Reddit's first day as a publicly traded company was a pretty big success

It's been a long time in coming, but the Reddit forum and social networking website finally launched its IPO today on the New York Stock Exchange after first announcing its plans in December 2021. Reddit's first day as a publicly traded company got a lot of attention on the positive side from investors.

Reddit set the price for its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share which was on the high side of expectations. That allowed the company and its shareholders to raise $750 million, with Reddit itself keeping $519 million.

CNBC reports that when trading for Reddit began until the ticker name RDDT, the share price instantly went up to $47 a share. The price was as high as $57.80 at one point, but at the end of the NYSE trading day, the price settled down to $50.44 a share. That means Reddit currently has a market cap worth $9.5 billion.

One of Reddit's biggest shareholders is Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. CNBC says that on paper, Altman became $200 million richer today thanks to Reddit's IPO. The shares he now owns in the company are now worth over $613 million. Altman, and all other shareholders of Reddit, can't start selling their stock for another six months.

Over the last month, Reddit has revealed more of its financial and user numbers prior to today's IPO launch. It stated in February it had 267.5 million active weekly users, along with about 73 million daily users. Reddit said the site itself has 1 billion posts.

It also said that in 2023, Reddit had revenues of $804 million, but ran at a loss of $90.8 million last year. The huge majority of its revenue came from advertising, but the company said it plans to broaden out where it can get money, including monetizing its data and from its commerce division.

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