And for the princely sum of $10 billion, no less.
Launched in 2015, the Discord platform is the brainchild of Jason Citron, who initially aimed to bring together all the existing VoIP software (Mumble, Skype or TeamSpeak for example) in a single program. At first, Discord was mainly aimed at gamers who saw it as the perfect tool to accompany their online sessions. Soon, however, it was used by other communities, such as developers, and reached an increasingly wide audience. Thus, in May 2016 shortly after raising $20 million, there is talk of over 45 million user accounts.
A figure that then continues to grow as Discord's reputation goes crescendo: there is talk of 87 million user accounts in December 2017 and 250 million in May 2019. A rise in power that has obviously not been slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic: the Discord company does not stop increasing its valuation, which is estimated, in December 2020, at more than 7 billion dollars. These figures make you dizzy and, inevitably, whet the appetite. Thus, Microsoft first confirmed its interest in Discord before rumors of a buyout offer based on $10 billion.
Today, while other Web giants seemed to be interested in Discord, the Wall Street Journal states that the Microsoft case is actually very advanced. According to the American journalists, the deal could even be concluded during the month of April and the sum of 10 billion dollars seems to be on the table. For Microsoft, this would be a new acquisition of weight after the purchase of the publisher Zenimax Media and its video game creation structures (Bethesda): it would especially be the largest acquisition of the group since the purchase of LinkedIn in 2016 ... for the sum of $ 26 billion.
