No ad business
Not "no ads for now." The company charter prohibits an ads business, a data brokerage, and any acquisition whose stated goal is either.
The company
A messenger built by people who hate being monitored
Instaigram Labs was founded in Austin in the spring of 2021 by Dana Whitlock and Priya Raghunathan — two infrastructure engineers who had spent a decade making other people's data fast, and decided to make their own product careful instead. The first public release shipped fourteen months later with encryption, group threads and nothing else. Voice transcripts arrived in 2023, the Remora assistant in 2024.
We are 41 people today: relay engineers, two cryptographers, a typography-obsessed design pair, support staff who answer their own tickets, and one office dog named Router who has opinions about stand-up meetings. The company is profitable on subscriptions alone, which is the only revenue line we plan to have.
What we will not build
No dark patterns
Streaks, read-receipt anxiety, artificial urgency — deliberately absent. If engagement drops because people have real lives, that is the product working.
No silent AI
Every model invocation is visible, optional and reversible. A messenger that surprises its users has misunderstood the job.
How the money works
Roughly 4% of active accounts pay for Plus or Studio. That share covers the relay network, the office and salaries with a margin we reinvest. When we say the free tier is not a loss leader, the arithmetic is this simple: paid users are not subsidizing free ones out of charity — they are paying for bigger limits they genuinely use.
We raised one round of outside funding in 2022 ($6M, led by a fund with no ad portfolio) and have not needed another since subscriptions reached break-even in early 2025.
Office and contact
Instaigram Labs, Inc.
11804 Domain Loop, Suite 210
Austin, TX 78754
United States
General: [email protected]
Press: [email protected]
Security disclosures: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (512) 555-0177, weekdays 9:00–17:00 Central