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Discord attracted investment to develop functionality
American company Discord held another round of financing, during which it received an investment of $500 million. Thanks to this, the valuation of the platform has grown to 15 billion dollars. Investors were such companies as Fidelity Management & Research, Dragoneer Investment Group and others.
According to the head of Discord, the funds raised will be used to develop the messenger, expand its functionality, as well as to increase the number of employees. It should be noted that the company’s investors are already Benchmark, Spark Capital and others. The previous round of funding brought Discord about $600 million. It took place last year, and at the end of it, the company was valued at $7 billion. The new investments have more than doubled the value of the platform.
Discord was created by programmers Jason Citron and Stan Wisniewski in 2015 in San Francisco. The messenger was originally developed for gamers to be able to communicate with each other while playing games. For a long time, they were the only audience of the platform, which can be clearly seen in the correlation of user growth with the release of popular games, such as Fortnite from Epic Games.
Messenger became widely known during the pandemic, when people all over the world sat at home and began to organize their leisure time. Many began to pass the time by playing video games and communicating virtually. Discord is a free service, but there are also various plans for paid subscriptions, ranging from $10 a month to $100 a year. They allow users to send high-quality files and videos. In the free option, users can also exchange video and audio messages and send images. Another advantage of Discord is the ability to create closed groups, which has become relevant for schoolchildren and students, as well as people united by their interests.
Now the number of active users is more than 150 million people per month. This has made Discord an attractive option for many large companies. Not so long ago, Microsoft Corporation expressed its desire to purchase the platform for the development of its gaming direction. However, after negotiations, the founders of Discord refused the Internet giant. According to them, they decided to focus on the IPO. In addition to Microsoft, social network Twitter has also been once interested in the conditions of purchase of the company, game studio Epic Games and Amazon is also looking for an opportunity to buy the platform. However, all interested Discord refused, choosing their own way of doing business. The company is actively developing, raising funds and plans to go public, but when it will be – is still unknown.