Reddit signs ~$60M/year AI data deal with Google

On February 22, 2024, Reddit announced a content-licensing agreement reportedly worth roughly $60 million a year that gives Google access to Reddit's vast trove of user-generated posts and comments to train its AI models and improve products such as Google Search. In exchange, Reddit gained access to Google's Vertex AI models to enhance its own internal site search and other features. The deal was disclosed in the same window that Reddit filed its IPO paperwork, underscoring data licensing as a central pillar of the company's path to profitability.

The arrangement marked one of the first high-profile, openly disclosed deals in which a major platform monetized its user content for AI training rather than seeing it scraped for free. It signaled a broader industry shift toward paid content-licensing partnerships between AI developers and the sites that host human-written discussion. For Reddit, the recurring revenue helped reframe its investment story ahead of going public and set the template for subsequent agreements, including a later partnership with OpenAI.