Chat App Discord Aims to Reach $1.5 Billion Valuation

Discord, a voice and video chat application, is looking to raise $50 million in another round of funding, which would make it worth $1.5 billion. The three-year-old company has propelled itself to the forefront of gaming culture by giving gamers and various other online communities a platform to interact with other like-minded users.

The chat app filed documents last week in the state of Delaware, which detailed that it intended to gather more funds to put it past the $1 billion mark. These were obtained by Cheddar reporter Alex Heath, who went on Cheddar’s Morning Bell to break the news.

“This is a significant raise because if we look at the history of Discord they started in 2015, they’ve raised a little over $100 million to date,” says Heath. “Their last valuation was at about $775 million as of last February, so after this raise is completed we’re talking a roughly $1.5 billion valuations.”

Discord has poised itself to make 2018 a monumental year. It has some of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital firms already onboard including Benchmark, SmartCapital, and Greylock Partners. The app has also been in talks with video game developers about incorporating Discord functionality right into games like Fortnite: Battle Royal. This would take it from a voice chat app to a built-in feature of some of the world’s most popular games.

Aside from Discord’s seemingly endless potential, the app has been known to foster some fringe internet groups, including alt-right activists. But even this slightly tainted past doesn’t seem to be worrying investors.

“It was for a while, and some would say still is, a place where a lot of alt-right members and even neo-Nazis had discussions,” explains Heath. “The CEO and executives have come out strongly against that and have been trying to crack down on those groups in the last few months. But that activity is clearly not deterring investors from wanting to get in on the company.”

Discord has capitalized on bringing online communities together around common interests. If its next round of funding is successful it could begin to partner with big-name video game companies to rocket itself into the mainstream.