Microsoft is preparing for a new takeover. This time, the corporation is negotiating the purchase of Discord. The estimated volume of the transaction is over $10 billion. But there is a nuance. The owners of Discord are not sure yet whether they need to sell the business at all. Instead, they can conduct an IPO.
The plans of the companies are reported by Bloomberg with reference to anonymous sources. But neither side commented on the publication’s information.
Microsoft has been eyeing companies that can provide access to active user communities for a long time. For example, last year the corporation was going to buy TikTok and was negotiating with Pinterest. According to Bloomberg sources, for this reason, Microsoft could also be interested in Discord, whose MAU has already exceeded 140 million people.
It is also assumed that Microsoft is considering the possibility of including a Discord Nitro subscription in the Xbox Game Pass service. They say that in this way the company will not only increase the audience of the service, but also take another step towards a multiservice business strategy.
Recall that Discord is a platform popular among gamers for online communication using audio, video and text. Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, the service has grown dramatically and attracted the attention of people forced to work remotely. As a result, Discord’s revenue for 2020 jumped to $130 million (for comparison, in 2019 it was only $45 million).
Nevertheless, according to the estimates of the VentureBeat portal, Discord is still in the growth stage. This means that the company may change its mind about selling the business and decide to try to enter the stock exchange through an IPO. This was confirmed by one of Bloomberg’s sources.
It is worth noting that Discord has been negotiating the sale of assets for several years. The company has also discussed this issue with Epic Games and Amazon in the past.