Barcelona-based keyboard startup ThingThing reaches deal with founders of keyboard app Fleksy to continue development, after Pinterest acqui-hired Fleksy
Context & Ripple Effects
Fleksy has been in limbo since its team joined Pinterest in a deal that left the keyboard app in the App Store but without its builders — the company had already pivoted once before, going free on a bet that premium themes and deep-linking revenue could carry it. Now Barcelona-based ThingThing has struck a deal with Fleksy's founders to pick up development where Pinterest left it.
The move lands in a keyboard market that has been consolidating fast: Microsoft bought SwiftKey and kept shipping product under it, while Apple quietly absorbed keyboard maker Dryft a year earlier. ThingThing is betting an orphaned app with an installed base is worth inheriting.
First-order effects
- Fleksy users get a committed maintainer again — ThingThing takes over development of an app that had been running on autopilot since the Pinterest acqui-hire.
Second-order effects
- With SwiftKey inside Microsoft and Fleksy's original team at Pinterest, the remaining independent keyboard developers face a thinner competitive field — and a pool of Fleksy users looking for a new home if ThingThing's stewardship stalls.
Third-order effects
- The pattern across Dryft, SwiftKey, and Fleksy points to third-party keyboards being structurally hard to sustain as standalone businesses: teams get acqui-hired by platforms, and the apps themselves pass to smaller studios willing to run them as side properties.
The trend: Mobile keyboard startups are consolidating into platform acquirers through acqui-hires, leaving independent studios like ThingThing to inherit and maintain the orphaned apps.