A new report suggests Discord is looking for a buyer, and it’s apparently commanding a very steep price of at least $10 billion. Assuming the rumors are true, Microsoft is one of the companies most interested in buying the voice chat platform. So far no acquisition is in the works — it’s all just talk, say the reports — but it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, develops.
The report comes from Bloomberg, which cites anonymous insiders as saying, “Microsoft is in the running, but no deal is imminent.” Supposedly Xbox head Phil Spencer is the one talking to Discord, which, if true, would mean Microsoft is looking at Discord to be part of its gaming division. While Discord is valuable, it’s not profitable at the time, and it’s been looking for buyers for a while. Reportedly, it won’t sell to anyone who asks it to compromise the platform’s core values.
Discord being on the hunt for a buyer is corroborated by other reports, most recently VentureBeat, which also cites the $10 billion price tag. Given Discord’s meteoric rise from a gamer’s chat platform to the go-to voice and text chat service — helped a lot, most likely, by the global pandemic — the price tag isn’t a big surprise. What is a surprise is that Microsoft would be willing to spend that much money so soon after its $7.5 billion acquisition of Bethesda (assuming, of course, that the price cited in the report is accurate).
Either way, the report says that Microsoft isn’t even the only one who’s willing to spend that much money. It’s not clear who the other potential buyers would be, but the report hints that Amazon and Epic Games have both been interested in the past. Whoever buys Discord would likely be able to integrate its voice and text chat functions into their own service, if they have one.
Source: Bloomberg
