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Discord acquires anti-harassment AI firm Sentropy

Date Type Companies involved Size
July 15th, 2021 acquisition Discord Not disclosed
Discord acquires anti-harassment AI firm Sentropy

Chat platform Discord has bought AI firm Sentropy Technologies.

The deal was announced in a blog post on Medium from Sentropy CEO and co-founder John Redgrave, and comes just three years after it was founded. The company's aim is to make sure people are safe online, using artificial intelligence to stop "abuse, harassment and malicious content."

No figure has been placed on the deal yet.

"As we have gotten to know Discord, we have been impressed by their deep commitment to safety — a commitment that extends beyond their own communities to the broader internet," Redgrave wrote.

"One of the hard-and-fast requirements Sentropy had as we discussed working together was that our future home allows us to keep our focus on improving the internet as a whole, not just improving the Trust and Safety (T&S) capabilities of the company. Our team’s focus will be on helping Discord expand and evolve its T&S capabilities; we are also inspired by Discord’s commitment to knowledge-sharing and capability-building in the content moderation space, as exemplified by their Moderator Academy. We are excited to help Discord decide how we can most effectively share with the rest of the Internet the best practices, technology, and tools that we’ve developed to protect our own communities."

Policing its service for bad actors has been something Discord has done a great deal of in recent years. In the second half of 2020 alone, the firm removed 1.5k servers for violent extremism.

Discord purchasing this company is also notable as there were reports earlier this year that it was in discussions about an acquisition, with Microsoft apparently in the running. These talks fell apart in April amid rumours that Discord was interested in going public in the future.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.