Chat service
Signal: Operations will soon cost $50 million per year
The logo of the messenger service Signal on a smartphone. photo
© Zacharie Scheurer/dpa-tmn/dpa
The chat service Signal is not looking for profits. But running the platform costs money – and that will soon run out. In the long run, only donations are likely to help.
In an unusual step, the encrypted chat service Signal has made its costs public. By 2025, around $50 million (46 million euros) will be needed annually, it said in a blog post on Thursday. Currently, salaries and other personnel expenses with around 50 full-time employees cost $19 million. The bandwidth required for data transmission alone costs $2.8 million annually.
Signal consistently relies on so-called end-to-end encryption, in which the content of the communication is only visible to those involved in plain text. Therefore, the messages are temporarily stored on the company’s servers only for transmission. That also costs $1.3 million annually.
Signal’s encryption technology is used, among other things, by the chat service WhatsApp used. Signal is not aimed at making a profit and is operated by a foundation. The service wants to finance itself in the long term with the help of a broad base of donors, wrote foundation chairwoman Meredith Whittaker in the blog entry. So far, Signal has been helped by a million-dollar donation from WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton. He received part of the more than $20 billion that Facebook paid for WhatsApp and was then one of the co-founders of the Signal Foundation.