Automattic Inc., the Internet company behind popular online blogging service WordPress.com, acquired the messaging app at the heart of a recent dispute with Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL).

Automattic is buying the Beeper app and absorbing its 27 employees. That includes Beeper co-founder Eric Migicovsky, who will become Automattic’s head of messaging. The buyer, which also owns the Tumblr and Longreads websites, is paying $125 million for the business, according to Bloomberg News. The deal is part of a bid to make online messaging a key part of Automattic’s business. Beeper, which first launched as a beta test in 2021, is a universal chat app that taps into several different messaging services to create one unified inbox. The service, with about 100,000 users, works with apps like Facebook Messenger, Signal and Slack.