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Hammer & Chisel raises $20 million for gamer messaging app Discord

Everybody talking

Date Type Companies involved Size
January 26th, 2016 investment Benchmark Capital
Discord
Greylock IL
Tencent
YouWeb
$20m
Hammer & Chisel raises $20 million for gamer messaging app Discord

2014 was the year we were all taking about the explosive growth of mobile messaging channels such as LINE, WhatsApp, WeChat and Kakao.

Since then, however, the market has fragmented with new networks such as Palringo being more niche and focused.

And that's certainly the case with Discord, the PC/mobile voice/chat messaging app that's designed for hardcore PC gamers.

It's from Hammer & Chisel, the company set up by Jason Citron, the co-founder of mobile social gaming network OpenFeint.

He came up with the idea following the failure of its mobile MOBA Fates Forever to find a paying audience. 

Latest round

And it's just announced a new funding round of almost $20 million.

Lead by new investor Greylock, the round was supported by existing investors Tencent, Benchmark, and YouWeb.

The 18-strong San Francisco-based team says it will use the cash to expand its headcount and expand its technology.

The round comes as Discord says it's seeing growth of one million users a month (currently around 3 million users in total), with over 300 million messages shared a month.


Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.