Artificial Intelligence · Profile from AI Research Companion
The San Francisco online-community platform (NYSE: RDDT), founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, that discovered in the generative-AI era that its two decades of human conversation were among the most valuable training and grounding data on the web. Reddit turned that corpus into a business line by charging for its API (2023), signing data-licensing deals with Google (~$60m a year, February 2024, reported) and OpenAI (May 2024), and suing those who took it without paying: Anthropic (June 2025) and the scraping firms SerpApi, Oxylabs and AWMProxy together with Perplexity (October 2025). It also built its own AI search product, Reddit Answers (December 2024). Its AI exposure cuts both ways: AI models and Google's AI results make Reddit more cited than ever, but by late 2026 Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode were cutting the search referrals that fed its logged-out audience, and its Q3 2026 results came with a warning of a possible low-double-digit fall in daily users (reported).
At a glance
- Founded
- June 2005, Medford, Massachusetts (Y Combinator's first batch), by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian; bought by Condé Nast in 2006; spun out as an Advance Publications–controlled company in 2011
- Headquarters
- San Francisco
- Ownership / structure
- Public since 21 March 2024 (NYSE: RDDT), dual-class shares; Advance Publications the largest holder (~30% at IPO, reported); Tencent (~11%) and Sam Altman (~8.7% through entities) were large holders at IPO (S-1, reported; current stakes verify)
- Leadership (2026)
- Steve Huffman (co-founder, CEO since July 2015); Jen Wong (COO); Andrew Vollero (CFO; verify current); Ohanian left the board in June 2020
- AI-related products
- Data API and data-licensing contracts (Google, OpenAI and others); Reddit Answers (AI search over Reddit posts, December 2024); machine translation of posts into other languages (2024–25); AI tools for advertisers and moderators (Reddit Insights / Community Intelligence, 2025, reported)
- Scale
- Daily active uniques (DAUq) 130.3m and weekly active uniques 515.2m in Q3 2026, with US DAUq 50.7m (−2% year on year) and international 79.6m (+24%) (company, 29 Oct 2026); Reddit Answers ~15m weekly users and >80m weekly searchers (Q4 2025, company as reported)
- Financials
- Revenue ~$804m (2023), ~$1.30bn (2024), ~$2.2bn (2025, reported); Q3 2026 revenue $895m (+53%), of which advertising $847m and "other" (mainly data licensing) $48m (+35%); Q3 2026 net income $283m; nine-month 2026 revenue $2.363bn; trailing-twelve-month revenue above $3bn (company); Q4 2026 guide $1.00–1.03bn
- Capital
- IPO priced 20 March 2024 at $34 (~$748m raised including selling shareholders, ~$6.4bn valuation, reported); ~$3.03bn cash and securities (30 Sep 2026); ~$340m of buybacks in the first nine months of 2026 (company)
- Key AI counterparties
- Alphabet Google (licence and search partner); OpenAI (licence, ad partner; its CEO a large shareholder); Anthropic and Perplexity (defendants)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- API pricing and the moderator blackout (2023, controversy); the Google data licence (2024); the IPO and its data-licensing disclosure (2024); the OpenAI partnership (2024); crawler blocks and the Google-only index (2024–25); Reddit Answers (2024–26); the Anthropic suit (2025–26); the SerpApi/Perplexity scraping suit (2025–26); the Google renewal talks and the AI-traffic shock (2026, failure)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2023
API Pricing and the Moderator Blackout
Pricing change / controversy
2024
Crawler Blocks and the Google Only Index
Access policy
2024
Google Data Licence and Search Partnership
Partnership / data licence
2024
IPO and the Data Licensing Disclosure
IPO
2024
OpenAI Partnership and the Altman Stake
Partnership / data licence
2024
Reddit Answers and AI Search
Launch
2025
Anthropic Lawsuit and the State Court Remand
Lawsuit
2025
SerpApi Perplexity Scraping Suit
Lawsuit
2026
Google Renewal Talks and the AI Traffic Shock
Partnership renewal / failure (traffic dependence)