Sarah Gilbert spends a lot of time on Reddit. For the past three years, she’s helped moderate the r/AskHistorians subreddit, which has 2 million members and was the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation. She’s been a lurker on the forum since 2012.
But when the subject turns to Reddit’s upcoming IPO, Gilbert’s excitement wanes. The 19-year-old social media company set aside 8% of the shares in its offering for certain users and moderators, along with some company insiders and their friends and family members. Airbnb, Rivian and Doximity employed a similar model when they went public, as a way to reward power users or early customers.
Reddit’s initial public offering is different. While its predecessors hit the market during a record IPO stretch in 2020 and 2021, Reddit’s planned New York Stock Exchange debut this week will be the first major tech offering of the year, and lands after a major reckoning in the industry that was highlighted by tumbling valuations, reduced investment and an emphasis on profit over growth. The two venture-backed tech debuts of 2023 — Instacart and Klaviyo — failed to pop, a sign that getting in at the IPO price no longer equals free money.
It’s not just market conditions that have Reddit moderators like Gilbert forgoing the investment opportunity. Reddit has long had a rocky relationship with moderators and the site’s most dedicated users, or Redditors. Following a user protest last year stemming from a policy change that forced some third-party developers to pay more for use of the company’s application programming interface (API), Reddit CEO Steve Huffman compared site moderators to “landed gentry.”
Gilbert, who works as a research manager at Cornell University’s Citizens and Technology Lab, said the bad blood from the conflict has “really sort of knocked a lot of the goodwill and the energy” from those who had been spending the most time and effort on trying to build up communities on the site. It’s hard for her to now see the appeal in paying money to own a piece of the company and betting on its future.
“It’s like, OK, you’ve invested your time, you’ve invested your emotional well-being and put yourself at risk, now invest your money into this platform too,” Gilbert said. “It doesn’t really feel like Reddit is necessarily giving back, so much as it feels like maybe it’s asking for even more.”
Reddit founders Alexis Ohanian (L) and Steve Huffman (R)
Reddit
Reddit, a site with 60,000 daily active moderators hosting forums on topics from the mainstream to the extremely obscure, plans to sell shares at $31 to $34 a piece in its IPO, potentially valuing the company at around $6.5 billion, and trade under ticker symbol “RDDT.” At the tech market peak in 2021, Reddit was valued by private investors at $10 billion, according to PitchBook.
Reddit’s directed share program, or DSP, is intended for certain U.S.-based users with high site-wide reputations — measured in so-called Karma points — or for moderators, as a way to “recognize those who have contributed significantly to Reddit over the years,” the company said in explaining the offering. In total, Reddit said underwriters have reserved 1.76 million of the 8 million shares in the IPO for the DSP.
Some invitees say they’re worried about the company’s financial situation. Reddit recorded a net loss of $90.8 million last year, an improvement from 2022, when its deficit came it at $158.6 million. The company said in its prospectus that it’s racked up a cumulative loss of $716.6 million.
Reddit is competing for advertising dollars in a notoriously difficult market against the likes of Google and its YouTube service, Facebook‘s apps and TikTok. In its filing, Reddit also names as competitors Wikipedia, Snap, X, Pinterest, Roblox, Discord and Amazon’s Twitch.
A moderator with username BuckRowdy, who spoke on condition that his real name not be disclosed, told CNBC that he’s passing on the IPO, and said his sentiment appears to be widely shared.
“People do seem to have like a negative view that it’s going to go down immediately or you’re going to lose money,” said BuckRowdy, who moderates subreddits including r/UnresolvedMysteries and r/TrueCrime. “I don’t see anybody in any spaces I’m in that are taking it seriously, that are thinking of it as an investment or anything along those lines.”
Reddit didn’t provide a comment for this story.
Meme stocks
Of all companies, Reddit knows something about stock market volatility.
It’s a risk the company acknowledges in its IPO filing:
“Given the broad awareness and brand recognition of Reddit, including as a result of the popularity of r/ wallstreetbets among retail investors, and the direct access by retail investors to broadly available trading platforms, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could experience extreme volatility for reasons unrelated to our underlying business or macroeconomic or industry fundamentals, which could cause you to lose all or part of your investment if you are unable to sell your shares at or above the initial offering price.”
