WordPress.com, has made a significant move by acquiring the messaging app Beeper for a whopping $125 million. This acquisition not only brings Beeper’s 27 employees, including co-founder Eric Migicovsky, into the Automattic family but also marks a new chapter in the company’s expansion.

Beeper, a universal chat app that consolidates various messaging services into one inbox, has gained popularity since its beta launch in 2021, attracting around 100,000 users by integrating with platforms like Facebook Messenger, Signal, and Slack. Migicovsky, the brains behind Beeper and the creator of the Pebble smartwatch, sees the app as a solution to the lack of open standards in online messaging.

The acquisition comes after Beeper’s clash with Apple over its “Beeper Mini” app, which allowed Android users to access iMessage, a feature Apple promptly shut down. This incident led to regulatory scrutiny, with the US Department of Justice citing it in an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

Migicovsky believes that the partnership with Automattic will bring more attention to the importance of open messaging standards. He praised Automattic’s open-source approach, stating that they understand how to build open-source infrastructure for the internet.

With Beeper now exiting its beta phase and becoming available to all users, Automattic is making a bold move into the messaging arena. This acquisition signifies a strategic step for Automattic as it expands its portfolio and ventures into new territories.