One of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched private companies appears to be lining up for an IPO as early as March. Global communications platform Discord has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as the lead underwriters and filed IPO paperwork with the SEC on a confidential basis.
Discord was founded in 2015 by Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy, who both had backgrounds in social gaming platforms. The company emerged from an unexpected pivot when Citron’s game development studio, Hammer & Chisel, discovered that the internal communication tool they built in 2014 for their failed mobile game, Fates Forever, had far more potential than the game itself. Citron noticed how effectively the game’s built-in voice and text chat functioned, particularly compared to the frustrating experience gamers had with existing tools like Skype and TeamSpeak. The company then made a decisive pivot in 2015, laying off a third of its workforce and transitioning entirely to what would become Discord.
Discord’s (DSCD) growth trajectory has been stunning, expanding from 10 million monthly users in 2016 to 150 million by 2019 and reaching approximately 200 million by early 2025. The platform achieved this while maintaining a freemium model that keeps core features free for unlimited users, differentiating itself from enterprise communication tools like Slack that charge per seat. Discord’s (DSCD) revenue has grown from $45 million in 2019 to an estimated $725 million by the end of 2024. Notably, the company now reports more than 200 million monthly active users globally, making it one of the largest real‑time communication platforms outside traditional social networks.
Looking forward, Discord’s (DSCD) expansion into non-gaming communities, enhanced Activities features, and new monetization through in-app purchases for embedded applications signal a strategy of broadening the business. The platform’s pseudonymous nature and community-driven structure, while appealing to users across gaming, crypto, entertainment, and financial groups seeking privacy and autonomy, also create some moderation challenges that have drawn some regulatory scrutiny.
For investors, Discord’s (DSCD) strong community-first reputation with users is a positive and could increase retail interest in the IPO; however, the company’s history of relatively low average revenue per user and operating losses will be a concern.
Strategic investors in Discord (DSCD) include Tencent (TCEHY) and Sony (SONY). Potential competitors as Discord (DSCD) continues to grow include Telegram, Reddit (RDDT), Slack (CRM), Skype, Twitch (AMZN), Facebook Groups (META), WhatsApp (META), and even Microsoft (MSFT) through the Teams and Skype businesses.