Discord Inc. owns Discord, a communication platform that was founded by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy in 2015. Despite rumors saying that Microsoft would take over the company, it is still privately held.
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Let’s explore below the top individual shareholders and the institutional shareholders of the company, as well as its current owners.
As Discord is a privately held company, information about its top individual shareholders is not publicly available. Private companies are not required to disclose information about their ownership structure or individual shareholders, and they typically keep this information confidential.
Discord is a privately owned company, and this means that it is not obligated to publicly reveal any information about its institutional shareholders. This kind of information is usually confidential for private companies. And this means it is not available through publicly accessible sources like financial reports or stock exchange filings.
Because of the size and popularity of the Discord platform, it’s no doubt that it has interest from various institutional investors. For example, private equity funds, venture capital firms, equity funds, and other massive investment firms. These investors may have funded the company in exchange for equity stakes, making them institutional shareholders.
While Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy founded Discord, the company is currently privately owned by Discord, Inc. Some of the leading investors in Discord include Sony, Tencent, Index Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity investments, and Accel.
On the following topics, we’ll explore how the company was initially founded and how much the brand is currently worth.
Stan Vishnevskiy and Jason Citron’s experience in the mobile gaming industry came in handy to help them establish Discord. Their shared vision for transforming communication for gamers was also significant in their venture. Jason and Stan had previously established and worked together at OpenFeint, a mobile gaming company, in 2008. The company was a social gaming platform that provided game developers with essential tools to build and distribute mobile games. And also connected players.
In 2011, Citron and Vishnevskiy sold OpenFeint to Japanese gaming company GREE for $104 million. After the acquisition, Citron stayed on at GREE for a while, but eventually left to start his own gaming startup called Hammer & Chisel.
Hammer & Chisel initially focused on developing a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game called Fates Forever, which was released in 2014 but failed to gain traction. Citron and his team began to pivot the company towards creating a better communication platform for gamers after they noticed that existing communication tools were not meeting the needs of the gaming community.
Vishnevskiy, who had been working on another project after leaving OpenFeint, reconnected with Citron and joined Hammer & Chisel to help build the new platform. Together, they worked on developing a voice chat app for gamers that was easy to use, had low latency, high-quality voice communication, and customizable features.
The result of their efforts was Discord, which released its beta version in 2015. It hit the industry hard and became immensely popular among gamers. The company’s success demonstrates Jason and Stan’s and also their broad understanding of the gaming industry. It also reflects their ability to recognize and solve a core problem in the market.
Discord is a privately owned company, and this means that its brand value is not revealed to the public. What’s more, estimating its exact worth is difficult. But, from its latest funding round in 2021, the company was valued at $15 billion.
At this point, it’s important to mention that the value of a brand depends on a range of factors. For example, its customer loyalty, brand recognition, financial performance, and market position. Discord is among the top communication platforms for online communities. Its loyal user base is still growing, boosting its popularity and recognition among artists, gamers, and musicians.
The current valuation of the company is not available to the general public.
Discord is a popular communication platform. It has various features and capabilities for its users. Here are some additional interesting facts about Discord.
Discord has attracted millions of registered users in the last few years. Part of this growth has been attributed to various successful funding rounds. One of its latest and largest funding rounds was in 2022, after which the company’s value hit more than $15 billion. Rumors of the company’s IPO in the recent future are rife, but the exact date is yet to be made public.
Here are some key usage statistics for Discord:
This overall trend shows that Discord has experienced considerable growth in usage and engagement over the past few years and continues to be a popular platform for online communication and collaboration.
While the number of registered users on Discord is likely to escalate, direct revenues may reduce in the coming years. This is because the platform offers a big percentage of its features (video communication, text, and VoIP) free of charge.
The company collects revenue from user subscription yearly packages. These are:
All these packages come with perks such as HD streaming, server boosters, and personalized emojis. The company’s total revenue from premium membership subscriptions in 2022 was $220 million.
During the first quarter of 2023, the company’s revenue was $55 million, and this was a drop from the previous year. Discord uses its revenue to invest in new features and improve the platform to maintain the top position in the industry.
These milestones show the significant growth and success that the company has achieved within a short period of time. The platform’s focus on user experience, community building, and innovation has made it a popular choice among diverse users and industries.
There have been some recent changes to the ownership structure of Discord, especially after its planned acquisition by Microsoft. In December 2021, Microsoft announced that it had agreed to acquire Discord for a reported $10 billion.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Discord would operate as a standalone business within Microsoft while its co-founders, Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, would continue leading the company and report to Microsoft’s executive vice president of gaming, Phil Spencer.
The acquisition by Microsoft would have been a significant milestone for Discord, which has grown rapidly since its launch in 2015, becoming a popular communication platform for gamers, creators, and communities.
The acquisition would also have been a strategic move for Microsoft — the brand had been expanding its gaming business in recent years and saw Discord as a way to further enhance its gaming ecosystem.
There were some rumors and reports of other potential suitors for Discord before Microsoft’s acquisition was announced — for example, Amazon and Epic Games. However, these reports were not confirmed, and, eventually, Microsoft emerged as the possible buyer. But things changed when Discord declined Microsoft’s acquisition plan, sending the latter back to the drawing board. Many people thought the decision was unwise.
Even so, the platform registered thousands of new members during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also held acquisition discussions with other companies like Twitter. Nonetheless, these talks never progressed.
Discord has transformed into a popular communication platform for gamers, creators, and communities. Besides its voice chat, the platform has other features, which are text chat, video chat, and screen sharing. It also has other communication tools, and accommodates over 140 million monthly active users, and 56 million daily active users as of December 2020.
The brand’s success can be attributed to its user-friendly design, low latency, high-quality voice communication, and customizable features. Its co-founders have a robust background in the mobile gaming industry, and were able to identify and solve a core problem in the market with the development of the company.
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