Brian Acton is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder of the popular messaging app WhatsApp. He was born on February 17, 1972, in Michigan and studied computer science at Stanford University. After working at Yahoo for over a decade, Acton and his colleague Jan Koum launched WhatsApp in 2009, which quickly gained millions of users worldwide. In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for approximately $19 billion, making it one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. Acton served as the company's CTO until 2017, when he left to pursue other interests, including philanthropy and advocating for privacy rights in technology.