Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing
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https://archive.is/2025.03.06-011758/https://www.ft.com/content/4ab9efe7-36bc-44ff-b2cd-06eb2c38203a
::: spoiler Tap for article
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/TechCrunchDiscord 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.
:::It was nice while it lasted.
Back to Ventrillo I guess...
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I was trying to make a joke
Coldside was just emplifying your joke
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I hate that everyone uses discord. Why can't we use IRC which is obviously better and uses a tiny fraction of the system resources that discord uses?
Reaction emojis, threads, screen sharing, and voice chat. IRC has none of these features. Better to get on the Matrix train
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https://archive.is/2025.03.06-011758/https://www.ft.com/content/4ab9efe7-36bc-44ff-b2cd-06eb2c38203a
::: spoiler Tap for article
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/TechCrunchDiscord 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.
:::Enshittifcation imminent
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Reaction emojis, threads, screen sharing, and voice chat. IRC has none of these features. Better to get on the Matrix train
Matrix is so bad though. Slow, sometimes just doesn't load, bridges are crap... Why would I want to switch to it?
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Enshittifcation imminent
Can it be any more enshitified tho?
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I hate that everyone uses discord. Why can't we use IRC which is obviously better and uses a tiny fraction of the system resources that discord uses?
Discord was great when it had a goal to be a connection point for gaming parties but then they got greedy.
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looks like me and the boys are going back to teamspeak
teamspeak and skype was the beginning until discord came in my country. Way better for voice over chatting.
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Matrix is so bad though. Slow, sometimes just doesn't load, bridges are crap... Why would I want to switch to it?
Do you have an alternative to suggest or are you just here to whine?
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Do you have an alternative to suggest or are you just here to whine?
"But I don't want to eat the moldy cabbage on the ground outside!"
"Okay, do you have an alternative, or are you just gonna whine? Eat up!"
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https://archive.is/2025.03.06-011758/https://www.ft.com/content/4ab9efe7-36bc-44ff-b2cd-06eb2c38203a
::: spoiler Tap for article
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/TechCrunchDiscord 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.
:::Can anyone with knowledge on business explain why these companies keep going public other than the simple fact of money?
I feel like everytime a company does they go full throttle into making shareholders money and lose sight of their original company. Honestly I assumed discord was already public based on some of their monetary features that are overpriced lol.
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Coldside was just emplifying your joke
What? Its evolving!
Accelerate turned into exelerate!
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Can anyone with knowledge on business explain why these companies keep going public other than the simple fact of money?
I feel like everytime a company does they go full throttle into making shareholders money and lose sight of their original company. Honestly I assumed discord was already public based on some of their monetary features that are overpriced lol.
It’s the path for the startup industry to rewards the venture capitalist investor basically either IPO by going public or M&A by being bought (like instagram by meta).
Here some more info on the different startup stages
https://www.latitud.com/blog/stages-of-a-startup -
Do you have an alternative to suggest or are you just here to whine?
Honestly if Discord went away I'd switch to posting notes on a cork board on the wall before I switched to Matrix in its current state.
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Enshittifcation imminent
It's already pretty shitty to be fair
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Can it be any more enshitified tho?
Oh, it can get a lot worse
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I hate that everyone uses discord. Why can't we use IRC which is obviously better and uses a tiny fraction of the system resources that discord uses?
Because I don't care to set up a bot that monitors what is being said while I'm offline. Matrix is actually better, though
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I know they had a terrible redesign last year and then it went all terribly down hill
They've been working on the redesign for awhile now, but the version everyone's used to (Teamspeak 3) still works perfectly fine. TS3 clients can connect to new Teamspeak servers, and new Teamspeak clients can connect to old teamspeak servers, just without the new features like screen share
My group still uses TS3 on a daily basis on a self hosted server
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Matrix does not support custom emojis, which are the killer feature of Discord.
[Buy Turbo to unlock on all servers]
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Jesus fucking Christ, can I not just enjoy one thing in my life without it eventually turning adversarial?
No, not until you embrace open source software. It was always going to be enshittified. Just a matter of time
