Discord reaches $15 billion valuation
The developer of the messenger Discord recently raised $500 million in a funding round. As a result, the company’s valuation rose to $15 billion.
Discord plans to use the funds to increase the staff, as well as to expand the functionality of the product. The investors were Dragoneer Investment Group, Coatue Management, Franklin Templeton and others.
After the next round of financing, the company’s value has more than doubled since the previous round of investment in December. Then the cost of Discord was estimated at $7 billion.
Not so long ago, Bloomberg noted that the Internet giant Microsoft was planning to buy Discord. Then the amount was announced at $12 billion. According to experts, this step would help the corporation to expand its gaming division. But then it was reported that negotiations regarding the terms of the deal have been suspended by the parties. It is likely that the developers of the messenger preferred to focus on the implementation of the initial public offering and changed their minds about selling the business.
Discord was created in 2015 by Jason Citron and Stan Wisniewski in San Francisco. Initially it was focused on gamers, so that while playing games users could exchange audio and video messages. Messenger had a feature set that was ideal for gamers, it displayed not only the nickname of the participant, but also what game he is currently in. In addition, it was possible to create a variety of communities, quickly and safely exchange messages. Discord became very popular during the pandemic, when a lot of people were locked up at home and could devote more time to video games. In addition, users were eager to communicate, joining in groups where they discussed different ideas, even the craziest ones. Their choice fell on Discord because of the high degree of data protection, which allowed not only to exchange homework without problems, but also to discuss government actions or conspiracy theories. Now the platform was not only used by gamers, it attracted many categories of people. In 2020, the messenger’s revenue was estimated at $100 million, with more than 150 million people visiting Discord every month.
Unlike other similar projects, the platform makes money not from advertising. Profits are brought by the client service Nitro, through which, for $10 per month the user can set up tags next to the nickname, upload files and videos of large size and good quality.
In order to avoid the spread of illegal ideas and cyberbullying in the messenger, Discord bought the Sentropy platform. The latter uses artificial intelligence technology to find and eliminate offensive messages and content that contains threats to other users.
