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.
Jesus fucking Christ, can I not just enjoy one thing in my life without it eventually turning adversarial?
Look for the companies that lead by example. Valve comes to mind. But there’s small businesses out there that do as well.
One of the reason people here are so insistent about free and open source software is so that you can enjoy things indefinitely.
But the problem I keep running into is getting my friends to switch. They're not very tech literate as they came from console gaming. I could try to educate them but the response I usually get is "why would I switch to something that might not work when this already works perfectly fine?" And I can't really argue with it. It's just not even an issue for them.
I don't know why people trusted Discord, it's one of the worst platforms and I say this while I use it because I had to settle for that (friends) like I had to settle for WhatsApp (family and work)
Irc was better for chat, ventilo and mumble better for audio, and matrix is pretty much the same but better. Discord sucks like Twitter did and I can't wait for it to go away. And forums are a better platform for help and documentation.
Thank God I convinced my fiancee to move our VCs to Wire, away from WhatsApp and Discord.
I think it's less about trusting Discord and more about not giving a shit. It does the thing they want it to do and that's the extent of their consideration. It's the reason why everyone still uses Windows even though it's basically spyware at this point. Talking to my friends about it is like talking to a brick wall and they just check out of the conversation.
Discord does exactly one thing not entirely shittily. It puts all those features in one place. It gets beat out in any one feature, but you can run an entire community within a Discord for free. You shouldn't because it's terrible at most of that and mediocre at the rest, but it's free and just good enough if you bludgeon it into shape with tools and bots and stuff.
It's free because you're the product
Wonder how long this will last. Bet they are burning angel investors money up to now, going public is the first step towards having to become profitable.
The best part about discord is the streaming feature. So far I haven’t been able to find a replacement for that.
Dude i am so glad. Discord was always a cancer, i hope this will spell the beginning of the end of discord. Its the number one biggest offender in terms of limiting access to information on the internet right now. It needs to die.
The number of times I've been directed to a useless discord chat while looking for help on a topic is infuriating. Can't wait for this shit to stop.
It also has plenty of utility for non-information-storing purposes. It's more of a cultural issue than an issue with the tool.
Besides, wouldn't it take all the information there to its grave as well, making its death a net information loss? After all, information confined it is still information stored somewhere, just not as easily accessible directly from the Web.
Information that cant be indexed by a search engine is completely worthless to anyone looking for answers. It might aswell not be there.
Maybe the search engines should start crawling and indexing discord
Discord blocks all attempts at crawling their "public" servers
😐
It would probably take a lot of information to its grave, but the more known "servers" would probably get crawled by archive teams.
Also - assuming Discord wouldn't be replaced by something equally closed off from easy public access - all new information would be easier to access.
When Discord started, they marketed it primarily as a voice chat software for gaming. I remember them marketing it as "superior audio quality to TeamSpeak" or similar wording (which by the way wasn't the case). It obviously has chat, video chat and screen sharing conveniently built in which TeamSpeak is only starting to add now in 2025 with the TS6 beta (they seem kind of lost atm).
I always preferred the decentralized nature of TeamSpeak and Mumble though and at least from my own experience, TS tends to work better with fewer connection issues and better autogain and voice leveling.
I don't like the fact that most people happily gave up decentralized voice chat for a centralized alternative and we still use TeamSpeak in most of my circles to this day.
Good, that will teach people to use such a shit platform to store "important" information. I hope tons of apps and programs and games crash and burn with it so the lesson sticks.
No, not until you embrace open source software. It was always going to be enshittified. Just a matter of time
I've already switched to Linux. The problem I have with this is that all my friends, a Discord server of around 20 people, are not going to be willing to switch. It's been the way we have stayed in contact for the past 5 years.
"No. Fuck you. Pay me. Now pay me more. Now enjoy ads. Pay me again. We're now introducing fees associated with the privilege of paying me. So pay that while paying me."
-- approximately everything
I have bad news for you, it was adversarial from the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvNkdAggUGU
You enjoy discord???
I used to. It's entirely too easy of a program to use.
Man, it's one of the worst UI I ever had the displeasure to use...
I came from skype so my bar was already pretty low. I'm not defending Discord, by the way. I've just been using it to talk to my friends for years because they all had Discord and it was convenient.