It has come to the light of day that Discord is exploring a sale to a prospective buyer for the hefty price tag of $10 billion. The chat and communications platform has grown massively in recent years and is extremely popular with gamers, as well as many other groups. It still remained to be seen who the probable suiters of the sale were, and now Bloomberg reports that Microsoft may snap up the platform.
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The report doesn’t detail the inner workings of the deal, or even whether it is close to completion. Another source has claimed that Discord is more likely to file for a public offering rather than a sale.
Discord allows communication through video, voice and text. It adds extra social features like collaborative ‘servers’ dedicated to a specific topic or group of people. Since the onset of the pandemic it has seen a major influx of users, expanding its reach far beyond the gamer-centric focus it had until recently. It has more than 100 million active monthly users at the moment.
We’ll see soon if these reports are true, but Microsoft as a buyer of Discord is an interesting proposition. It is trying to become the dominant force in communications platforms and is competing with its own products like Skype, Skype Business and Microsoft Teams. Discord could be another feather in its bow as it takes on the likes of Slack and Zoom. It could also fit in nicely with its Xbox Live community if it doubles down on the gaming angle.
“Microsoft possibly acquiring Discord makes a lot of sense as it continues to reshape its gaming business more toward software and services,” said Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Matthew Kanterman. “There’s a big opportunity to bundle Discord’s premium offering, Nitro, into the Game Pass service to drive more subscriptions from the last reported 18 million.”
