The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is officially engaged in exclusive talks with Discord on an acquisition of the chat service for roughly $10 billion.
Last week, rumors and speculation swirled regarding Microsoft’s position among other big named would-be suitors for Discord as news surfaced that the service was entering the final round of its year-long sales process.
However, according to the Wall Street Journals’ late-day reporting, Microsoft may have beaten out bidders such as Amazon and Google to enter, what sources familiar with the sales process are calling ‘exclusive talks.’
While WSJ’s reports come as more an affirmation of solid speculation from the industry, there was a new wrinkled uncovered that involves a timeline for an official decision from Discord. Assuming talks progress uninterrupted and Microsoft and Discord come to an agreement, there could be an official announcement of some sort of acquisition as soon as next month.
While $10 billion decisions aren’t normally reliant on truncated news cycles, an official Microsoft acquisition of Discord just before BUILD or whatever replaces E3 could represent a huge promotional news cycle for the remainder of the year for the company’s Xbox efforts.
Most reporting on Microsoft’s possible acquisition of Discord reiterates the company’s desire to pivot the chat service into its consumer and entertainment communication platform which could assuage internal demands to evolve its enterprise Teams app into said service.
