Meta is shaking up the leadership over at its popular messaging platform WhatsApp. Will Cathcart, the longtime head of WhatsApp, announced Monday that he is stepping down after leading the encrypted messaging service for seven years. He will be replaced by Kunal Shah, the founder and CEO of CRED, an Indian fintech startup best known for rewarding users who pay their credit card bills on time.
“WhatsApp is in the strongest position it’s ever been — and that felt like the right moment to step back,” wrote Cathcart in a post on X on Monday. “We scaled end-to-end encrypted messaging to more than three billion people. We brought it to group chats, companion devices, new surfaces — and defended people’s right to a private conversation across the globe.” Cathcart will no longer call the shots at WhatsApp, but he is not leaving Meta altogether. Instead, he is moving into a new role at the company where he will “build new products from the ground up,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post Monday.
The leadership change comes as Meta is spending enormous amounts of money on the infrastructure needed to train and run advanced AI models. The company raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from its previous projection of $115 billion to $135 billion.
