Who Owns Discord?

Discord is a private company: it is not publicly listed on any stock exchange and its shares are not able to be bought easily by members of the public. As a result it is not precisely known what sized stake each investor has in the company, but overall ownership is split between the two co-founders (Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy) and the various venture capitalist firms who have invested in the company since its foundation. As of the round of investment in summer 2020, the company was valued at $3.5 billion. Of this it is thought that the co-founders each own shares worth at least $350 million, which if true, would mean they each own at least 10% of the company.

Discord’s Founders - Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy

Jason Citron (born in 1985, aged 35 at the time of writing) is Discord’s CEO. Of Jewish descent, the use of the platform by far-right, white nationalist groups as brought to light by the 2017 Charlottesville attack disturbed him particularly “The word ‘horror’ comes to mind… My grandfather fought for America in World War II against the Nazis. It certainly weighed on me that I would be working to somehow facilitate people becoming radicalized.”

First attending Full Sail University in Florida, Citron worked as a programmer at various gaming start-up companies, eventually founding his own gaming social network company called OpenFeint. OpenFeint made him a small fortune when he sold it to GREE, a Japanese gaming conglomerate, for $104 million. Whilst working for GREE for a short period after the sale, Citron was introduced to Stan Vishnevskiy by a friend and the two went on to co-found their own company Hammer & Chisel in 2012.

Stan Vishnevskiy (born in 1989, aged 31 at the time of writing) is Discord’s Chief Technology Officer. Vishnevskiy Cal State Northridge University, before working as a software engineer for several different startups in Silicon Valley, most of them relating to applications for mobile phones and tablets.

After meeting Jason Citron, founding Hammer & Chisel together, and having their tablet-based game “Fates Forever” flop following its release, it was Stan who suggested that they instead pivot the company towards the social network / online communication aspect of the technology they had developed. This is what would go on to become Discord, which was launched on May 13th 2015.

Final Word

We hope this article has helped to inform you about Discord’s owners. If you have more question or are just interested in learning more about Discord, please take a look at the other related articles from WePC.