Reddit is launching an initial public offering Thursday. The company and its shareholders plan to sell a combined 22 million shares for up to $748 million, which would value the company at $6.5 billion. Reddit stock will begin trading Thursday under the ticker “RDDT.”
The company, founded in 2005 by University of Virginia students Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, has had a long and fraught history before finally taking the leap to go public.
Here are five key moments that defined Reddit
2005: Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman found Reddit
Huffman and Ohanian actually wanted to start a food delivery service and turned to the startup incubator Y Combinator (which would later be run by OpenAI’s Sam Altman). But Y Combinator founder Paul Graham helped them come up with an idea that became Reddit in 2005. The two college friends were also given $12,000 and three months rent for office and living space in Boston, The Street reported.
2011: The Reddit spinoff
Advance Publications, the parent company of Condé Nast, had purchased Reddit for $20 million just a year after it launched. But in 2011, the company spun off the site as an independent subsidiary. Reddit had about 20 employees and three billion monthly pageviews at the time, The New York Times. Advance remains Reddit’s largest shareholder, with a 30% ownership stake.
2015: Steve Huffman returns to Reddit
Steve Huffman returned to the company as CEO in 2015 after a period of turbulence at Reddit. The site’s lax content moderation policies had allowed hate speech to thrive on the platform, a dynamic employees felt unprepared to manage.
2016: Reddit gets an app
Reddit launched its first app for the iPhone and Android in 2016. Before that, Redditors had to access the site through a third-party app called Alien Blue. Reddit’s app began development between 2012 and 2014 under then-CEO Yishan Wong.
2021: Reddit makes an unusual first Wall Street splash
The same year Reddit hired a new CFO to help it prepare to go public, Redditors-turned-revenge-seeking-retail-traders on the subreddit WallStreetBets caused a stir at the company — and a big splash on Wall Street. Seeking to punish wealthy institutional investors for short-selling (or betting against) smaller, struggling companies, Redditors started a buying frenzy for GameStop stock in 2021. Their efforts sent the stock surging to more than 20 times its value at the start of the year.
The frenzy popularized the idea of meme stocks, and was dramatized in the 2023 movie “Dumb Money.”
More recently, Redditors have revolted against Huffman’s move to make Reddit a paid platform. The company’s IPO pricing suggests it could be worth up to $6.5 billion — a lot less than its $10 billion valuation in late 2021.
More Reddit IPO news
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is paid more than the heads of Meta, Pinterest, and Snap — combined
Reddit’s IPO goal is measly compared to other social media giants
OpenAI’s Sam Altman is about to make a ton of money from the Reddit IPO
The Reddit IPO will aim to raise almost $750 million. Here’s what to know before it goes public