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If you’re an avid online gamer or cryptocurrency enthusiast, you’re likely familiar with the Discord messaging platform to engage with other members of those communities.
Discord has pioneered new features and functionality in app-based communication. It has attracted investments approaching $1 billion from various investors in multiple funding and secondary market rounds, including technology investment firm Dragoneer Investment Group, asset manager Fidelity Investments, Japan’s Sony, and Chinese technology company Tencent.
That raises the question: Who owns Discord? Is It a private company, or is it publicly traded?
This article examines the company’s founders and who Discord is owned by today, answering common questions about the platform.
Key Takeaways
- Discord is a US-based social networking platform used by gamers and crypto enthusiasts.
- It is getting increasingly popular with businesses to communicate with customers using voice, video, and text.
- The platform is owned by San Francisco-headquartered Discord Inc. and was founded by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy.
- As a privately held company, Discord Inc. has no legal obligation to make its ownership details public, although the co-founders are likely to be majority shareholders.
- Key investors in the company’s multiple investment rounds include Tencent, Sony, Dragoneer Investment Group, Index Ventures, Accel, Fidelity Investments, and Franklin Templeton.
What Is Discord?
Discord is a well-known mobile and desktop-based social messaging app that allows users to communicate and collaborate through text messages, voice calls, and video calls.
The platform’s user-friendly interface and continuous innovation to address users’ preferences and needs have contributed to its success, and it reportedly has more than 200 million monthly active users.
Discord is unique in the way it organizes communications. The platform enables users to create and join private virtual communities—known as servers—and create several separate channels within each server for specific discussions. This is particularly useful for organizing documentation and tutorials separately from group discussions.
The platform started as an online meeting place for gamers to come together, communicate, and socialize while playing games. It has since expanded to be used by other communities, including musicians, artists, stock market investors, and cryptocurrency traders, who share their trading strategies and enthusiasm for various crypto projects.
The basic Discord app is free to use, but the company’s business model also includes a Discord Nitro premium subscription service that provides members with access to additional features for a monthly fee. Discord also generates revenue through licensing agreements with developers and businesses that use the platform.
| Key Facts | Details |
|---|---|
| Platform Type | Mobile and desktop-based social messaging app |
| Core Features | Text messaging, voice calls, video calls |
| Monthly Active Users | Over 200 million |
| Unique Feature | Server-based communication with multiple channels |
| Primary User Groups | Originally gamers, now include musicians, artists, investors, and crypto enthusiasts |
| Business Model | Free to use with optional premium subscription (Discord Nitro) |
| Revenue Streams | Subscriptions, licensing agreements with developers and businesses |
| Targeted Uses | Community building, collaboration, sharing tutorials and documentation |
Who Are Discord’s Founders?
Who created Discord? Discord was founded by computer programmer and video game developer Jason Citron and software engineer Stanislav Vishnevskiy.
Citron is the company’s chief executive officer (CEO), and Vishnevskiy is the chief technology officer (CTO).
Prior to Discord, Citron founded OpenFeint, a social media platform for mobile games, in 2009. The platform offered a software development kit (SDK) and other tools that enabled developers to integrate social networking features into their games and distribute their titles.
OpenFeint was sold to Japanese mobile network GREE for $104 million in 2011 and discontinued at the end of 2012. Citron used some of the funds from the sale to start up the Hammer & Chisel game development studio.
Meanwhile, in October 2010, Vishnevskiy, who had also worked at OpenFeint, founded the social network and web hosting service Guildwork, which was built for gamers engaging in group activities at scale in massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI.
Hammer & Chisel initially focused on developing Fates Forever, a mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, which was released in 2014. However, when the game failed to find commercial success, Citron turned his attention to creating a new user-friendly voice chat platform for the gaming community, after he and his team members experienced frustrations with existing voice-over-IP (VOIP) tools as gamers themselves.
