We also want to show some examples so you can see our data is accurate, and to show some interesting ways some companies are using Discord.
Software · New York, NY · Gemini App
Discord
Google runs a dedicated Discord server for the Gemini app, and it has quietly become the place where the company talks directly with its most engaged AI users. Not casual users, not the press, but the people who actually care enough to hang out in a chat room and trade notes about what the model can do.
The whole operation is run by a full-time channel manager based in New York, and the job is bigger than it sounds. They own the content calendar, the events, the community growth strategy, and the tone of the server itself, all tailored to an audience that would sniff out a corporate marketing post in a heartbeat.
Live events are where it really comes together. When something new ships in Gemini, the team often rolls it out inside Discord first, coordinating with product managers and the comms team so the announcement lands as a conversation instead of a press release. Fans get to react in real time, ask questions, and feel like they're in the room.
What makes this stand out is that none of it is outsourced. Most companies the size of Google hand community management to an agency and call it a day. Google keeps it in-house, which means the person reading every thread and shaping the vibe of the server is sitting close to the people actually building the product, and the feedback loop is short enough to actually matter.
Software Development · Beijing, China · Discord
ByteDance is the Chinese tech giant behind TikTok, with over 2.5 billion people using their products globally. They're not just a social media company though, they also build VR headsets (PICO), publish mobile games, and run TikTok Shop, which is rapidly becoming one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world.
What's interesting about ByteDance is how widely they use Discord across completely different parts of their business.
On the VR side, their PICO brand uses Discord as the main hub for connecting with users, fans, and developers of their headsets. There's a global PICO Discord that runs community challenges, social events, and direct conversations between the engineering team and power users. It's where PICO collects real-time feedback, runs beta testing programs, and keeps users engaged between hardware launches.
On the gaming side, ByteDance's Japan publishing team manages Discord communities for their mobile game titles, alongside Twitter and LINE. Discord is one of the platforms they use to gather player feedback, push version updates, and act as a bridge between the game studios in China and Japanese players.
On the TikTok Shop side, ByteDance uses Discord to manage their e-commerce creator community in the US. The team running creator success for TikTok Shop specifically looks for people who know how to manage Discord channels, since a lot of the relationship-building with creators happens there outside the main TikTok app.
Even on the developer-tooling side, ByteDance leans on Discord. The team behind PICO's WebSpatial SDK lists active engagement on Discord (alongside GitHub and Stack Overflow) as a preferred qualification for developer support engineers helping people build AR/VR/MR apps on the platform.
Luxury Fashion · Milan, Italy · NFT community
Discord
Gucci uses Discord as the home base for its NFT community, which is a pretty unusual move for a luxury fashion house that built its name on Italian leather goods and red carpet moments. The server is where the brand connects with the artists, collectors, and crypto-curious fans who follow its digital collectible drops.
The whole operation runs out of Milan, and the goal is to keep the community lively between activations and white-hot during them. That means planning events, dreaming up new ways to bring people deeper into the brand, and staying close to what's trending in the crypto world so Gucci doesn't show up looking like a tourist.
A big part of the work is artist relations. Gucci keeps a regular back-and-forth going with the creators it partners with on its drops, and Discord is the main channel where those conversations live. It's less about broadcasting to fans and more about running an ongoing creative dialogue with collaborators in a place they already hang out.
What's most telling is the kind of people Gucci wants steering this. They have to know NFT projects inside and out, trade crypto memes fluently, and ideally hold their own digital wallets. This is a brand that treats Discord fluency and Web3 literacy as serious must-haves, which says a lot about how much it cares about this corner of its business.
Media · New York, NY · GQ
Discord
Condé Nast runs a Discord server for GQ, turning a 60-year-old men's magazine brand into a live community space where readers can hang out, swap ideas, and get closer to the people behind the bylines. The server is built around the topics GQ covers, which means style, pop culture, and sports all sharing the same chat in real time.
