Is IRC in danger of a monopoly?

Freenode Owner's Funding Expands

London Trust Media Holdings and [Andrew Lee] ... funding, sponsorships, and other contributions have been and will continue to be provided to IRC clients like KiwiIRC and weechat, IRC networks like freenode, snoonet, DALnet, and EuropNet.
...
Today, I'd like to introduce a few new projects that we are soon launching alongside notable IRC communities:
IRC.com (A professional, friendly network for huge communities)
...
Yours truly, Andrew Lee
Co-founder, London Trust Media Holdings
Snoonet is expanding its family and linking up with the new IRC network, IRC.com.
SaberUK on Dec 9, 2018 []
Full disclosure: i'm being paid to work on InspIRCd for use on the IRC.com network.
prawnsalad on June 22, 2018 [<E2><80><93>]
I'm part of LTM and starting to build up irc.com, along with founding kiwiirc.com.
#ircdocs on Freenode · GitHub
LTM/PIA and me~
Made by Daniel Oaks
LTM/PIA and IRC
Yo! My name's Daniel, or DanielOaks, and I run the ircdocs sites. I've worked at Private Internet Access / London Trust Media for a long while now! Like, three years or so. And in that time, I've been very lucky that they've let me work on IRC stuff on the side.
...
Spec nerds / devs that work for LTM/PIA:
Daniel (me)
Prawnsalad
Spec nerds / devs who’re sponsored by LTM:
Sadie (through IRC.com to work on InspIRCd)
Projects that are owned by LTM:
KiwiIRC
IRC.com
Networks that are owned by LTM:
freenode
Snoonet

IRC.com, where's the source?

As part of the KiwiIRC.com open source project this application will be open sourced as a generic multi network IRC client in the near future.

As of May 24, 2021, there is no source code but it is being distributed on Google Play: