> from this technical investment

What technical investment? They bought an open-source project from a high-school student.

Beeper Mini is an app they would have built anyway. They simply implemented the bare minimum of iMessage functionality there. Which is a couple of days worth of work, maximum. Maybe a week. And some for testing.

I’m somewhat certain it cost them less than 5 figures. And if it did, what a great marketing campaign. I had no idea what Beeper even was before this whole fiasco.