American social news and discussion site
Reddit, Inc. is the Delaware-incorporated social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion platform founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian, and Aaron Swartz.
The site - structured as a network of user-created "subreddits" across roughly 100,000 active communities - draws more than 90 million daily active users and over a billion monthly unique visitors, making it one of the ten most-visited websites in the world.
Operational headquarters are at 548 Market Street in San Francisco (the same building that houses Anthropic), with offices in New York, Chicago, Dublin, London, Sydney, and Toronto.
Annual revenue crossed 1 billion US dollars in 2024, driven by advertising, licensed data feeds to AI training companies (Reddit's early 2024 Google data-licensing deal was reportedly worth 60 million US dollars per year), and its Reddit Premium subscription service.
Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange on March 21, 2024 under the ticker RDDT via a traditional IPO, pricing at 34 US dollars per share and closing its first day at 50.44, one of the most anticipated consumer tech IPOs of 2024. The legal parent is Reddit, Inc., a Delaware C-Corporation.
Reddit's March 2024 IPO was the most-studied consumer tech listing of the year and illustrates how Delaware corporate law supports an unusually complex pre-IPO cap table.
Reddit was acquired by Advance Publications (the Newhouse family's holding company) in 2006, spun back out as an independent Delaware C-Corp in 2011, and then raised nine rounds of venture capital from Y Combinator, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Tencent, Vy Capital, Fidelity, and others - accumulating more than 1.5 billion US dollars in primary capital before its IPO.
Managing a cap table that complex through pre-IPO SAFE conversions, option pool expansions, anti-dilution adjustments, founder stock repurchases, and employee RSU grants required Delaware General Corporation Law's flexibility around authorized share counts, preferred-stock series (Reddit had Series A through Series F), and certificate-amendment procedures.
Reddit's IPO certificate of incorporation authorizes Class A common stock (one vote, publicly traded as RDDT on NYSE) and Class B common stock (ten votes, held by Steve Huffman and other pre-IPO insiders), the standard dual-class structure used by nearly every founder-led Delaware tech company that has gone public since Google's 2004 IPO.
One novel feature of Reddit's IPO was the directed share program that allocated approximately 8 percent of the offering to Reddit users (moderators of the largest subreddits and long-standing Reddit Gold subscribers), letting core community members buy at the IPO price rather than chasing the stock at market open.
Directed share programs are SEC-regulated but legal in any US state; Delaware's clean governance framework made the drafting straightforward. Reddit is also notable as a Delaware C-Corp navigating active content-moderation, Section 230, and generative-AI litigation - areas where Delaware's Chancery Court has relevant precedent on director fiduciary duties when companies face existential regulatory risk.
Reddit raised primary capital at its IPO, approximately 748 million US dollars in new money, which a direct listing cannot provide (direct listings only sell existing shares).
Reddit also wanted the underwriter-sponsored investor education that comes with a traditional IPO roadshow, particularly because Reddit's business model (advertising plus data licensing to AI companies) was novel enough that institutional investors needed hands-on explanation. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan led the offering.
Reddit set aside approximately 8 percent of its IPO allocation for longtime users, moderators of the largest subreddits, contributors with ten or more years of karma, and Reddit Gold subscribers. Eligible users who opted in could buy at the IPO offering price of 34 US dollars rather than chasing the stock at market open (it closed first day at 50.44).
Directed share programs are SEC-regulated and fully legal; Reddit's was unusually large and represented a novel attempt to align user community with shareholder community.
Yes. Going public does not change your state of incorporation. Reddit, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware when it was acquired by Advance Publications in 2006, remained Delaware-incorporated through its 2011 spinout, stayed Delaware-incorporated through its nine venture rounds, and remains Delaware-incorporated post-IPO.
The registered agent is the Corporation Trust Company at 1209 N Orange Street in Wilmington, the same address used by most large Delaware C-Corps.
Reddit's Delaware certificate of incorporation authorizes Class A common (one vote per share, publicly traded as RDDT) and Class B common (ten votes per share, held by founders and select pre-IPO insiders). Steve Huffman holds Class B shares, giving him outsized voting power relative to his economic equity stake.
Delaware General Corporation Law § 151 explicitly permits unequal-voting share classes, and NYSE listing rules allow dual-class stock at IPO. Class B converts to Class A on transfer or at sunset triggers specified in the certificate.
