Discord gets $500 million investment for new features

Chat platform Discord has received $500 million in investments. A company spokesperson announced this. Discord reports that it will use that amount to invest in “new features and tools.”

What features and tools the company has in mind, the spokesperson did not tell Bloomberg. According to the news site, with this $500 million investment, the popular chat service would now be worth about $15 billion. The platform itself refuses to make any statements about this.

Discord is said to be in talks with Microsoft about a possible acquisition. According to several sources, it would have involved an amount of around 12 billion dollars. At the beginning of this year, Discord would have turned down that offer.

Discord was founded in 2015 as a platform to communicate with friends while playing online. The intention was to make a more user-friendly version of Skype and Teamspeak. Keeping the delay to a minimum was an important goal for the founders because this would be necessary for a smooth gaming experience. Meanwhile, Discord wants to be more than a gaming platform. For example, Discord now has an average of 150 million monthly users and in 2020 had a turnover of about 130 million dollars, mainly from subscriptions. Despite this, the company would not yet be profitable, partly because of the lack of advertisements.