Who owns Discord and how much does companies like Tencent and Sony own? Here's everything we know so far about Discord's ownership.
By Branko Gapo
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You might have asked yourself who founded Discord and who currently owns the company. We will explore the story of Discord’s ownership in this article.
We cannot know who the owner is with certainty because information on this topic is private.
However, by exploring Discord’s funding rounds and looking at its founders, we might at least get some idea of who the majority shareholder is.
The origins of Discord started with Jason Citron after he created OpenFeint, a similar social platform for gamers that was later sold to GREE. After OpenFeint’s sale in 2012, Jason Citron founded a game development company called Hammer & Chisel, Inc.
Within a couple of years, Hammer & Chisel, Inc. abandoned the idea of developing games and redirected their resources to Discord, which was released to the public in 2015. Hammer & Chisel, Inc. is now known as Discord Inc.
Jason Citron is thus the founder of Discord and its current CEO. He likely still has a percentage of shares of Discord.
Stanislav Vishnevskiy
Jason Citron was not alone on his journey of founding Discord Inc. Stan Vishnevskiy was his co-founder and is also Discord’s current CTO.
The collaboration between Jason and Stan has been a huge part of Discord reaching its current heights.
Unfortunately, there is no publicly accessible information on how many Discord shares Stan owns. However, as a co-founder, it’s safe to assume that he still has a large percentage.
Lead Investors
To reach its level of success so quickly, Discord has been the subject of several funding rounds throughout the years, with each round raking in millions and helping Discord reach an organization valuation of more than $15 billion.
With each of these investments, the investors can acquire a large (or small) share of ownership over Discord.
Here are all the investors leading those funding rounds:
Dragoneer Investment Group – Lead investors of the September 16, 2021 Series H funding round. Dragoneer Investment Group, along with several other investors, raised as much as $500 million.
Sony Interactive Entertainment – $3.3 million was raised during the secondary market funding round in 2021 with Sony as a lead investor.
Greenoaks – Lead investor for a $100 million Series H funding round in 2020 and one in 2018 with $150 million funding.
Index Ventures – Raised over $150 million as lead investors in two different funding rounds. One in 2017 and another in 2020.
Greylock– Led one of the earliest funding rounds for Discord in 2016 together with Spark Capital.
Spark Capital– Partnered with Greylock as a lead investor for the 2016 $20 million funding round.
Here’s a video of what Jason Citron had to say about the $500 million funding round.
Other Investors
Naturally, funding rounds are backed by multiple investors. These other investors also receive a share of Discord’s ownership.
As you can see, Discord has been through a lot of funding rounds. However, most of the information regarding the company’s ownership is private.
It could be that some of the lead investors, such as Dragoneer Investment Group, have become Discord’s majority shareholders. However, it is equally possible that the company’s founders have retained ownership.
The platform is owned by Discord Inc. and is the brainchild of Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy. Discord Inc. is a privately held company with the co-founders likely to be majority owners. Clues to Discord's ownership structure can also be found by exploring the company's investors.
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.
They have been invested in by several venture capital firms, as well as Chinese company Tencent, which has sparked rumors that Discord is selling user data to Tencent or to China. However, Tencent does not own Discord in any way.
Discord is privately held, and you cannot buy Discord stock on the open market. You may be able to invest in Discord shares in pre-IPO marketplaces. There may be high minimum purchase requirements and investor qualifications. Pre-IPO stock purchases can be very profitable but carry a number of real risks.
Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order Thursday banning Chinese-owned company Tencent Holding from devices used by state government agencies, employees and contractors. Tencent, which owns the popular chat app WeChat, the website Discord and various game companies, is used by 1.3 billion people across the world.
Jason Citron: The Relentless Builder of Discord. Read more about Jason Citron, an alumnus of Full Sail University who became a relentless builder founding Discord, which conquered the chat app market by storm. This is some text inside of a div block.
Jason Citron founded Discord in 2015, after previously having founded OpenFeint, another social gaming platform. In 2016, Discord raised $20 million in funding; this included an investment from WarnerMedia. Since then, WarnerMedia Investment Group has been shut down and acquired by ATT.
