Discord is Finally Pushing Toward an IPO, But Does It Have the Numbers?

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Earlier this week, Discord's founder announced he's stepping down in order to make room for an industry veteran to take over as CEO. This move reaffirms Discord's plan to go public, which we've known about since last year.

The new CEO, Humam Sakhnini, was the president of King and CSO of Activision Blizzard, so you know Discord isn't playing around here.

Discord started as a chat for gamers but has grown to be much more, powering millions of communities and a large percentage of those aren't even gamers (as much as 80% according to this article).

Here's the obvious question - how's Discord's growth?

Pretty flat lately, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

According to Appfigures Intelligence, Discord's mobile apps brought in about 90M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play in 2024. That's not a small number! But... it's identical to 2023's total and a smidge lower than 2022's 95M. While not exploding, Discord is maintaining momentum, which is better than the trend of downloads dropping, and in a way, exactly what you want heading into an IPO.

Looking at the trend, it's clear stay-at-home propelled demand, and while it subsided, the app is still getting more downloads now than it did before 2020. And when looking at all downloads since 2017, Discord has amassed nearly 700M downloads. That's about 10% of all smartphones in the world.

Revenue is a bit more complicated.

Our estimates show that while Discord's yearly net revenue from its app rose more than 4,600% since 2019 to a whopping $143M, 2024 went in the opposite direction. Discord ended 2024 with $140M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play, a tad lower. And when I say net I mean what Discord gets to keep after Apple's and Google's fees.

Like the flatness of downloads, this isn't ideal, but also isn't terrible. We're still talking about IPO-level revenue. And that's just from mobile.

For a product that's still mostly free and community-driven, these numbers are good. Discord has been slowly layering in subscriptions and premium features without upsetting its user base—something other community apps struggle with.

How does this set up an IPO? Discord's mobile growth shows it can hold a massive audience and monetize it without heavy churn or backlash. It's not the hyper-growth IPO story we used to see, but it is the kind of sticky, expanding revenue stream that fits the current market's appetite for sustainable growth.

I'm no IPO expert, but given this data, I can see Discord pitching itself as an under-monetized giant, with Nitro subscriptions, boosted communities, and integrations offering lots of opportunities once optimized. There's still a massive gap between users and paying users, and I suspect that's what investors would like to see.

And speaking of how investors will see Discord, I think that in the public markets, Discord will end up compared to a weird mix of players:

• Slack feels like the closest cousin, but it's locked into corporate communication. Discord has broader cultural reach and younger, more active audiences, and better community management tools for larger communities.

• Roblox has stronger monetization and a younger user base, and while the two are not at all the same, they do share the community aspect in a way that can inform a smart investor. But Discord offers more flexibility across niches, both for gamers and others.

• Reddit is probably the best comparison culturally, but Reddit has struggled for years to monetize effectively and hasn't been able to do that without alienating its users. Discord has already crossed that bridge more successfully with Nitro and server boosts.

There's no perfect competitor to suggest context so it's up to Discord to paint a picture. It's walking into the IPO ring with better retention than Slack, a wider demographic than Roblox, and a more functional business model than Reddit. That's a strong hand to play.

Obviously, this isn't investment advice and I'm not a financial advisor.

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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.