What happened
On March 21, 2024, Reddit began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker 'RDDT' after pricing its IPO at $34 a share, the top of its expected range. The stock opened at $47, climbed as high as $57.80 intraday, and closed at $50.44, a roughly 48% first-day gain that gave the company a market capitalization of about $9.5 billion. Reddit and selling shareholders raised around $750 million in the offering, with Reddit itself netting roughly $519 million. It was the first IPO by a major social media company since Pinterest in 2019.
The debut capped nearly two decades as a private company and a long, uneven road to public markets, arriving at a valuation below the $10 billion figure Reddit had targeted in private fundraising in 2021. In an unusual move, Reddit reserved a portion of shares for some of its most active moderators and users through a directed-share program, acknowledging the unpaid community labor underpinning the platform. The listing turned Reddit's user-generated content and emerging AI data-licensing deals into a publicly scrutinized business.