Reddit COO targets 1 billion users as internet’s ‘odd duck’ aims for new heights

Reddit accidentally built one of the world's most valuable archives of human conversation. Now it wants to turn that into a billion-user business

For much of its existence, Reddit has occupied the internet’s stranger fringes. Users vote posts up or down, propelling some to viral fame (or infamy), and organize themselves into communities, known as subreddits. 

At its worst, the site has harbored hateful rhetoric, conspiracy theories and misinformation, forcing the company to ban entire communities when discussions spiral into extremism or violence. Yet Reddit is also home to some oddly moving exchanges between strangers, mundane advice on everyday life, and impassioned debates between far-flung enthusiasts.

“We were an odd duck a decade ago, but things have changed,” Reddit COO Jen Wong tells Fortune. In a world filled with deepfakes and AI slop, she argues, “the most radical thing a platform can offer is people talking to people.”

That proposition appears to be paying off.

Lately, while Reddit’s seedier side persists, the platform has broadened its appeal as millions of new users have flocked to its forums. The site went public in 2024 and became profitable for the first time in its history, driven by a swell in users and advertising revenue. 

The platform now attracts more than 120 million daily users across over 100,000 active communities. In the U.K., its second largest user base after the U.S., more than half are women. 

Whether it’s choosing a skincare routine, planning a holiday, or navigating a career change, Reddit has become an unlikely repository of lived experience. “There is, quite literally, something for everyone,” Wong says—her own favorites are subreddits dedicated to vintage cameras and sourdough pizza. The challenge is turning those communities into a bigger business without undermining what made them valuable. “It’s really important that the ideas on Reddit come from real people,” Wong says. “That is everything.”

Open for business

Reddit was slow to develop its advertising business. While ads were first sold on the social media site in 2006, investment in ad tech didn’t follow until 2018.

“Our users are famously skeptical of marketing, and communities are quick to call out anything that feels forced,” Wong says. That attitude hasn’t changed, she argues, but the company’s approach to business has evolved. In its latest quarterly results, 94% of Reddit’s revenue came from advertising.

Brands now have two ways to participate. The first is conventional advertising: promoted posts designed to match the conversations users are already having, without relying on years of cross-platform tracking. The second is more delicate. Reddit has introduced brand accounts for customer service and product discussions, while experimenting with commerce features that formalize the buying and recommending already happening across the platform.

Whether Reddit’s famously skeptical users will embrace the shift remains unclear. Many subreddits prohibit overt self-promotion, while others have developed their own rules around authenticity and disclosure. “I think there was a myth that our communities would be against commercialization,” Wong says. “That’s not true, so long as you’re adding value to the user.”

The bigger challenge may be preserving the balance of power that helped to differentiate Reddit from other social media platforms. Unlike most social networks, Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to establish community rules and police discussions. “They’re not on our payroll, and they don’t want to be,” Wong says. “They are independent thinkers.”

That independence is one of Reddit’s strengths, but it also constrains how aggressively the company can commercialize the platform. Every advertising product and brand partnership depends on volunteers who have little incentive to prioritize the company’s commercial ambitions over their communities.

The AI opportunity

But the company’s real value may lie in the millions of conversations taking place across the platform every day.

As internet users search for genuine recommendations, Reddit has become a top destination for answers that feel more trustworthy than overly-polished marketing copy or SEO-driven websites—so much so that it became one of the most searched terms on Google in the U.S. “This corpus of human conversation and intelligence has become increasingly appreciated because it’s a real, authentic experience,” Wong says.

That authenticity has also made Reddit valuable to AI companies. In 2024, the platform signed licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, creating a new revenue stream by selling legal access to its archive of conversations for AI training and products. It’s shaking up the digital economy. For years, platforms primarily monetized content through advertising, but Reddit is betting that the conversations themselves can become a product, licensing access to AI companies. 

Such a strategy, though, isn’t without risk. If AI-generated content begins infiltrating Reddit itself, or if users feel they’re creating unpaid training data for tech companies, it might undermine the authenticity that made its archive valuable in the first place. 

The billion-user ambition

Wong believes Reddit is still in the early stages of its evolution. “We are very early in our monetization journey and in our product journey. The goal is 1 billion users,” she says.

Going forward, Reddit wants to support the real-world communities that emerge from the platform, from local running clubs to hobbyist meet-ups organized by people who first encountered one another online. “It’s weird and slightly counterintuitive,” Wong laughs, “but people are coming online to find a community so they can enjoy moments in real life, away from screens. We want to encourage that.”

Reaching 1 billion daily users and capitalizing on the AI boom could increase the company’s valuation, but only if it preserves the uniquely human conversations that initially attracted users, advertisers and AI companies to the platform. “We are a pillar of the internet,” Wong says confidently. Whether the site can stay that way remains to be seen.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com