Reddit is Making its Public and Urging Influential Users to Invest

Reddit is Making its Public and Urging Influential Users to Invest

In preparation for its impending IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RDDT, Reddit submitted its S-1 registration statement to the SEC on Thursday, outlining its financial position and corporate objectives.

Reddit reported $804 million in revenue in its S-1 filing, with advertising accounting for the lion’s share of that amount. But in 2023, the company’s net loss was $90.8 million, indicating that it is not profitable.

Unusually, Reddit is also allowing a certain percentage of its most popular users—including moderators and people with high karma scores—to purchase shares in its initial public offering (IPO). Professional investors who wish to purchase stock at a potentially lower price before everyone else has the opportunity to do so on the public market are typically granted this privilege.

Starting with “certain users and moderators identified by us who have meaningfully contributed to Reddit community programs,” Reddit will distribute shares in a tiered manner. Following the first tier, shares will be made available for purchase to individuals “who have performed at least 5,000 moderator actions” and those with a karma score of at least 2,000.

Reddit reports having 1 billion posts overall, over 100,000 active communities, and 267.5 million weekly active users in its SEC filing. 1.3 million shares of its Class A common stock have been set aside, according to the business, “to fund community-related programs that empower Redditors to bring their ideas to life.”

Reddit’s revenue approach includes model training and data licensing. It had earlier on Thursday announced a partnership with Google for AI training data, which will provide the search engine behemoth with real-time access to “more efficient ways to train models” at an estimated annual cost of roughly $60 million. Reddit’s primary source of income at the moment is advertising; from 2022 to 2023, adverts accounted for 98% of the platform’s total revenue.