How Reddit's Ad Sales Made Steve Huffman A Billionaire

Forbes

Strong ad sales have propelled Steve Huffman into the billionaire ranks. Now he’s charting a new course, aiming to become invaluable to AI companies.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicahunter-hart/2025/11/02/reddits-ceo-debuts-as-a-steve-huffman-billionaire-20-years-after-cofounding-the-company/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

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00:00Today on Forbes, Reddit's CEO debuts as a billionaire 20 years after co-founding the company.

00:08Reddit has hit its stride. After trudging through 19 years of almost entirely losing money,

00:15the platform recorded its first quarterly profit as a public company a year ago

00:19and just posted its most lucrative financials yet. Last week, the company announced a net

00:25income of $163 million, marking five consecutive quarters of profitability, about a year and a half

00:33after going public. The market rewarded the company. Reddit's stock closed at $208.95 on Friday,

00:41October 31st, up 7.5% from the previous day and up 75% year over year. It was enough to have bumped

00:49the fortune of co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman up to $1.2 billion. As of Wednesday, the stock had

00:58closed at just under $200. On the company earnings call last week, Huffman said, quote,

01:05Q3 was a strong quarter. On the call, he also lauded Reddit as being, quote,

01:11for humans by humans, and seemed to take a subtle dig at AI slop, slop being the low-quality AI content

01:18clogging corners of the internet, saying, quote,

01:22Reddit is in a unique position. We're not trying to be the next anything. We're focused on being

01:27the best version of ourselves and what the internet needs most, a place where people can connect on

01:32almost any topic and find genuinely useful information. Authentic human recommendations

01:38are a hot commodity these days. As bots and sponsored content crowd the internet, Reddit is often seen as a

01:45more reliable source of information, and its popularity has exploded in the past couple of

01:50years. Daily active users have approximately doubled since the summer of 2023. Google searches

01:57increasingly surface links to Reddit. Organic search to the platform is up over 560% from two years ago,

02:04per data from digital marketing firm SEMrush. Given that Facebook, Twitter, which is now X,

02:11and LinkedIn long ago minted a class of early 2000s social media billionaires, it may seem surprising

02:18that Huffman is so late to join that club. After all, Reddit was the world's seventh most visited

02:24website in September, according to SimilarWeb. That was ahead of LinkedIn, TikTok, and Netflix.

02:31But that's because Huffman, now 41 years old, unloaded his founder's stake in the then-startup in 2006.

02:38About a year after launching the company in June 2005, he and his partner Alexis Ohanian,

02:45now a venture capitalist married to tennis icon Serena Williams, sold out to Condé Nast for just

02:51$10 million. It seemed an enormous sum for them at the time, the pair has said since.

02:57Without any plans for monetization, and overwhelmed with running the exploding platform with just a few

03:03employees, they viewed the acquisition as a rescue. Perhaps in the short term, but long term,

03:09they left massive sums on the table. By 2014, the company was valued at $500 million.

03:16Ohanian, who joined Reddit's board in 2014, but left in 2020, has said he did reacquire some shares

03:23while on the board, but likely gets most of his fortune from his many startup investments.

03:28Huffman, on the other hand, appears to be Reddit's biggest individual shareholder these days.

03:34That's because Reddit poached him back in 2015 to help navigate a streak of operational crises.

03:40His pay-for-performance compensation package has since allowed him to amass 3.1 million shares,

03:46or a 2.3% stake in the company.

03:48The rest of his fortune lies in Reddit stock options and $190 million in cash and other

03:54investments, Forbes estimates. Huffman declined to comment for this story.

03:59While generous stock awards are common among the billionaire CEO set, for example, Tesla investors

04:05are even weighing whether to approve a $1 trillion compensation package for Elon Musk Thursday,

04:12generally, it's rare for an executive to build up such a significant stake essentially from scratch.

04:17In its 2024 IPO document, the company explained that it had massively increased the compensation

04:24of Huffman and COO Jen Wong the previous year because their packages had not been

04:30providing the incentive initially intended. Huffman's ballooned to $193.2 million in 2023.

04:39As for Reddit's future, Huffman appears confident in its value and unfazed by new challenges,

04:45saying last week, quote,

04:48No matter what you're going through, someone on Reddit has already been there, done that,

04:52and shared the story. The best pitch for Reddit is Reddit's content.

04:58For full coverage, check out Monica Hunter Hart's piece on Forbes.com.

05:04This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

05:15Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:16ие日もいます.

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