You may have wondered who founded Discord and who is the current owner of the company. We will explore the history of Discord ownership in this article.
We cannot know for sure who owns it because information on this subject is private.
However, by exploring Discord's funding rounds and looking at its founders, we might at least get an idea of who the majority shareholder is.mLet's dive in.
Jason citron
Discord's origins began with Jason Citron after he created OpenFeint, a similar social platform for gamers that was later sold to GREE. After the sale of OpenFeint, in 2012, Jason Citron founded a game development company called Hammer & Chisel, Inc.
Within a couple of years, Hammer & Chisel, Inc. abandoned the idea of developing games and redirected its resources to Discord, which was released to the public in 2015. Hammer & Chisel, Inc. is now known as Discord Inc.
Jason Citron is, therefore, the founder of Discord and its current CEO. You probably still have a percentage of Discord shares.
Stanislav Vishnevsky
Jason Citron was not alone in his journey of founding Discord Inc. Stan Vishnevskiy was his co-founder and is also the current CTO of Discord.
The collaboration between Jason and Stan has been a big part of Discord reaching its current heights.
Unfortunately, there is no publicly accessible information on how many shares of Discord Stan owns. However, as a co-founder, it's safe to assume that he still has a large percentage.
Main investors
In order to reach its level of success so quickly, Discord platform has been the subject of several rounds of funding over the years, with each round raising millions and helping Discord achieve an organization valuation of over €15 billion.
With each of these investments, investors can acquire a large (or small) ownership stake in Discord.
Here are all the investors leading those funding rounds:
- Dragoneer Investment Group – Lead investors in the Series H funding round on September 16, 2021. Dragoneer Investment Group, along with several other investors, raised up to €500 million.
- Sony Interactive Entertainment: €3.3 million raised during secondary market funding round in 2021 with Sony as lead investor.
- Greenoaks: lead investor for a €100 million Series H financing round in 2020 and another in 2018 with €150 million financing.
- Index Ventures – Raised over €150 million as lead investors in two different funding rounds. One in 2017 and another in 2020.
- Greylock – Led one of Discord's first rounds of funding in 2016 together with Spark Capital.
- Spark Capital – Partnered with Greylock as lead investor for the 2016 €20 million funding round.
Other investors
Funding rounds are naturally backed by multiple investors. These other investors also receive a piece of Discord ownership.
Conclusion
As you can see, Discord has been through many rounds of funding. However, most of the information about company ownership is private.
It could be that some of the major investors, like Dragoneer Investment Group, have become the majority shareholders of Discord. However, it is just as possible that the founders of the company retained ownership.