That's sad to hear. Where did you get that info that they are not looking into an AE inspired software? I only can find a thread from 2016.
There is no After Effects alternatives, full stop. Natron is ambitious, but it's more similar to Nuke, and also is not actively developed (or at least it needed a maintainer for quite some time so it's on the way to abandonware).
I've done several hours of search for some hypothetical non-adobe video alternative, and it simply doesn't exist somehow. If you want to do motion graphics or video effects, AE is legitimately the only way to do that.
I really hope Serif chooses to make an Affinity Video some day so I can finally cancel my Adobe account once and for all.