Reddit Valued At $3B After $300M Funding Round

Reddit has received $300 million in a Series D funding round from some notable investors, giving the company a new valuation of $3 billion. In addition, the investment will help the company take on ad revenue from companies like Facebook and Google and continue to expand globally, according to a report from CNBC.

Recently, even politicians like United States Senator Kamala Harris and companies like Toyota have turned to Reddit to deploy ad campaigns and try to connect with a younger demographic. The $3 billion valuation is up from $1.8 billion in 2017.

One of the most well-known companies to invest in Reddit is Chinese tech giant Tencent, which invested $150 million. Other investors include Sequoia, Snoop Dogg, Fidelity and Quiet Capital, among others.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told CNBC that Reddit wants to target the ad revenue from other social media giants. “When we are talking about competing for ad dollars, of course we are talking about Facebook and Google, who take up the vast majority of ad spend.” He also said that in terms of competition, “we are competing with anybody, or anywhere people spend their free time.”

Reddit, which was founded in 2005, has at times been under the microscope for rampant harassment and abuse issues. Huffman said the company has implemented tools to combat this kind of behavior, and that he’s made a commitment to advertisers to make sure the platform is “free from abuse and other kinds of misbehaving.”

“One of the things that’s been very important to us is that we can now assure advertisers that you are going to have a positive experience on Reddit and potentially even a new experience, a new way of connecting with customers,” Huffman said.

Reddit, which doesn’t disclose exact revenue but pulled in $100 million last year, has 330 million active monthly users, about 50 percent of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24, making the site a huge magnet for advertisers.

“We are reinventing the ads business, both on the technology side and our ability to sell it and to create a friendly home for users and brands alike,” Huffman said. “So we’ve made steady progress on all of these fronts over the last year, and we feel pretty proud of where we are. And as a result, we are seeing a lot of attention from both brands and investors.”