Updated
Updated · Fortune · Jun 25
Reddit Turns Profitable With 120 Million Daily Users as AI Licensing Opens New Revenue
Updated
Updated · Fortune · Jun 25

Reddit Turns Profitable With 120 Million Daily Users as AI Licensing Opens New Revenue

1 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jun 25

Summary

  • More than 120 million people now use Reddit daily across 100,000-plus active communities, helping push the company to its first profit since going public in 2024.
  • Ninety-four percent of revenue still comes from advertising, with Reddit expanding promoted posts, brand accounts and commerce tools to capture more spending without alienating users.
  • 2024 licensing deals with Google and OpenAI added a new business line by selling legal access to Reddit’s archive of conversations for AI training and products.
  • Volunteer moderators and anti-promotion norms still limit how aggressively Reddit can commercialize, while AI-generated content or user backlash over unpaid training data could erode the authenticity it is selling.
  • Reddit says its long-term target is 1 billion daily users, betting that human conversation will remain valuable to advertisers, searchers and AI companies alike.

Insights

As Reddit sells its human conversations to train AI, can it protect the authenticity that makes its data so valuable?
Since Reddit now powers AI search results, how must brands fundamentally change their online strategy to stay relevant?
With user data now a core asset for Reddit, what is the future for the unpaid moderators who curate it?