Zulip launches nonprofit foundation as founder Tim Abbott and senior teammates depart Kandra Labs for Anthropic

Zulip founder Tim Abbott says he is stepping back from full-time leadership to join Anthropic, alongside three senior team members. Kandra Labs, the company behind the open-source team chat app, is being donated to the new Zulip Foundation, which will own and steward the project while continuing commercial hosting and support.

The move gives Zulip a governance model closer to Mozilla, Signal, and Wikipedia, aiming to protect its independence while enabling charitable fundraising. It also reflects a broader trend of mature open-source projects seeking nonprofit stewardship to balance community trust with sustainable operations.