Microsoft to splurge $10 billion on Discord?

A lot of the mature tech giants are sitting on giant stockpiles of cash that are generating no income. Microsoft for example has close to $132 billion cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet -- over double as much as the firm's long-term debt. This gives Microsoft a lot of firepower to splurge on acquisitions. Over the past two decades, most of Microsoft's big acquisitions didn't really pan out. Failures like Nokia's phone business, Skype, and LinkedIn come to mind.

Is Discord the next billion dollar acquisition?

Recently, Microsoft completed its $7.5 billion buyout of game publisher Bethesda and now the software giant is aiming at another gaming-related deal. Bloomberg writes Microsoft is in talks with video game chat community Discord. Allegedly, Microsoft is bidding $10 billion to take over the service.

Discord is widely popular among gamers but over the past years, the service has also seen an uptick in use for study groups, book clubs, and all sorts of virtual gatherings. For those who have never used it, Discord is sort of a modern, web-based version of the old-school IRC chat channels. Discord has 140 million monthly users but does not generate a profit.

Discord has been talking to potential buyers and software giant Microsoft is in the running, but no deal is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Discord is more likely to go public than sell itself, one person said. Representatives for Microsoft and Discord declined to comment. VentureBeat reported earlier on Monday that Discord was engaged in sales talks.

Discord reportedly reached out to Microsoft to gauge interest. Previouly, the firm was in discussions with Amazon and Epic Games, but those talks did not result in a deal.