Jason Citron (born September 21, 1984) is an American businessman who is the co-founder and former chief executive officer of

Discord Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...

, an instant messaging social platform. He is also a founder of OpenFeint, a social platform for

mobile game A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any Mobile device, portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet computer, table ...

Biography

Early life

Jason Citron was born on September 21, 1984, in

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, into an

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

family with a background in business and technology, later growing up in

South Florida South Florida, sometimes colloquially shortened to SoFlo, is the Regions of the United States#Florida, southernmost region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is one of Florida's three most commonly referred to directional regions; the two others are ...

. He became interested in technology after being gifted a computer by his grandfather, as well as his love of video games, citing ''

Final Fantasy VI also known as ''Final Fantasy III'' in its initial North American release, is a 1994 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sixth main entry in the ''Final Fantasy'' ser ...

'' as his favorite game and that "I was a Squaresoft fanboy, and I still am." He learned how to write code in

QBasic QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and BASIC interpreter, interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled into an intermediate representation (IR), and this ...

at the age of 13 with the help of a friend, with his first program being a text-based role-playing game. He later attended

Full Sail University Full Sail University is a Private university, private For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit university in Winter Park, Florida. It was formerly a recording studio in Ohio named Full Sail Productions and Full Sail Center f ...

Winter Park, Florida Winter Park is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 29,795 according to the 2020 census. It is part of the Greater Orlando, Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Winter Park was foun ...

, graduating with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

Game Design Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

and Development in 2004.

Career

Citron's career began with the founding of Aurora Feint, a mobile game development studio that later evolved into OpenFeint, a social platform for mobile games. OpenFeint became a success, eventually being sold to the Japanese company GREE for $104 million in 2011. The following year, Citron founded Hammer & Chisel, a gaming company that aimed to create high-quality mobile games, releasing the game '' Fates Forever'' in 2014. However, the company pivoted towards developing a chat service when Citron noticed the need for better communication tools for gamers, leading to the creation of

in 2015. Discord quickly became a popular communication platform, initially among gamers but later expanding to a wider audience. By 2024, under Citron's leadership, Discord had grown into a multi-billion-dollar company with over 150 million active users per month. Citron announced in April 2025 that he was stepping down as Discord's CEO but will remain on the board of directors. He was succeeded as CEO by Humam Sakhnini, who was the former president of

Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. Activision Blizzard currently includes three operating units: Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and King (company), King. Founded in July 2 ...

and

King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

References

Living people 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American Jews 1984 births {{US-CEO-stub Discord