Discord Upcoming IPO: Gaming up a public market debut

After several years of speculation, social media/communications app Discord, which primarily serves gaming consumers, appears to have taken a concrete step toward going public. Bloomberg reported that the company confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO on January 6, 2026, although that doesn't mean the company will ultimately decide to move forward with one.⁶ Discord is reportedly working with Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as advisors for the potential IPO, as Bloomberg reported in March 2025.

The filing follows a series of milestones positioning Discord for a public debut, including a leadership transition in April 2025 that brought in Humam Sakhnini (former vice chairman at Activision Blizzard) as CEO.⁷ Key details such as pricing and a listing date remain unconfirmed.⁸

For eligible investors interested in accessing Discord shares before a potential IPO, accredited investors may be able to buy shares through a private marketplace such as Forge, subject to availability and applicable eligibility criteria.

Discord: Company background

Discord was launched in 2015 by co-founders Jason Citron and Stanislav Vishnevskiy, but its roots stretch back to 2012. Citron previously started a video game studio that Vishnevskiy soon joined, but they decided to create Discord due to frustration over available options for talking to other gamers while playing online. They took some of the voice chat, text chat and forum features from a game they previously launched (Fates Forever) to create Discord.⁹

The company is based in San Francisco and says it has over 200 million monthly active users.¹⁰ While it has gone through some pivots over the years, it has returned to primarily serving the gaming community,¹¹ with features such as text, voice and video chat on mobile, desktop and through some gaming consoles.

A social network for gaming

While there are many other apps that can be used to communicate with friends and interact with new people online, Discord has found widespread success while focusing on a more distinct community — gamers.

That's not to say that gaming is a small industry by any means; in fact, gaming generates nearly $200 billion in revenue annually, which is more than the music and movie industries combined.¹² Still, Discord's focus on gamers is narrower than some other social networks like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, which are mass market platforms.

Discord also differs from other social networks in the sense that it's more about direct communication among groups in private spaces, called servers,¹³ rather than the more open sharing of content for others to discover on other social networks.

That said, Discord does have discovery features where users can find new communities, but that still largely involves joining groups in which you can then engage in chats, more like you're in a text message thread or WhatsApp group, rather than browsing someone's TikTok feed.

This communication focus also means that Discord has some overlap with videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, but instead of being a general-purpose tool used for specific meeting times, Discord is structured as more of an open-ended conversation tool for specific communities, and it can involve asynchronous conversations too. In that sense, Discord also resembles some other community-focused apps like Slack or Telegram, but Discord is more specifically built to support communication between gamers, such as by enabling live streaming while chatting.

However, Discord is not exclusively for gamers. Anyone who wants to chat with other like-minded folks might start a Discord server, such as students in a study group or an influencer who wants to create a space for fans to chat with them and each other. Businesses might also use Discord, such as if a conference host wants to facilitate conversations among attendees within the app.

Although Discord tried to expand to wider audiences like these after the app took off during the pandemic,¹⁴ it decided in 2024 to return to focus primarily on the gaming community.¹⁵

Still, Discord remains widely popular and the company has been finding some success in monetizing its user base. The latest revenue data from 2023 shows that Discord grew its revenue to $575 million, up from $135 million in 2020. Most of Discord's revenue comes from its subscription service, Discord Nitro, which offers premium features such as a larger emoji library, allowing for large file uploads and more.¹⁶

However, Discord's valuation has fluctuated since the pandemic, as we'll examine more below. It remains to be seen how prospective IPO investors might evaluate Discord's potential to further monetize its user base and how that might affect its valuation if and when it goes public.

Discord IPO date and timeline

Discord has been the subject of IPO speculation for several years. In 2021, the company hired its first CFO, Tomasz Marcinkowski, who previously helped take Pinterest public.¹⁷ While that move was reportedly one of the first steps toward an IPO, former CEO Citron said around that time that he wasn't thinking about going public.¹⁸

Shortly thereafter, Discord ended talks about a potential sale to Microsoft for at least $10 billion, with the company reportedly focusing on an IPO that could come sometime later.¹⁹ The following year, in 2022, Discord reportedly explored going public via a direct listing,²⁰ although that did not come to fruition.

