Discord is especially popular among gamers as a chat platform. But the messenger is also increasingly establishing itself outside the computer games industry. Microsoft is now said to be interested in the platform. A sum of 10 billion US dollars is in the offing.
Like many players in the gaming industry, Discord has also benefited from the ongoing lockdown. This is because people are spending more time at home and also more time exchanging ideas digitally.
The platform, founded in 2015, says it now has more than 100 million monthly active users. They communicate with each other for up to four hours a day via Discord.
In 2020, sales climbed to 130 million U.S. dollars – in 2019, they were still around 45 million. However, according to the company’s own statements, this still leaves it far from profitable.
Nevertheless, Discord was valued at seven billion U.S. dollars as recently as December 2020 and was able to collect investor funds of 140 million U.S. dollars.
Will Discord go to the highest bidder?
Now the popular platform could change hands. As Gamesbeat reports, Discord is currently in sales talks. There are several interested companies that want to take over the chat service, Gamesbeat quotes two insiders.
According to one of the two sources, Discord is in exclusive talks with an interested party. The parties are said to be “in final negotiations about a sale.”
Microsoft apparently interested in Discord takeover
The interested party, which Gamesbeat did not name further, could be Microsoft, the New York Times and Bloomberg report.
There have been preliminary negotiations between the two companies, in which a purchase price of more than ten billion US dollars is said to have been on the table. However, a contract is not yet in sight.
According to an insider quoted by Bloomberg, however, it is more likely that Discord will seek an IPO than sell itself.
The perfect fit for Microsoft’s gaming efforts
For Microsoft, buying Discord would probably be a big win. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the tech company generated revenue of more than five billion US dollars in its gaming division for the first time. Earlier, the tech company launched a new Xbox console.
Discord would be a “natural fit” for Microsoft’s Xbox division, Joost van Dreunen, a professor of video games at New York University, told The New York Times. Microsoft has built hardware and bought software, he said, and is now “stitching it all together with a community connective tissue.”
