Social network Reddit reveals plans to go public

After months of speculation, the popular social media site Reddit has finally announced that it is filing for an initial public offering.

Late Wednesday night, the popular social platform Reddit announced that it had started the process of making the company public. The company filed a confidential S-1 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to go public.

Per SEC regulations, it cannot provide any details about shares or prices until after a quiet period is over to protect trade secrets from being leaked before an initial public offering (IPO) date is set. The SEC filing confirmed long-running rumors about Reddit’s plans for a public offering.

Back in August, Reddit raised $700 million in fresh funding, making it worth more than $10 billion. In a recent update, Reddit stated that it had made $100 million in ad revenue for the second quarter of 2021, which represents a nearly 200% increase over the previous year.

“The initial public offering is expected to occur after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions,” Reddit stated in a filing with the SEC.

Reddit competes with ad-supported social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. According to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, the firm has grown up in the shadow of Facebook, now called Meta, and Google, and every dollar the company makes is a struggle. On the other hand, Reddit has already established its cryptocurrency in the form of Reddit Community Points, or RCPs.

Related: Reddit to reportedly tokenize karma points and onboard 500M new users

As of August, Reddit boasted about 52 million daily users and more than 100,000 active subreddits. Reddit is a forum where seasoned traders congregate to share their expertise, as well as a popular gathering spot for notorious meme stock r/Wallstreetbets, which has had a big influence on stock and crypto markets this year with its retail trading and pumping tactics. The group’s popularity prompted the creation of crypto counterpart r/SatoshiStreetB, which now has 509,000 members.