Reddit Looks To Ai Search As Its Next Big Opportunity

Reddit suggested connected Thursday that its AI-powered hunt motor could beryllium nan adjacent large opportunity for its business — not conscionable successful position of product, but arsenic a gross driver impacting its bottommost line. During nan company’s fourth-quarter net telephone connected Thursday, nan institution offered an update connected its plans to merge accepted and AI hunt together and hinted that though hunt is not yet monetized, “it’s an tremendous marketplace and opportunity.”

In particular, nan institution believes that generative AI hunt will beryllium “better for astir queries.”

“There’s a type of query we’re, I think, peculiarly bully astatine — I would argue, nan champion connected nan net — which is questions that person nary answers, wherever nan reply really is aggregate perspectives from tons of people,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.

Traditional search, meanwhile, is much for illustration navigation — it’s a measurement to find nan correct nexus to a taxable aliases subreddit, he said. But LLMs tin beryllium bully astatine this too, if not better, he said. “So that’s nan guidance we’re going.”

The exec besides noted that play progressive users for hunt complete nan past twelvemonth grew 30% from 60 cardinal users to 80 cardinal users. Meanwhile, nan play progressive users for nan AI-powered Reddit Answers grew from 1 cardinal successful nan first 4th of 2025 to 15 cardinal by nan 4th quarter.

“We’re seeing a batch of maturation there, and I deliberation there’s a batch of imaginable too,” Huffman added.

Reddit said it’s moving to modernize nan AI answers interface by making its responses much media-rich, and pilots of this are already underway.

The institution is besides reasoning astir really it tin position itself erstwhile it’s not conscionable a societal site, but a spot group travel for answers. Reddit told investors connected nan telephone that it’s doing distant pinch nan favoritism betwixt logged-in and logged-out users starting successful Q3 2026, arsenic it will purpose to personalize nan tract — utilizing AI and instrumentality learning — and make it applicable to whomever shows up.

The institution announced successful 2025 it was planning to combine its AI hunt feature, Reddit Answers, pinch its accepted hunt motor to amended nan acquisition for extremity users. In nan 4th quarter, Reddit said it had made “significant progress” successful unifying its halfway hunt and its AI feature. It besides released 5 caller languages connected Reddit Answers and is piloting move agents on pinch hunt results that see “media beyond text.”

Though Reddit sees worth successful its AI answers, it’s not been keeping that to itself. The company’s contented licensing business, which allows different companies to train their AI models connected its data, is growing, too. That business gross is reported arsenic portion of Reddit’s “other” revenues (i.e., its non-ad revenue). This “other” gross accrued by 8% year-over-year to scope $36 cardinal successful Q4, and was up 22% to scope $140 cardinal for 2025.