Sam Altman is pretty deeply invested in Reddit: OpenAI’s CEO was revealed as Reddit’s third largest shareholder in a IPO prospectus filed with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday.
Reddit, the online community platform founded by then-college roommates Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, and Aaron Swartz in 2005, is the first major tech initial public offering (IPO) of the year.
While it was known that Altman is a Reddit investor, it’s the first time the size of his stake has been disclosed. Altman owns 8.7% of the the social media platform, according to the filing. Ahead of the public offering, Altman’s voting power stands at 9.2%. If Reddit’s valuation comes to at least $5 billion, Altman’s stake would figure in the range of $435 million. His stake follows those of Advance Publications, an American media company owned by the Newhouse family, which owns 30% of Reddit shares, and Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which holds 11%.
But while the OpenAI chief holds a significant stake in Reddit, this week the company struck a partnership with a different AI player: Google. Reddit announced a new partnership that would allow the search engine giant to train its AI models on Reddit’s user-generated content.
Reddit’s IPO
No date or share price has been set for Reddit’s IPO yet, although Reuters reports that the company is looking to launch its public offering in March.
In its filing with the SEC, Reddit highlighted that it received 73 million unique daily visits on average in the fourth quarter of 2023 and has over 100,000 active online communities (known as subreddits).
The company’s revenue grew 20% to $804 million in 2023 from roughly $667 million in 2022. The company reported a net loss of $90.8 million, down from a loss of about $159 million the year prior.
Reddit also announced it would be reserving some of its IPO shares for eligible users and moderators who have contributed to the platform.