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How Reddit CEO Steve Huffman got the upper hand with AI
Reddit's strategy focuses on enhancing user engagement and advertising effectiveness by leveraging AI to personalize user experiences while maintaining its core community-driven ethos. As the platform seeks to convert casual visitors into committed users, it must balance AI optimization with the authentic human interactions that define its brand identity.
FastCompany: Last fall, Chives took over Reddit. It started when a cook who belonged to the massive social site’s r/kitchenconfidential community pledged to practice his chive-cutting skills every day and post photos so that others could rate his technique. Thousands among the group’s 1.8 million weekly visitors weighed in, and soon he became known as “Chivelord.” All went well until day 31, when a commenter claimed that the latest image he’d posted was the same as the one from day 23, only flipped. A scandal—known, inevitably, as Chivegate—boiled over.
Chivelord confessed to the subterfuge, explaining that car troubles had prevented him from cutting chives that day. He was widely forgiven and resumed posting photos. Eventually, his redemption was cemented by an ad that Kraft’s Philadelphia brand ran on Reddit. “Some heroes chop chives every day until Reddit says they’re perfect,” it read. “We whip ours into cream cheese.” The incident was fascinating, funny, and, above all, human—in other words, classic Reddit. Among those watching and marveling was the company’s CEO, Steve Huffman.
No one could have predicted, he says, that “for whatever reason, everybody who uses Reddit was going to care about chives for the next two months. But I think those things are really delightful.” Serendipitous weirdness has been core to Reddit’s character since Huffman and Alexis Ohanian cofounded the site in 2005. But along the way, their brainchild also grew up into something far greater.
Reddit has become the internet’s indispensable wellspring of advice, opinion, and camaraderie on every topic imaginable: which new EVs are most exciting, how to find a job overseas, where to recycle scrap metal, what to do if your boyfriend is jealous of your pet fish. Helping people help other people has made Reddit the fifth-most-visited site in the United States and the eighth worldwide as of January, according to market intelligence firm Similarweb. Lately, it’s also made for a burgeoning financial success story.
Since the company’s March 2024 initial public offering, Reddit has beaten analyst expectations in every quarter, most recently by reporting Q4 2025 revenue of $726 million and net income of $252 million, up 70% and 254% year over year, respectively. For 2025 in total, revenue grew 69% to $2.2 billion; net income swung to $530 million from a $484 million loss. Those numbers are overwhelmingly attributable to Reddit’s growing skill in selling ads on its site, the source of 94% of its revenue.
Reddit is already so well established, popular, and increasingly adept at convincing marketers of its audience’s worth that you might wonder how much it has left to prove. As Huffman sees it, quite a lot. “We’ve got a home for everybody on Reddit,” he says. “Does the average person, when they open the app for the first time, believe and experience that? I think there’s a gap there.” The platform is hardly running short on new visitors. Its 471.6 million weekly active users represent 24% year-over-year growth. But U.S.
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The article discusses a significant strategy from a major platform like Reddit, focusing on the integration of AI in brand engagement, which is highly relevant to brand strategy professionals.