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Facebook today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WhatsApp, a rapidly growing cross-platform mobile messaging company, for a total of approximately USD 16 billion, including USD 4 billion in cash and approximately USD 12 billion worth of Facebook shares.
The agreement also provides for an additional USD 3 billion in restricted stock units to be granted to WhatsApp’s founders and employees that will vest over four years subsequent to closing.
WhatsApp has built a leading and rapidly growing real-time mobile messaging service, with:
Over 450 million people using the service each month;
70 percent of those people active on a given day;
Messaging volume approaching the entire global telecom SMS volume;
and continued strong growth, currently adding more than 1 million new registered users per day
"WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "I've known Jan for a long time and I'm excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected."
Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, said, “WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We're excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world.”
Facebook fosters an environment where independent-minded entrepreneurs can build companies, set their own direction and focus on growth while also benefiting from Facebook’s expertise, resources and scale. This approach is working well with Instagram, and WhatsApp will operate in this manner. WhatsApp’s brand will be maintained; its headquarters will remain in Mountain View, CA; Jan Koum will join Facebook’s Board of Directors; and WhatsApp’s core messaging product and Facebook’s existing Messenger app will continue to operate as standalone applications.
Mark Zuckerberg comments on the WhatsApp deal
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| Mark Zuckerberg |
"I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire WhatsApp and that their entire team will be joining us at Facebook. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group of people they want.
WhatsApp will help us do this by continuing to develop a service that people around the world love to use every day. WhatsApp is a simple, fast and reliable mobile messaging service that is used by over 450 million people on every major mobile platform."
More than 1 million people sign up for WhatsApp every day and it is on its way to connecting one billion people. More and more people rely on WhatsApp to communicate with all of their contacts every day. WhatsApp will continue to operate independently within Facebook.
The product roadmap will remain unchanged and the team is going to stay in Mountain View. Over the next few years, we're going to work hard to help WhatsApp grow and connect the whole world. We also expect that WhatsApp will add to our efforts forInternet.org, our partnership to make basic internet services affordable for everyone. WhatsApp will complement our existing chat and messaging services to provide new tools for our community. Facebook Messenger is widely used for chatting with your Facebook friends, and WhatsApp for communicating with all of your contacts and small groups of people.
Since WhatsApp and Messenger serve such different and important uses, we will continue investing in both and making them each great products for everyone. WhatsApp had every option in the world, so I’m thrilled that they chose to work with us.
I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting. I've also known Jan for a long time, and I know that we both share the vision of making the world more open and connected.
I'm particularly happy that Jan has agreed to join the Facebook board and partner with me to shape Facebook's future as well as WhatsApp's. Jan and the WhatsApp team have done some amazing work to connect almost half a billion people. I can’t wait for them to join Facebook and help us connect the rest of the world.
WhatsApp growth
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