Reddit looks to AI search as its next big opportunity
RedditReddit(US:RDDT) TechCrunch·2026-02-05 23:20

Core Insights - Reddit's AI-powered search engine is viewed as a significant business opportunity, with potential to impact revenue despite not being monetized yet [1] - The company believes generative AI search will outperform traditional search for many queries, particularly those requiring multiple perspectives [1][2] - Weekly active users for search increased by 30% over the past year, from 60 million to 80 million, while AI-powered Reddit Answers grew from 1 million to 15 million users [2] Product Development - Reddit is modernizing its AI answers interface to include more media-rich responses, with pilot programs already in progress [3] - The company plans to merge its AI search feature with traditional search to enhance user experience, having made significant progress in this unification [5] User Engagement and Personalization - Starting in Q3 2026, Reddit will eliminate the distinction between logged-in and logged-out users to personalize the site using AI and machine learning [4] - The content licensing business, which allows other companies to train their AI models on Reddit's data, is also growing, contributing to non-ad revenue [5] Financial Performance - Reddit's "other" revenue, which includes content licensing, increased by 8% year-over-year to $36 million in Q4 and rose 22% to $140 million for the year 2025 [5]

Reddit looks to AI search as its next big opportunity - Reportify