What happened
On October 31, 2006, roughly 16 months after launch, Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to magazine publisher Condé Nast Publications, a subsidiary of the privately held media conglomerate Advance Publications. Reported figures for the deal ranged from $10 million to $20 million, a substantial outcome for a venture that had been seeded with about $12,000 from Y Combinator. The founders and Aaron Swartz relocated to San Francisco as part of the acquisition, and Reddit was initially folded into Condé Nast's digital operations under Wired Digital.
The purchase proved to be one of the most lucrative bets in Advance's history. The company's relatively modest investment was reported to be worth on the order of $2 billion when Reddit completed its initial public offering in 2024. In the near term, however, the acquisition placed a fast-moving, community-driven website inside a traditional print-publishing corporation, a cultural mismatch that contributed to friction with the founding team and to both Huffman's and Ohanian's eventual departures in 2009.