Reddit officially made its debut as a publicly traded company on Thursday. The social media company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the RDDT ticker. Reddit launched in 2005 with a simple idea: anyone could submit links for others to vote on to create a “front page of the internet.” Those votes led to customized pages of recommended links and content for each user. Much of that is still in Reddit’s DNA.

This moment is almost two decades in the making, but before we jump into how well Reddit did on its public debut, let’s take a look at some major milestones from the company over the years.

Major Milestones

• June 23, 2005: Reddit is founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
• Oct. 31, 2006: Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast Publications for a reported $10 to $20 million and moved the company to San Francisco.
• January 2008: Subreddits are born.
• January 2009: The “I Am A” subreddit was created, becoming one of the most popular subreddits to date. The forum often hosts Ask Me Anything sessions with notable people.
• October 2009: Huffman and Ohanian part ways with Reddit.
• November 2014: Ohanian joins Reddit’s board as executive chairman. (He later stepped down on June 5, 2020, and called to be replaced by a Black person in response to the murder of George Floyd. Five days later, Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel was inducted into Reddit’s board.)
• July 10, 2015: Huffman rejoins Reddit as CEO, a role he still holds today.
• May 31, 2017: Reddit sunsets default subreddits and introduces the r/popular landing page for more inclusivity.
• April 2018: Reddit unveiled a new design for its website and introduced its famous logo, Snoo.
• Dec. 13, 2020: Reddit acquires Dubsmash to integrate video creation tools.
• March 21: 2024: Reddit begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

A Historic IPO

Nearly 19 years after its inception, Reddit finally went public. The company’s mascot, Snoo, was on deck at the NYSE to ring the opening bell on Thursday. Reddit priced its IPO at $34 per share, but the stock opened at $47 and reached a high of $57.80 on Thursday. Reddit’s market cap reached $9.5 billion on opening day, exceeding its target of $6.4 billion, and shares closed at $50.44 each. Reddit and its selling shareholders raised $748 million, which is what the company was targeting.

Reddit originally filed to go public in December 2021 following the GameStop meme stock saga, but after hitting some roadblocks, the company decided to delay its public offering. It’s clear that now was the best time for the social media network to make its debut on the stock market. Reddit filed to offer 22 million shares for its IPO while reserving 8% of shares to offer to eligible users, board members, and family and friends of employees.

One unexpected person who netted millions of dollars from Reddit’s public debut is OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, who holds 9% of the company’s shares. The shares he controls were worth $613 million at closing price on Thursday. Altman is a close friend of Huffman and has known Reddit’s CEO since the social network’s launch years ago. The pair met during their time as part of the inaugural Y-Combinator class. If you’re wondering where all of those entrepreneurs ended up, check out this read.

Reddit is the first social media company to go public in nearly five years. Before Reddit, Pinterest was the last social network to hit the stock market on April 18, 2019, at $19 per share, with a high of $24.40 on opening day. It’s obvious the market has a larger appetite for social media stocks right now, as Reddit joins the likes of Meta, Snap, and others.

Reddit boasts an estimated 850 million monthly active users and around 73 million daily users. The company has yet to turn an annual profit, but we can expect to see some positive dollar signs for Reddit soon.

I’ll continue following Reddit’s successful public debut and report on the big news here.

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