Discord revenue streams consist of: Subscription fees from Discord Nitro Classic and Discord Nitro. Sales from e-commerce platform. Distribution fees from the Discord Store.
Microsoft is in talks to acquire Discord, a popular video-game chat community. Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
Microsoft reportedly made a $10 billion bid for Discord, and while Discord CEO and co-founder Jason Citron can't talk about it, he tells CNBC that the company received multiple offers. Discord ranked No. 3 on the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
Unfortunately, Discord will not work in China. However, you can unblock Discord in China with the help of a VPN, we reveal how and the best VPNs for the job.
The number of people who use Discord monthly has rapidly expanded from 10 million in 2017 to an estimated 196.2 million users this year. It shows a massive growth of 186.2 million in six years. In 2021, Discord's monthly active users reached 140 million, an increase of 40 million or 40% from the previous year.
Discord is now used by everyone from local hiking clubs, to art communities, to study groups. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Servers are the main communities on Discord, often focused on a single game or topic. Anyone on the app can create a server upon signup. Servers can be private and require an invitation to join, or public, which anyone can take part in. Servers are broken up into text channels and voice channels.
Discord is an incredibly secure platform, but with the wrong permissions you can open your server up to unnecessary risks. Here are a few easy points that are sometimes missed: It's generally best to set permissions for a whole category instead of on every individual channel.
Jason Citron is a 37-year-old world-famous brain behind the widely used social platform for gamers. He was born on the 21st of September 1987 and started his entrepreneurial journey from a young age. According to Discord's company page, he is the company's co-founder.
Ma Huateng (also known as Pony Ma) chairs Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings. Tencent's popular social messaging app WeChat has 1.3 billion users.
Meanwhile, Discord does not appear to be wildly profitable. That's partly by design. The company relies mostly on optional premium subscriptions (the majority of features are available free) and has eschewed potentially more lucrative opportunities to sell ads or user data.
It could have been one of the biggest business blunders of the pandemic. In early 2021, Discord spurned a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft, an eye-popping sum for a nine-year-old social communications startup whose app saw a tsunami of new users during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Common Sense Media also recommends that Discord users be at least 13 due to its open chat. Because it's all user-generated, there's the potential for plenty of inappropriate content, like swearing and graphic language and images (though it's entirely possible to belong to a group that forbids these).
However, Discord belongs to the same family as that of Slack — only that Discord is heavily used by gamers to communicate with one another and within their respective communities. But that's not to say gamers don't use Slack or businessmen don't use Discord.
Microsoft signaled its interest in acquiring a social media company last year when it was in talks to buy TikTok for up to $30 billion. Buying Discord would give Microsoft access to 140 million monthly users and tie in nicely with its Xbox business.
Sources told Bloomberg that Discord rejected Microsoft's bids for purchase in the hopes it would achieve a public listing on the stock market. The chat service has been courted for purchase by other companies such as Twitter, Epic, and Amazon as well.
When / If Microsoft acquires Discord, one of the first things they will do is assign an engagement specialist to the team. That analyst will look for and implement a bunch of tricks to get Discord users to open Discord more, read more messages, and click on more links.
How Much Money Do I Get to Keep from Each Subscription? Good news: It's a 90/10 split! This means you, the creator, get to keep 90% of each monthly Server Subscription you sell, minus some small processing fees for legal's sake.
Is Discord safe? Some of the servers on Discord are themed around adult topics that might not be suitable for your child. There are also reports of harmful and illegal content being shared on the platform. Anyone over the age of 13 can join public servers on Discord.
These guidelines are intended for law enforcement authorities seeking information/records about Discord users. Discord provides user information to law enforcement when we are in receipt of enforceable legal process.
They're typically used for the community to ask and answer questions, share jokes and memes, and make conversation without having to use a microphone. A new Discord server will start with a General channel, but admins can create multiple channels for specific reasons.
This is a pretty simple question: It's Slack, which came out in 2013, whereas Discord came out in 2015. But you probably want more information about the two, and how they compare.
Discord allows users to create up to 500 channels per server. This includes voice and text channels, as well as, categories. This limit is designed to ensure that servers remain organized and easy to navigate.
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