Reddit Bets on AI Search as Next Revenue Engine Amid Surging Usage
Executives emphasised that generative AI search could outperform traditional search for many queries
Reddit is positioning its AI-powered search as a major future revenue driver, telling investors during its fourth-quarter earnings call that the opportunity in generative search is vast, even though monetisation has yet to begin.
The company said it is working to merge its traditional search with AI-powered Reddit Answers into a unified experience. So far, the company has already launched two new AI-powered advertising features designed to help brands better engage with users by leveraging the platform’s active conversations.
Executives emphasised that generative AI search could outperform traditional search for many queries. “There’s a type of query we’re, I think, particularly good at — I would argue, the best on the internet — which is questions that have no answers, where the answer actually is multiple perspectives from lots of people,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
He added that traditional search functions more like navigation, helping users find links or subreddits, but large language models can perform that role as well. “So that’s the direction we’re going.”
Search engagement is rising quickly. Weekly active users for Reddit search grew from 60 million to 80 million over the past year, while AI-powered Reddit Answers climbed from 1 million weekly users in early 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter. “We’re seeing a lot of growth there, and I think there’s a lot of potential too,” Huffman added.
Reddit is enhancing its AI answers with richer media and personalisation while expanding its content licensing business, which generated $36 million in “other” revenue in Q4.
Interestingly, last year, Reddit filed lawsuits against Perplexity AI Inc. and three data-scraping firms — SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy — accusing them of illegally harvesting Reddit’s copyrighted content to train AI models.
It also filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, accusing it of using Reddit’s content to train its models without a proper licensing agreement.