In 2024, speculation picked up again when former CEO Citron told Bloomberg that the company would probably go public at some point.²¹ Then in March 2025, Bloomberg reported that Discord had engaged Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for an IPO that could happen as soon as that year, although the specific plans were somewhat up in the air.²²

In April 2025, Discord announced that co-founder Citron was stepping down but would remain on the board and as an advisor to the new CEO, Humam Sakhnini, former Vice Chairman at Activision Blizzard.²³ This change added to the IPO buzz, given Sakhnini's experience at Activision Blizzard, a public company, where he managed a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of gaming franchises, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush.²⁴

Most recently, Bloomberg reported that Discord confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO on January 6, 2026.²⁵ Despite this significant milestone, neither the pricing nor the exact date of the public listing has been confirmed. Bloomberg also reported that plans are still under consideration and Discord might ultimately decide to not go forward with an IPO. Market conditions, regulatory review and the company's financials will likely influence the final timeline/decision whether to go public.²⁵

Discord stock price history

Discord's Forge Price is $31.31 at an $8.53 billion Forge Price Valuation as of July 8, 2026.²⁶ That valuation remains well below the $15.2 billion peak from Discord's last primary funding round in 2021, though it now exceeds the $7 billion valuation from the company's preceding funding round in 2020.²⁷

Forge Data as of 07/08/2026

Forge Price is a derived data point that reflects the up-to-date price performance of venture-backed, late-stage companies, and is calculated based on a proprietary model incorporating pricing inputs from primary funding round information, secondary market transactions on Forge.

Discord funding history and private market valuation

Discord has raised just over $1 billion across 10 primary funding rounds.²⁸

Forge Data as of 07/08/2026

Early funding came from a YouWeb incubator before Discord officially launched, when co-founder Citron ran the video game development studio Hammer & Chisel.²⁹ While still a video game studio, the company also raised a second round from investors such as Benchmark Capital and gaming company Tencent.³⁰ By 2016, about a year after Discord officially launched, the company raised over $20 million in a round led by Greylock Partners, valuing Discord at $260 million.³¹

The following year, Discord raised nearly $50 million and almost tripled its valuation to around $775 million, with investment from a mix of new and returning investors, including Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, IVP and Spark Capital.³²

By 2018, Discord reached unicorn status, raising $50 million at a valuation above $1.6 billion. Shortly thereafter, it raised another $150 million, crossing just over $2 billion in valuation, with the round led by Greenoaks Capital.³³

In 2020, Discord raised two rounds, both bringing in around $100 million, first at a valuation of around $3.5 billion and then approximately doubling to $7 billion.

Discord's last primary funding round came in 2021, when it raised $500 million and more than doubled its valuation to $15.2 billion.³⁴ That round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group.³⁵

How to invest in Discord before its IPO

Because Discord is a private company, its shares are not available through traditional public stock brokerages. However, accredited investors may be able to access shares through a private marketplace such as Forge, subject to availability and eligibility requirements.

Investing in private companies involves secondary market transactions, where existing shareholders (such as early employees or investors) sell their equity to new buyers. These transactions are subject to transfer restrictions, company approval and share availability.

To learn more about pre-IPO opportunities, explore our buyer's guide to investing in private market shares or our comprehensive pre-IPO investing guide. Sign up here to explore available private market investment opportunities on Forge's marketplace.

Looking ahead

While Discord has not publicly announced an IPO timetable.³⁶ Investors will likely scrutinize Discord's monetization and profitability potential as it approaches public-market scrutiny.

Check back here or take a look at Forge's upcoming IPO calendar to stay in the loop about the Discord IPO and other pending public offerings.