The interesting thing is how Condé treats Discord less like a social channel and more like a small broadcast studio. The brand maps out run-of-show docs and asset lists for activations on the server, and the community lead acts as a producer during those activations, coordinating with GQ talent and editorial staff to keep the programming flowing. It's the same kind of muscle a TV show uses, just pointed at a chat room.
Behind the scenes, there's a network of volunteer moderators stationed across different time zones so the server never goes dark. Condé invests real effort in keeping that crew engaged, recognizing them, and rewarding them, which is how the community stays welcoming even at three in the morning when no one from the office is around.
What makes the whole setup distinctive is the editorial sensibility baked into it. The team behind the server doesn't just keep the lights on. They carry GQ's signature voice and visual style into a casual chat environment, and they pair that taste with hard numbers on engagement and growth to decide what to publish next. It's old-school magazine craft running on a platform that didn't exist when the brand was founded.
Design Software · San Francisco, CA · Discord
Figma is the browser-based design tool that quietly took over how product teams build software. Adobe famously tried to buy them for $20 billion before regulators blocked the deal.
Now Figma is building something new called Weave, an AI-powered creative platform aimed at designers and artists who want to use generative AI without losing creative control. And the place where they're building that community? Discord.
This isn't a casual "we have a Discord server" situation. Figma is treating Discord as the actual home of the Weave artist community, not just a sidekick to Twitter or a marketing channel. Workshops happen there. Artist spotlights happen there. Onboarding materials and resource libraries get organized there. Live sessions, creative challenges, and collaborations with schools and studios all run through Discord.
For a design tool company, that's a meaningful choice. Most B2B software companies still default to Slack, forums, or community platforms built into their own product. Figma picked Discord because that's where creative communities already are. Artists, illustrators, animators, and now AI-curious designers all hang out there, sharing work and giving each other feedback in real time.
The Discord community also connects directly into Figma's product feedback loop. Insights from real conversations flow back to the product and marketing teams, meaning what artists say in Discord channels can directly influence what gets built next in Weave.
Entertainment · Culver City, CA · Anime streaming
Discord
Crunchyroll runs a Discord server as the global gathering spot for anime fans, the platform's way of giving its 100 million-plus subscribers across 200 countries somewhere to actually hang out together rather than just stream shows alone. The server sits alongside its other social channels but plays a different role, which is being the place where the conversation about anime never stops.
The server runs on a steady drumbeat of fan-focused programming. There are dedicated discussions for individual anime series, seasonal launch quizzes when new shows premiere, sweepstakes, rewards, and chatter about Crunchyroll Expo and the company's store. The whole point is to give superfans something new to engage with every week so the community feels alive rather than just informational.
Behind the scenes, a network of volunteer moderators keeps the server running around the clock so no time zone goes unattended. Crunchyroll provides them with direction and feedback like a real team, treating the volunteers as a core part of how the community functions rather than an afterthought.
What turns the server into something genuinely useful for the business is how the conversation gets fed back into the company. Every week, the team pulls together sentiment reports on the topics fans are most fired up about, then routes that intel to product, marketing, and engineering. So when someone vents in a thread about a show or a feature, that frustration can actually shape what Crunchyroll does next.
Cryptocurrency · Global · Crypto exchange
Discord
Binance runs Discord as part of a globe-spanning community network that turns its 300 million users into something more like a movement than a customer base. The server sits alongside Telegram and other channels, but its job is specific. It's where the world's largest crypto exchange goes deep with the people who actually live and breathe the product, gathering them by region, language, and interest.
The most interesting piece of the operation is a volunteer program called Binance Angels. These are real users who love the platform enough to help moderate Discord servers, run activations, onboard newcomers, and answer questions for free. Binance recruits them, trains them, tracks their performance, and rewards them, basically treating them like an extension of staff in dozens of countries.
The Angels and the official Discord servers don't just chat. They run airdrops, live AMA sessions with the team, quizzes, mini-games, and reward campaigns powered by bots. Each region gets its own flavor too, with localized servers for places like the UAE, Mexico, Spain, Pakistan, and the DACH countries, all speaking the local language and tuned to local crypto culture.
