Brian Acton Net Worth $3.5 Billion
Category: Richest Business › Richest Billionaires
Net Worth: $3.5 Billion
Birthplace: Michigan, U.S.
Nationality: American
What is Brian Acton’s Net Worth?
Brian Acton is an American internet entrepreneur with a net worth of $3.5 billion. He earned his fortune as the co-founder of the popular messaging service WhatsApp. Before this, Acton worked for companies like Rockwell International, Apple, Adobe, and Yahoo!. Acton and Jan Koum, his future WhatsApp co-founder, left Yahoo! in 2009 and soon founded WhatsApp. In 2014, Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $19 billion, making it one of the largest tech acquisitions ever.
Early Life and Education
Brian Acton was born in 1972 in Michigan. He later moved to Central Florida, where he attended Lake Howell High School. For college, Acton initially studied engineering at the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship before transferring to Stanford University. He graduated from Stanford in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in computer science.
Career Beginnings
While at Stanford, Acton worked as a systems administrator at Rockwell International and later became a product tester for Apple and Adobe. In 1996, he joined Yahoo!, where he met Jan Koum. Acton and Koum worked together for nine years at Yahoo!, during which Acton lost millions in investments during the dot-com bubble.
In 2007, after leaving Yahoo!, Acton and Koum traveled through South America and played ultimate Frisbee. In early 2009, Koum bought an Apple iPhone and realized the potential of mobile applications. He and Acton founded WhatsApp, an instant-messaging and voice-over-IP service, later that year. By early 2013, WhatsApp had around 200 million active users and a valuation of $1.5 billion.
In 2014, Acton and Koum sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion, the largest acquisition made by Facebook at that time. Following the acquisition, WhatsApp became the world’s most popular messaging application, with over 600 million users by late 2014 and one billion users by early 2016.
Leaving Facebook
Brian Acton left Facebook in 2017 due to concerns about Facebook’s privacy and ad policies. He forfeited $850 million in unvested stock options by leaving early. Acton became a vocal supporter of the #DeleteFacebook movement and funded Signal, a rival messaging service.
Signal Technology Foundation
After leaving WhatsApp, Acton co-founded the Signal Technology Foundation with cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike. The foundation’s mission is to enable secure global communication through open-source privacy technology. Signal, their encrypted instant-messaging app, is widely used by human rights activists and journalists for its enhanced security features.
Personal Life and Philanthropy
Brian Acton lives in Palo Alto, California, with his wife Tegan. They are involved in philanthropic work through Wildcard Giving and its sister foundations: Sunlight Giving, Solidarity Giving, and Acton Family Giving. Sunlight Giving, established in 2014, focuses on helping low-income families in the Bay Area access housing, nutrition, and healthcare. By 2019, the Actons had donated over $1 billion to charitable causes.
Real Estate
Brian Acton has spent $86 million over five years assembling a compound in Palo Alto near Stanford University. He purchased seven homes on the same street, sometimes paying significantly more than market value. For instance, he bought a property assessed at $1.5 million for $30 million. He has demolished one of the homes to build a contemporary residence for himself. His compound is located less than a mile from Mark Zuckerberg’s similar compound.
