What happened
On December 13, 2020, Reddit announced its first significant acquisition, buying the short-form video app Dubsmash in a cash-and-stock deal whose financial terms were not disclosed. Dubsmash was a TikTok-style platform built around lip-syncing and creative short videos, generating more than a billion monthly video views. It was notable for over-indexing on Black and female creators — by some accounts around a quarter of Black teens in the United States used it, and roughly 70% of its user base was female — giving Reddit access to a younger, more diverse creator community.
Reddit said it would operate Dubsmash as a separate brand while integrating its video-creation tools into the Reddit app, and Dubsmash's roughly dozen employees, including its three co-founders, joined Reddit. The deal underscored Reddit's strategic bet on video as it competed for attention in a market dominated by TikTok. Although Dubsmash as a standalone product was ultimately wound down, the acquisition advanced Reddit's video tooling and signaled the company's willingness to grow through M&A as it professionalized ahead of its public listing.