They have been trying to get to IPO for a while. 2 years ago they deleted a huge swathe of accounts to cause those people to create new ones to boost their growth stats and frankly having been caught up in it that was the push I needed to get off Discord. It caused a huge discontentment at the time as it wasn't clear if it was a bug or intentional but Discord didn't fix it.

They will do anything to get to a successful IPO including cooking the stats but they aren't there yet.