Joshua White, an assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University, said Reddit’s DSP could be “nice stocking stuff” if it were to follow the lead of companies that went public in 2020 and 2021.
“This is usually a good deal because really hot IPO stocks typically go up on the first day,” White said.
However, given the dearth of tech IPOs since the start of 2022, White said Reddit’s offering is “probably a little more risky.”
While there’s plenty of skepticism heading into the IPO, some Redditors appear poised to get in on the action, based on forum commentary.
A Reddit user with the handle FormicaDinette33 said in the r/RedditIPO subreddit that they plan to purchase 10 shares “just to experience the process,” while SpindriftRascal plans to spend $5,000, an amount allowing them to “to be happy if it does well and not care much if it tanks,” according to a post.
Sweatycat, a moderator of the r/IAmA and r/LifeProTips subreddits, plans to participate in the IPO, telling CNBC they “both like Reddit as a company and see this as a potentially good investment opportunity.” The Redditor, who asked not to be identified further, said other moderators may have “mixed feelings” about Reddit going public because of their “strained relationship” with management.
For wrestlegirl, who moderates the AEWOfficial subreddit for over 100,000 wrestling fans, the stock purchase program is “a nice enough thing to offer, but it’s not a reward of any sort” and doesn’t project to be a “long-term stable investment.”
Wrestlegirl, who also asked not to be named, told CNBC that owning the stock may be “something fun to have or an amusing experience to talk about later, but I don’t think anyone is actually taking Reddit’s public offering seriously.”
‘It’s being mocked so much’
Akaash Maharaj is ineligible for the program as a Canadian resident. He said he would decline an invitation to participate even if he could, largely because of concerns about the business. He also says moderators shouldn’t be motivated to improve the company’s share price at the expense of the “long-term identity of the platform.”
“There are very few Redditors who I would say are enthusiastic about the IPO,” Maharaj told CNBC.
For roughly five years, Maharaj has helped moderate the forum r/Equestrian, consisting of 72,000 horse lovers. He’s also a member of the Reddit Mod Council, a select group of power users who gather with the goal of improving the site and, in his words, to “make decisions that are in everyone’s interest.”
“Our track record there is mixed,” Maharaj said, with a chuckle.
Even though he’s dubious about the IPO and not particularly bullish on the stock, Maharaj said the DSP could be a “very shrewd” way for management to invite participation and fend off any effort by the Reddit community to spoil a major moment in the company’s history.
“Had they not done that, there would have been a heightened risk that more Redditors would have rhetorically run down the stock as it goes to market,” Maharaj said. The company is saying, “Look, buy some shares and you might make money, but you only make money if you don’t do something to disrupt the IPO itself,” he said.
Wrestlegirl said that despite the swarm of negativity she’s seeing among moderators, she thinks a decent number of them will participate in the IPO.
“It’s being mocked so much it’s almost a meme,” she said. “I think a lot of those jeering secretly don’t want to be left out of things if this turns into a GameStop.”
Courtnie Swearingen says she won’t be one of them.
Swearingen, an attorney, has been a Reddit moderator for about 13 years, currently for forums on music and on her hometown of Chicago. Over that time, she’s built up a distrust of the company. In 2015, after the controversial firing of a Reddit employee named Victoria Taylor, hundreds of moderators locked their subreddits in a protest effort led by Swearingen.
Swearingen told CNBC that after that ordeal, Reddit flew her and other moderators to San Francisco to collect feedback and to clear the air. But she hasn’t seen much change for the better, and no longer expects it.
“Every time anything is promised, or new ideas are presented, it’s never done well and it never goes well,” Swearingen said. “Even with the opportunity to buy in, I would not. I cannot risk money on a company that I haven’t been able to trust for a decade.”
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.
A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.
“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.
On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.
The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.
Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.
The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.
BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.
Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.
The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.
Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.
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Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.
Honor
Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.
The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.
Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.
In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.
Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.
Honor vs. Samsung
Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.
Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.
Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.
“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.
“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.
At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.
“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.
“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.
Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.
In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.
Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.
The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.