The long-running dearth of IPOs could be coming to a close, partly due to Reddit’s upcoming public debut. Expected to list this month, Reddit saw its valuation soar during the pandemic. Now, the company is fighting to retain as much of its final private-market price in its public offering. The company’s sheer size — more than $800 million in revenue last year — is partially marred by its continued unprofitability. But investors love nothing more than a growth story, and Reddit has that in spades. It turns out that the endless reams of text and memes that Reddit’s myriad users generate every day is digital gold for the forum giant — as long as AI companies need data to train their models, that is. If Reddit’s IPO does well, it could wiggle open the public-offering window just a little bit wider than we’ve seen in quarters and quarters. Of course, the public offering could also fizzle out like an unpopular opinion downvoted to hell on the site. But with an AI-friendly growth story to tell, Reddit may have timed its ramp toward the public markets just right.
