As Reddit inches towards an initial public offering nearly twenty years after its founding, we now know exactly who the social media's top shareholders are.
They include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, China's Tencent Holdings, Fidelity Investments and Advance Publications.
The largest single shareholder is Advance Publications which holds just over 30% of Reddit's shares and 34% of the voting power.
Advance also owns magazine publisher Condé Nast and local news publisher American City Business Journals, the parent company of the San Francisco Business Times and the Silicon Valley Business Journal. It acquired Reddit through its ownership of Wired magazine, which bought Reddit in 2006 as part of a plan to expand Wired's digital arm.
Tencent is Reddit's second largest shareholder with 11% of shares via two of its subsidiaries: Tencent Cloud Europe BV and Jojoba Investment Limited.
Fidelity holds 8.4% of Reddit's shares through various entities and has 9.5% voting power.
Altman holds 8.7% of Reddit's shares through multiple entities including his investment firms Apollo Projects and Hydrazine Capital, and a holding company called Altman Holdco LLC. He has 9.2% voting power.
Reddit and Altman have a long history together going all the way back to 2005 when Altman and Reddit's co-founders participated in Y Combinator's first cohort. When Advance set Reddit up as an independent company in 2011, Altman would go on to invest in the spinout, in addition to serving on the company's board for seven years through 2021.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman hold 3.3% of the company's shares, and has 3.5% voting power. His total compensation last year, which was comprised almost entirely of stock-based awards, was worth $193 million.
Huffman co-founded Reddit in 2005 with former CEO Alexis Ohanian and the late Aaron Swartz, who died in 2013. (Ohanian has disputed Swartz's status as a co-founder; neither is mentioned in the company's S-1 filing.)
The company's current board consists of Huffman, J.D. Power CEO Dave Habiger, former Condé Nast CEO Bob Sauerberg, former Virgin America executive Porter Gale, Y Combinator managing director Michael Seibel, longtime media-industry executive Patricia Fili-Krushel, and Advance Publications co-president Steven O. Newhouse.
Bay Area IPO Watch 2023/2024
Founded by CEO Ali Ghodsi, San Francisco-based data management and analytics company Databricks has raised $3.5 billion and was valued at $38 billion in 2021.
Todd Johnson | San Francisco Business Times
Former Amazon executive Dave Clark joined San Francisco-based logistics company Flexport in 2022. The company has raised $2.5 billion and was valued at $8 billion in 2022.
Dan DeLong | for the Nashville Business Journal
South San Francisco-based Stripe has seemingly shelved its IPO plans, for now, and raised $6.5 billion in a Series I round in 2023.
Stripe
Long tipped as an IPO candidate, San Francisco-based Instacart confidentially filed for an IPO in early 2022 but never moved forward before slashing its internal valuation several times that year. As of April 2023, the company reportedly valued itself at $12 billion, down from $40 billion at the beginning of 2022.
Instacart
San Francisco-based wholesale marketplace Faire has raised $1.26 billion and was valued at more than $12 billion in 2022.
Faire
Burlingame-based mental health services provider Lyra Health has raised more than $900 million and was valued at $5.85 billion in 2022.
Lyra Health
South San Francisco-based Plenty Unlimited has raised $941 million and was valued at more than $1.4 billion in 2022.
Jim Vetter Photography
In April 2023, San Francisco-based blockchain developer Chia Network confidentially filed to go public. It has raised $112 million and was valued at $455 million in 2022.
Chia Networks
San Francisco-based car sharing company Turo filed for an IPO at the beginning of 2022 and disclosed heavy net losses. As of June 2023, it hasn't debuted yet.
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San Francisco-based social media site Reddit confidentially filed for a public debut in 2021 but subsequently delayed. The company has raised $1.3 billion and was valued at $10 billion in 2021.
Jason Henry/The New York Times
San Francisco-based health tech developer Komodo Health has raised around $527 million and was valued at $3.3 billion in 2021.
Komodo Health f
San Francisco-based Plaid has raised more than $730 million and was valued at more than $13 billion in 2021.
Plaid
Formerly known as TripActions, Palo Alto-based Navan, which provides corporate travel management services, has raised a little over $2 billion, including a $100 million debt round. It was valued at more than $9 billion in 2022.
Job Portraits | Courtesy of TripActions
