WhatsApp is owned by Meta (the United States, NASDAQ: META), which acquired the brand on 6 October 2014 for $19 billion.[1][2] WhatsApp was founded in 2009 in the United States and was independent until 2014.
Evidence: Meta Platforms, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K filed 2026-01-29, SEC EDGAR, 29 January 2026. Verified from filings; last checked .
WhatsApp was founded by two former Yahoo engineers and sold to Facebook in 2014 for about $19 billion, the largest price ever paid for a venture-backed company at the time. It is the dominant messaging service across India, Brazil, Indonesia and much of Europe and Africa.
Sentences about WhatsApp from Meta's latest annual filing[1], copied word for word.
For example, as a result of limited visibility into encrypted products, we have fewer data signals from WhatsApp user accounts and primarily rely on phone numbers and device information to match WhatsApp user accounts with accounts on our other products.
For example, we look for account information and behaviors associated with Facebook and Instagram accounts that appear to be inauthentic to the reviewers, but we have less visibility into WhatsApp user activity due to encryption.
WhatsApp is a simple, reliable, and secure messaging application that is used by people and businesses around the world to communicate and transact in a private way.
A plain count of the times the name appears in the text of each annual report, not counting the start of a sentence. A brand that an owner writes about more is usually one it treats as central. The brand is named more often than it was three years earlier.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
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See the full Meta brand portfolio (6) →
Meta controls 6 brands on Brandtree, 6 of them in internet & digital.
The 18 brands in email & messaging on Brandtree belong to 14 owners. The largest is Snap, with 2; Meta has 2.
| Brand | Owner | Owner based in |
|---|---|---|
| Firefox Relay | Mozilla | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Bitmoji | Snap | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Mail.ru Email | VK | 🇷🇺 Russia |
| Gmail | Alphabet | 🇺🇸 United States |
| Yahoo Mail | Apollo | 🇺🇸 United States |
| KakaoTalk | Kakao | 🇰🇷 South Korea |
| LINE | LY Corporation | 🇯🇵 Japan |
| Skype | Microsoft | 🇺🇸 United States |
Meta is a publicly listed company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States, founded in 2004. Brandtree records 6 brands under its control, and it is listed as NASDAQ: META.
Meta was called Facebook until 2021, when it renamed itself after the virtual worlds it was then betting on. It owns four of the most used communication services in the world, and American regulators spent years arguing in court that two of those were bought specifically to remove competitors.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 2,549 brands that began in the United States. 478 of them (19%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country; WhatsApp is not one of them.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion in cash and stock, the largest sum ever paid for a venture-backed company at the time. The European Commission cleared the deal in October 2014.
The parent company of WhatsApp is Meta, a publicly listed company headquartered in the United States.
Yes. WhatsApp originated in the United States in 2009 and its owner, Meta, is also headquartered in the United States.
Meta completed its acquisition of WhatsApp on 6 October 2014, after announcing the deal on 19 February 2014. The deal was valued at $19 billion.
WhatsApp was an independent company from its founding in 2009 until Meta acquired it in 2014.
Yes. As of 9 October 2026, WhatsApp is still owned by Meta. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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