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Social network Reddit's IPO is an 'AI play,' says Herb Greenberg

Key Points
  • Reddit "is an AI play," said Herb Greenberg, Editor of "Herb Greenberg | On the Street" on Substack, on CNBC's Last Call Thursday.
  • The social media company mentioned licensing its data as a potential new area of revenue growth in its IPO filing.
OpenAI's Sam Altman is major Reddit backer as it files to go public on NYSE
VIDEO2:1602:16
OpenAI's Sam Altman is major Reddit backer as it files to go public on NYSE

Reddit disclosed 2023 revenue growth of 20% and said its core business relies on online advertising sales when it filed to go public on Thursday. But the social media company can attract more than advertisers.

"This is an AI play," Herb Greenberg, Editor of "Herb Greenberg | On the Street" on Substack, explained on CNBC's Last Call Thursday.

"If you go through the prospectus, the first thing you see is the talk that they're using this to train large language models -- and that's true," Greenberg said.

Reddit cut a $60 million deal with Google on Thursday for the tech giant to train its AI models on the social network's data.

"They talk about the revenue they're going to get from that from licensing that data," Greenberg said. "However, you could argue that most of the good, valuable data has already been given away. And they're just now starting to license it."