Citron brought Vishnevskiy onto the Hammer & Chisel team to help build the new platform, which will offer high-quality voice chat, low latency, and customizable features to make it easier for gamers to communicate.
The startup received additional funding to develop the app from YouWeb’s 9+ incubator, as well as Benchmark Capital and Tencent.
Once Discord was released to the public, some gaming-related groups on the Reddit social media platform began subreddits to post Discord links rather than IRC links, and the platform became popular among esports and LAN party gamers.
Relationships with gamers broadcasting on the Twitch streaming platform and posting in subreddit communities for the World of Warcraft and Diablo games also contributed to Discord taking off.
When Was Discord Founded?
It changed the way people used to communicate within the gaming industry. The company’s biggest shift came when it announced that it was shifting its focus exclusively from video gaming to becoming a more accessible communication platform for everyone.
Who Owns Discord Today?
Is Discord a publicly traded company? No, the platform’s parent company, Discord Inc., owns the app. As a private company, Discord’s owner is not required to disclose information about its ownership structure or individual shareholders—unlike publicly traded companies—so it has not yet released any information about who owns Discord.
As the company’s co-founders, Citron and Vishnevskiy are likely significant Discord shareholders with large stakes in the company.
In addition, the platform’s popularity and large user base have attracted interest from various institutional investors, who have likely received equity stakes in the company in exchange for funding.
- Discord has raised a total of $995.4 million over 17 rounds of series and secondary market funding, according to Crunchbase data.
- The company raised its latest financing on March 1, 2024, from a secondary market round.
- A total of 40 investors have participated in the rounds, of which 10 were lead investors.
- The most recent investors were IPOSharks and Atlas Capital.
In January 2016, WarnerMedia invested $20 million in the company to support its expansion and product improvement but later sold its equity after it was acquired by AT&T in 2017.
Discord raised $100 million in its Series G round in June 2020 to support its shift beyond the gaming niche to become a more general communication platform.
Its Series H round the following year was its largest to date, totaling $500 million. Sony Interactive Entertainment joined the round as a minority investor and agreed to incorporate Discord into PlayStation consoles.
Is Discord a Public Company?
As Discord is not a public company, no details about its shareholdings are available publicly.
Acquisition Rumors
Discord’s user base soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as more people engaged in gaming and other forms of entertainment, which they flocked to the platform to discuss in their thousands.
This attracted potential suitors, including Microsoft (MSFT), which offered a reported $10 billion to acquire Discord in December 2021. Under the terms of the acquisition offer, Discord would have operated as a standalone business within Microsoft. Co-founders Citron and Vishnevskiy, who run Discord, would continue to run the company, reporting to Microsoft’s executive vice president of gaming, Phil Spencer.
Microsoft viewed acquiring Discord as a strategic way to build on its gaming business, which it had been working on expanding. However, Discord declined the acquisition plan, opting to remain an independent company, and the deal fell through.
Prior to Microsoft’s pursuit of the company, there were other rumored potential buyers, such as Amazon (AMZN), Epic Games, and Twitter. However, the reports were unconfirmed, and the talk evidently did not progress.
Discord’s Valuation
As a privately-owned company, it is difficult to estimate Discord’s current real valuation. However, its major $500 million funding round in 2021 valued the company at that time at around $15 billion. That more than double its previous valuation of $7.3 billion from December 2020.
Discord has been rumored to launch an initial public offering (IPO) to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or NASDAQ, but it has not yet set an official date.
If it does proceed with an IPO, the company will have an official share price, shares in public circulation and a market capitalization that will determine its valuation.
The Bottom Line
Discord is a user-friendly social messaging platform that has grown in popularity over recent years. As a privately held company, information about Discord’s ownership and valuation are not publicly available.
However, it is clear from the company’s extensive financing rounds and rumored interest from potential acquirers that it is an attractive investment. If it proceeds with an expected IPO in the future, it could become a popular stock for retail and institutional investors alike.
FAQs
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References
- Discord – Funding, Financials, Valuation & Investors (Crunchbase)
