Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian while they were at the University of Virginia. The site launched as part of Y Combinator’s very first batch. It’s organized into user-created communities called subreddits, each focused on a specific topic — from programming and science to niche hobbies.
The platform went through a turbulent period in the mid-2010s but stabilized under Huffman’s return as CEO in 2015. Reddit went public on the NYSE in March 2024 under the ticker RDDT, with an initial valuation around $6.4 billion. By late 2024, the company’s market cap had grown well beyond that figure.
Reddit pulls in roughly 1.7 billion monthly visits and hosts over 100,000 active subreddits. The site’s upvote/downvote system lets communities self-moderate content, while volunteer moderators handle day-to-day rule enforcement. Reddit’s API and developer tools have fostered a large ecosystem of third-party apps and bots, though a controversial API pricing change in 2023 shut down many popular third-party clients.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Reddit has around 2,000 employees. The platform’s advertising business has grown steadily, and it’s also become a surprisingly important data source for AI training — the company signed licensing deals with Google and other AI firms. Reddit’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) format has hosted conversations with presidents, scientists, and celebrities.