What makes the whole setup work for the business is the feedback loop. Community managers across the network gather sentiment, complaints, feature requests, and trend signals from Discord conversations and route them back to product, marketing, and support. So a Telegram or Discord thread in Lisbon or Dubai can actually shape what Binance ships next, which is a useful position for a company that operates in over 100 countries and can't afford to misread any of them.
Toys & Entertainment · El Segundo, CA · Hot Wheels, Digital Games
Discord
Mattel uses Discord to talk directly with the adult collectors who chase its toys, and the operation started with the most obvious candidate in its catalog. Hot Wheels, the best-selling toy on earth, has its own server where serious collectors gather to swap finds, discuss new releases, and trade tips on tracking down rare cars.
The collector angle is what makes this interesting. Hot Wheels isn't just a kids' toy. There's a massive grown-up fandom that hunts limited editions, lines up for store drops, and obsesses over packaging variants, and Discord is where Mattel meets them. The brand uses the server to share inside information leading up to flagship launches, giving collectors a heads-up before the wider public sees anything.
Conversation flows the other way too. Mattel listens to what collectors are saying inside the server and reports that sentiment back to the brand team, so a thread complaining about a paint job or buzzing about a rumored release can actually shape how marketing and product teams move. It turns the server into a kind of always-on focus group made up of the most invested fans.
The operation has since expanded into Mattel's gaming push, with Discord now part of how the company supports its mobile games and its experiences on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. Same playbook, different audience. Mattel uses the platform to gather players' reactions to live events, surface recurring complaints, and stay close to the people actually playing, which for an 80-year-old toy company is a meaningful way to stay current with how kids and collectors hang out today.
API Platform · San Francisco, CA · Discord
Postman is the world's leading API platform with around 4,000 employees. Their Discord server has around 17,500 members. It is actively staffed by community and DevRel team members, and the day-to-day is real-time developer help, live support, and weekly build challenges with cash prizes.
Discord is also a deliberate destination in their community strategy. Team members actively scout Reddit and other external forums for engaged Postman users and funnel them into the server.
It sits alongside a separate Discourse forum, with Discord handling real-time conversation and Discourse handling longer-form discussion. The two are treated as distinct channels serving different purposes.
Cloud Infrastructure · New York, NY · Discord
DigitalOcean is a cloud hosting platform popular with independent developers and startups. Their Discord server is one of the more thoughtfully structured on this list. When new members join, they're asked which notification categories they want -- Product Updates, Deploy Updates (for their annual developer conference), or Community Updates -- so they only get pinged for what's relevant to them.
The channel list reflects a genuine community rather than a broadcast channel: there's a #-maker-space for builders sharing projects, #-do-love for members to share appreciation, #-livestreams, dedicated Hacktoberfest channels (DigitalOcean's own annual open-source contribution event, now a major fixture in the developer calendar), and a #-projects channel for showcasing work.
Discord is named alongside YouTube as one of the two primary online community channels for their DevRel team, sitting at the top of their community strategy.
Internet Infrastructure · San Francisco, CA · Discord
Cloudflare makes internet infrastructure -- the software that keeps websites fast, secure, and online. Their Discord server has one of the most thoughtful onboarding flows we've seen: new members pick exactly which channels they want, including blog posts, status updates, product releases, a Starboard for community highlights, Radar (their internet traffic insights tool), YouTube, and Project Alexandria -- their open source credits program.
What makes Cloudflare unusual is how deeply Discord is embedded in product work, not just community. Product managers across multiple teams are explicitly expected to engage on Discord as part of how they talk to developers and gather feedback -- not as a side task but as a core part of the job. One engineer role even lists "debug a developer's issue on Discord in the afternoon" as a literal example of a typical daily activity.
AI Hardware · Toronto, Canada · Discord
Tenstorrent builds AI chips and is one of the more technical communities on this list. Their Discord server has around 4,500 members and doubles as the official support channel, organized by different parts of their open-source software stack. They also run a #bounties channel where developers can earn money by completing tasks on the open-source codebase.
