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.
I highly disagree. I am in a group chat on XMPP that uses a IRC bridge and many of the users in that group chat are using that bridge.
And now to other stuff that I want to mention related to the discussion in this thread.
Services that does not meet modern standards like Mumble and XMPP, are not widly used because they “lack many important features”. I say “bah, humbug” to that!
If MSN and ICQ worked flawlessly when those services was active, Mumble and XMPP works very well today, too. People are too spoiled by today’s technology.
Here’s an example.
I use my self-hosted Jitsi Meet server when communicating with people that refuses to talk to me unless there’s video calls and screen sharing. Otherwise, I gladly use Mumble 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, every year! And for file sharing other than images? XMPP, baby!
A friend of mine invited a Discord loving person to my Jitsi Meet server few weeks ago. He/she said “it looks just like Discord, I’m sold!” My friend (also a Discord lover) agreed and does not hesitate for 1 second to join me on Jitsi Meet. My friend’s Discord friend said he/she gladly join us more times.
I’m happy you are able to find niche use cases for it, but that’s obviously not what I’m talking about.
The fact of the matter is this: if I want to engage with any of the hundreds of broad communities I frequent, I am not able to do that on IRC anymore. They are just not there.
Last time I used IRC (which was 1-3 years ago), I found over 4 servers that each had over 15 users. And since I am communicating with 5+ IRC users through XMPP, IRC is not dead. It’s more dead today compared to 20 years ago, yes, but it is not dead-dead.
It really looks like you’re being intentionally obtuse here.
I’m in hundreds of discord servers, most of which have 10,000 to 300,000 thousand users each.
I do still use IRC, and I rarely find a server with more than 1000 users, most of which are bots, or users who only send bot commands. A typical ‘active’ channel has less than 10 active chatters over a week. IRC is dead.
No, I’m not. All I am saying is that people are still using IRC. IRC is therefore not dead. But if you want to compare Discord with IRC, then yes, IRC is dead. But not dead-dead since people are still using it and can still recover. I know people that wants to start using IRC again.
Do you follow what I mean now?