Tencent leads $300M funding round at $3B valuation

On February 11, 2019, Reddit confirmed it had raised $300 million in a Series D round that pushed its post-money valuation to $3 billion, up from roughly $1.8 billion in 2017. The round was anchored by a $150 million investment from Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings, with participation from existing backers including Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz and Quiet Capital. Reddit said the capital would fund international expansion and a build-out of its advertising business as it sought to compete for ad dollars with Facebook and Google.

The Tencent investment immediately provoked backlash among Reddit's user base, who viewed a company tied to China's 'Great Firewall' censorship apparatus as an awkward fit for a platform built around free expression. Users flooded the site with posts featuring imagery banned in China, such as Tiananmen Square and Winnie the Pooh memes, daring the company to censor them. The episode became an early flashpoint in long-running tensions between Reddit's commercial ambitions and its community's free-speech identity.