Discord is also explicitly wired into their product team. They have a dedicated role whose primary job is to manage the Discord community and act as liaison between members and the AI Product team -- surfacing feedback directly into feature decisions. That role sits in Product, not Marketing, which is an unusual structural choice that signals how seriously they treat the server as a feedback channel.
Fintech · San Francisco, CA · Discord
Circle is the company behind USDC, the world's largest regulated stablecoin. Their Discord server -- called "Build on Circle" -- has around 136,000 members. Their developer X account links to it as the primary support destination, and their official documentation directs developers there for questions about integrating USDC and the Circle APIs.
The server grew fast: it was around 1,000 members in early 2023 and hit 8,000 by February 2024 after they invested heavily in staffed community management. It now sits at 136,000, which reflects how central Discord has become to the crypto/Web3 developer world more broadly. The community team runs interactive workshops, a grants and bounties program for builders, and regional engagement specifically targeting developers in Latin America -- with Spanish and Portuguese-speaking community managers hired for that purpose.
Payments · Amsterdam, Netherlands · Discord
Mollie is a European payments company with around 850 employees. Their developer Discord has around 2,100 members and does more than most -- someone on the community team is dedicated to routing issues raised in the server directly to engineering. Feature requests get their own structured forum channel with status tags (In Review, Planned, In Progress, Done, Rejected, Duplicate) so developers can see exactly what's being acted on.
They also run quarterly in-person developer meetups, coordinated through the server.
Nonprofit · Monterey, CA · Discord
Monterey Bay Aquarium has around 2,750 members on their Discord server. The entire server is written in ocean puns: rules are "reguloceans," introductions go in "introdoceans." Channels include #memeterey-bay-aquarium, #the-pixel-palace for member photos potentially featured on their social channels, and #deep-sea-december for a month-long community art challenge with MBARI and FathomVerse.
Staff promote LinkedIn Live events with researchers and aquarists through server announcements. They've written publicly that Discord is their best channel for reaching a younger audience because posts go directly to members with no algorithm.
Gaming · San Francisco, CA · Discord
Chess.com has over 150,000 members on their Discord server -- one of the larger gaming communities on the platform. New members link their Chess.com account on join, and staff hold Grandmaster roles as a nod to chess culture. Tournament announcements go out here first ($250,000 Chess.com Open, $2,500 Atomic Chess Championship), and they run a live Q&A with their Chief Chess Officer where members submit questions in a Discord thread and the best get answered on Twitch.
Their recruiting team also uses Discord as a sourcing channel, looking for candidates in gaming and chess communities there.
Gaming · New York, NY · Discord
Rockstar Games -- the studio behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption -- opened their Discord server to the public in February 2025, though the account itself had been sitting dormant since 2019. The timing was widely read as a sign that GTA VI news was coming. Within half an hour of opening, it had 12,000 members; it now sits at around 770,000.
The server is organized by game, with dedicated sections for GTA Online and Red Dead Online, and a channel specifically for the upcoming GTA VI. One of the more practical features is a set of LFG (Looking for Group) channels, where players can find others to team up with in-game -- Rockstar actually called this out in their launch announcement as a primary use case.
Members who link their Rockstar and Discord accounts can claim in-game rewards through a dedicated #discord-rewards channel, a program formal enough that Rockstar has a full FAQ page for it on their support site.
Yunak
Zennopay Inc.
Synthica
FIFO Australia
BloxyMarket
Honey Motel
VeloDB (Powered by Apache Doris)
Octoparse - Octopus Data Inc.
BeatStars
Controlled Insanity
Render
Cerebrium
Unova
T.R.N.F Clothing
MRL-Hotisland Action Figure Sex Doll
MTG SALON TOKYO | MTGサロン
H2LooP
Blunge
Google
ByteDance
Gucci
Condé Nast
Figma
Crunchyroll
Binance
Mattel
Postman
DigitalOcean
Cloudflare
Tenstorrent
Circle
Mollie
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Chess.com
Rockstar Games
