https://archive.is/2025.03.06-011758/https://www.ft.com/content/4ab9efe7-36bc-44ff-b2cd-06eb2c38203a
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Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing
US group has sought to broaden its appeal to a mass audience
Video game developer Jason Citron founded Discord in 2015 © Kimberly White/Getty Images/TechCrunch
Discord is in early talks with banks about a public listing, according to people familiar with the matter, in a sign of a possible revival in the sluggish US IPO market.
Founded in 2015 by video game developer Jason Citron, Discord offers multi-person voice, video and text-based spaces to its 200mn global monthly active users.
The San Francisco gaming chat platform was considering listing as early as 2021, according to people familiar with the matter. However, many technology companies and investors have put their IPO plans on hold due to political and market uncertainty.
That is expected to change this year as interest rates have fallen and US President Donald Trump has laid out a more tech-friendly regulatory agenda.
Discord was last valued at about $15bn in a 2021 fundraising, according to PitchBook. The company’s revived IPO plans remain subject to change, one of the people said.
“We understand there is a lot of interest around Discord’s future plans, but we do not comment on rumours or speculation,” the company said in a statement shared with the Financial Times. “Our focus remains on delivering the best possible experience for our users and building a strong, sustainable business.”
CoreWeave, an artificial intelligence cloud computing provider, filed for a New York IPO this month that would raise about $4bn and value the group at more than $35bn, which could make it the largest tech flotation of the year.
A series of valuable start-ups, including fintech groups Stripe and Chime and data platform Databricks that had been forced to stay private far longer than planned are expected to reignite plans to list their shares.
Discord initially found popularity among gamers, as well as retail trading and cryptocurrency communities, but has since sought to broaden its appeal to a mass audience.
The company has largely shunned advertising, in contrast to larger rivals such as Meta, X and Reddit, in favour of offering its users premium features for a fee.
In 2021, it attracted interest from multiple Big Tech groups, rebuffing a $12bn takeover bid from Microsoft. The recent IPO plans were first reported by The New York Times.
Don’t worry, once it goes public it will get worse and easier to replace
It will still have the social platform inertia that keeps many people on Twitter despite wanting to leave. If enough of the other people you want to talk to are there, what good is leaving?
In the case of communities, it’s even worse: you can possibly operate multiple platforms as an individual, but a community splitting its conversations across two platforms is now two communities. The best you can hope for is that most of the active members on the old (also) join the new and eventually bring their activity with them, but that relies on a lot of individual decisions.
Oh I fully get you, and it is a problem, but at least enough of the people I know consider discord’s behaviour problematic already that it would be possible to get things rolling with migrating smaller communities and friends
The big communities though? Yeah no. There’s a reason Facebook is still used, it’s used a lot for organizing things