Reddit has a new AI training deal to sell user content

Reddit will let “an unnamed large AI company” have access to its user-generated content platform in a new licensing deal, according to Bloomberg yesterday. The deal, “worth about $60 million on an annualized basis,” the outlet writes, could still change as the company’s plans to go public are still in the works.

Whether or not that’s true — after all, one of the best ways to get around SEO spam in search results is to add the word “Reddit” to your search query — Reddit has shown that it’s willing to play hardball before. Last year, it successfully stonewalled its way out of the biggest protest in its history after changes to its third-party API access pricing caused developers of the most popular Reddit apps to shut down.

As Bloomberg writes, Reddit’s year-over-year revenue was up by 20 percent by the end of 2023, but it was still $200 million shy of a $1 billion target it had set two years prior. The company was reportedly advised to seek a $5 billion valuation when it opens up for public investment, which is expected to happen in March. That’s half the $10–$15 billion it might have achieved the last time it filed to go public in 2021, before a market downturn held it back.