# Jason Citron

Jason Citron (born September 21, 1984) is an American entrepreneur, founder of the social gaming network OpenFeint and co-founder of Discord, where he served as CEO until 2025. He is also an angel investor in AI startups.

Jason Citron (born September 21, 1984) is an American businessman and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer of the communication platform Discord. He previously founded OpenFeint, one of the earliest major social gaming networks for mobile devices. Since leaving Discord, he has turned to angel investing in startups focused on [artificial intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) and related technologies.

Citron was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in South Florida. His early interest in technology was sparked by a computer gifted by his grandfather and a passion for video games, particularly Final Fantasy VI. He learned to code in QBasic at age 13, creating a text-based role-playing game as his first program. He attended Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida, graduating in 2004 with a Bachelor of Science in Game Design and Development. In March 2025, he was inducted into the Full Sail University Hall of Fame.

## OpenFeint and early career

In 2009, Citron founded OpenFeint, a social gaming platform for mobile games that provided achievements, leaderboards, messaging, and multiplayer integration. The platform grew rapidly alongside the rise of the iPhone and the App Store, becoming one of the largest mobile gaming networks of its time, with tens of millions of users and integration into thousands of games.

In 2011, Japanese company GREE acquired OpenFeint for approximately $104 million. Citron remained for a short period before leaving to pursue new ventures in online gaming and communication technology.

## Founding Discord

After departing OpenFeint, Citron co-founded the game development studio Hammer & Chisel. The studio initially developed the multiplayer online battle arena game Fates Forever, released in 2014. During development, the team grew frustrated with existing voice and text communication tools for gamers, which suffered from usability, latency, and reliability issues. They built an internal communication platform that eventually became Discord, launching publicly in 2015.

Under Citron's leadership, Discord expanded beyond gaming to serve students, hobbyists, creators, businesses, and online communities. The platform saw rapid growth in the late 2010s and early 2020s, adding features such as livestreaming, forum channels, subscription communities, and developer tools. Citron emphasized building Discord as a space for private communities and social interaction, contrasting it with algorithm-driven public social media feeds. He also oversaw moderation, trust and safety, and monetization initiatives.

## Stepping down and later investments

In April 2025, Citron announced he was stepping down as Discord's CEO but would remain on the board of directors. He was succeeded by Humam Sakhnini, former president of Activision Blizzard and King. After leaving the CEO role, Citron shifted focus to angel investing, particularly in [generative AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) startups that build on advances in [machine learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) and [deep learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/deep-learning). His investments reflect a broader trend of tech entrepreneurs funding AI ventures, with interest in areas such as [large language models](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/large-language-model) and [neural networks](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/neural-network).

Citron's career spans two decades of building and scaling communication and gaming technologies.X

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/jason-citron
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-12T16:25:54.314263+00:00