The US social media platform Reddit, known as the “US version of Tieba,” submitted an IPO application on Thursday.

According to the financial details disclosed,Reddit plans to raise up to US$748 million, with a valuation of US$6.4 billion (approximately RMB 46 billion)It is expected to be officially launched on March 21.

Although this valuation is lower than the peak of $10 billion in 2021, Reddit's IPO is still attracting widespread attention as one of the high-profile newly listed companies in 2024.

listing on Reddit,It will be one of the largest initial public offerings to date in 2024.

According to published documents, Reddit will sell approximately 22 million shares in the price range of $31 to $34 per share. The stock will begin trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock code “RDDT.”

It's worth mentioning that Reddit also reserved approximately 1.76 million shares for some eligible users and moderators (Redditors). Users must create an account before January 1, 2024 to participate in this IPO and buy shares. Unlike other investors, these users aren't limited by the lockdown period and can sell shares as soon as they go public on Reddit.

“Beating the Empty Head” made Reddit famous

According to reports, Reddit was founded in 2006, and the most popular time was in early 2021. At that time, the US stock capital market set off a fierce “retail war.”

The incident was mainly caused byPromoted by US retail investors on the Reddit online forum WallStreetBets (WallStreetBets)They rallied to buy Meme stocks such as GME in large numbers to counter those shorting hedge funds.

Thanks to the enthusiasm of retail investors, GME's stock price skyrocketed in a short period of time, causing huge losses to institutional investors who were shorting.

Point72 (hedge fund) lost 750 million US dollars, Citadel (hedge fund) lost 2 billion US dollars, and Melvin (100 billion asset star hedge fund) announced the closure of the position.

The emptying incident attracted widespread attention around the world.

According to reports, during Reddit's Gamestop crackdown in early 2021, the number of installs in the US market increased from 1.8 million last month to 2.8 million, an increase of 56% over the previous month. Reddit's ad revenue also increased. In the second quarter, ad revenue reached 100 million US dollars for the first time, nearly three times that of the same period of the previous year.

According to a regulatory document,In the three months ending December 31, 2023, Reddit had an average of 73.1 million daily active users, that is, users who have used the platform at least once a day.

According to the prospectus, Reddit's revenue in 2022 and 2023 was US$667 million and US$804 million, respectively; operating losses were US$172 million and US$140 million, respectively; and net losses were US$159 million and US$90.82 million, respectively.

The three mountains behind Reddit

According to information disclosed in the prospectus, Reddit's majority shareholder is the American publishing company Advance, which has a shareholding ratio of 34.5%.

Reddit's second-largest shareholder is our domestic Tencent, with a shareholding ratio of 11.7%.

What's most shocking is that Reddit's third-largest shareholder is Sam Altman, the boss of Open AI. Sam Altman owns 8.7% of Reddit's shares, including 4.5% Class A shares and 9.3% Class B shares.

Altman's collaboration with Reddit dates back to 2014, when Altman invested in Reddit's Series B funding. Reddit also invested in Reddit's Series C funding in July 2017, and Reddit was valued at 1.8 billion US dollars at the time.

According to information, after the former CEO of Reddit left his job,Sam Altman briefly served as the interim CEO of Reddit for 8 days.

Altman said at the time, “In my very short term, Reddit increased the number of users compared to Hacker NewsThe total number of users is even higher”.

“While my 8 days as Reddit's CEO were fun, I'm happy they're coming to an end and I'm sure the new team will do a better job and take Reddit to a higher level.”

Selling content to train AI models

Notably, Reddit's IPO file mentions that the company plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to expand its revenue stream, which is in line with Sam Altman's work priorities at OpenAI. This suggests that Altman may continue to play a strategic role in the future development of Reddit, especially in the application of AI technology.

Furthermore,The company also recently signed a $60 million annual content license agreement with Google to help train the search engine's artificial intelligence model.

“In a world increasingly saturated with AI-generated content, we expect users to increasingly seek out and value new ideas, and models will need to update their learning from those ideas. As artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques become more common and used, we believe Reddit data will increase in importance,” the company said in its IPO filing.