Reddit set aside 8 percent of its IPO shares for the people who built it for free: its users and moderators. The site was nearly 19 years old by then. It had grown from a link board started by two college friends into a sprawl of communities on everything from parenting to quitting drinking. Volunteers ran most of them. Reddit filed in February 2024, as AI companies were paying for human conversation to train their models, and Reddit had two decades of it.

Two Roommates and a Link Board

Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian founded Reddit in June 2005, right after college, with backing from Y Combinator. Users posted links, and votes pushed the best ones up the page. Condé Nast bought the site in 2006. Huffman later left, then came back as CEO in 2015. Reddit's founding idea held: a real place shaped by real people, with moderators instead of editors.

Fifty Dollars by the Close

Reddit priced its IPO at $34 a share on March 20, 2024, and listed on the NYSE as RDDT the next day. It opened at $47 and closed at $50.44, up 48 percent. Just before the IPO it signed a deal letting Google use its posts to train AI. In late 2024 Reddit turned its first quarterly profit, and its user numbers climbed as Google search sent more people its way. Reddit still trades on the NYSE as RDDT.

Cover: Forum Romanum, Rome, Bisson Frères. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for the Roman Forum (the town square of the internet).