Who owns Discord?

Discord is a communication platform used by gamers but also by businesses, communities, and individuals for voice, video, and text chat. 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.
Some of the key Discord investors across multiple successful funding rounds include Tencent, Sony, Dragoneer Investment Group, Index Ventures, Accel, Fidelity Investments, and Franklin Templeton.

Background

Discord is a popular communication platform used by gamers but also increasingly by businesses, communities, and individuals for voice, video, and text chat. The platform is owned by Discord Inc. and is the brainchild of Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy.

Discord enables users to create and join servers – akin to virtual communities – and also channels within those servers for specific discussions.

Discord Inc. is a privately held company despite rumors around a potential takeover from Microsoft. Nevertheless, clues to Discord’s ownership structure can be found by exploring the company’s key personnel and successful funding rounds in more detail.

Here’s what you need to know about the company’s owners.

Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy

As co-founders of the company, Citron and Vishnevskiy likely own a sizeable portion of the company. Citron is the current CEO who also founded the social platform OpenFeint, which was later sold to Japanese mobile network GREE for $104 million in 2011. Some of these funds were then used to found the game development studio Hammer & Chisel.

Vishnevsky is also an entrepreneur who founded the social network and web-hosting service Guildwork. The platform was primarily used to facilitate group activities at scale within MMORPGs (massively multiplayer role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft. Vishnevsky currently serves as Discord’s CTO.

Funding round investors

Discord’s ability to grow to 350 million registered users in seven years is at least partly due to several successful funding rounds. The company’s latest funding round in 2022 saw it valued at over $15 billion, and according to some, has aspirations to hold an IPO.

Some of these investors are listed below.

Early funding

Early on, Hammer & Chisel secured seed funding to develop Discord from YouWeb’s 9+ incubator in addition to other early investors such as Accel, TWI, and IDG.

A second round of funding took place later in 2015 with Tencent and Silicon Valley VC firm Benchmark capital taking part. Soon after, in January 2016, WarnerMedia made a $20 million investment but later sold its equity after it was acquired by AT&T.

Series F and Series G

Greenoaks Capital led a $150 million A Series F funding round in December 2018. Also participating were Tencent, Firstmark, IVP, Index Ventures, and Technology Opportunity Partners. Around this time, Discord reportedly walked away from an acquisition deal with Microsoft to remain an independent company.

This was followed by a $100 million Series G round in June 2020 to coincide with Discord’s shift toward a more general-purpose communication platform. VC firm Index Ventures was once again involved.

Series H

Discord’s Series H funding round of September 2021 is the company’s most significant to date. The $500 million round was led by growth-oriented investment firm Dragoneer Investment Group and also involved Baillie Gifford, Coatue Management, Fidelity Investments, and Franklin Templeton.

The round also included a minority investment from Sony Interactive Entertainment after the two companies agreed to incorporate Discord into PlayStation consoles.