Discord CEO and co-founder Jason Citron is [1]stepping down from his leadership role at the company and [2]being replaced by Humam Sakhnini , a former executive from Activision Blizzard. "Citron will remain on Discord's board of directors, and fellow co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy will continue acting as the company's chief technology officer," notes Engadget. From the report:

> There's an important financial context to Citron's move. [3]The New York Times reported in March that Discord was meeting with investors to take the company public. Sakhnini has experience acting as a leader of a public company. He was also the President of King Digital -- the creator of Candy Crush and other popular mobile games -- after the company was acquired by Activision Blizzard. A veteran executive could be a natural fit to usher Discord to an IPO. Citron didn't deny the plan when [4]VentureBeat asked if the company would go public: "As you can imagine, hiring someone like Humam is a step in that direction."

"From the very beginning, our mission has been about bringing people together around games," Citron said in a statement. "It's a mission I've dedicated my career to, and I'm confident that passing the torch to Humam is the right evolution for Discord's future." While initially pitched as a way to talk to friend's before, during and after playing games, Discord has morphed into a much larger and more general social platform, serving "more than 200 million monthly active users worldwide," the company says.



[1] https://discord.com/blog/passing-the-torch

[2] https://www.engadget.com/apps/discords-ceo-and-co-founder-is-stepping-down-181851778.html

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/technology/discord-ipo.html

[4] https://venturebeat.com/games/why-discord-founder-jason-citron-is-stepping-down-from-ceo-job-exclusive-interview/