Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website
Alexis Ohanian
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.
Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”
Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”
The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”
Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.
At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.
In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.
Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.
Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.
Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.
Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”
“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.
WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports
Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
- Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
- Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected
Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.
CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.
CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.
In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.
CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.
A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.
Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
WATCH: Citi’s Tyler Radke’s bullish call on CoreWeave, upgraded to buy
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) invites Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to speak in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, the White House’s Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
“Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt, the White House’s spokesperson.
“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she continued.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had negotiated a deal with Nvidia in which the U.S. government approves export licenses for the China-specific H20 AI chip in exchange for a 15% cut of revenue. Advanced Micro Devices also got licenses approved in exchange for a proportion of its China sales, the White House confirmed.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said Monday.
“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement this week.
Trump said the export licenses for AMD and Nvidia were a done deal. But lawyers and experts who follow trade have warned that Trump’s deal may be complicated because of existing laws that regulate how the government can charge fees for export licenses.
The Commerce Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The H20 is Nvidia’s Chinese-specific chip that is slowed down on purpose to comply with U.S. export relations. It’s related to the H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S., and was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on artificial intelligence chips in 2023.
Earlier this year, Nvidia said that it was on track to sell more than $8 billion worth of H20 chips in a single quarter before the Trump administration in April said that it would require a license to export the chip.
Trump signaled in July that he was likely to approve export licenses for the chip after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the White House.
The U.S. regulates AI chips like those made by Nvidia for national security reasons, saying that they could be used by the Chinese government to leapfrog U.S. capabilities in AI, or they could be used by the Chinese military or linked groups.
The Chinese government has been encouraging local companies in recent weeks to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips for any government or national security-related work, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
WATCH: Access to Nvidia’s H20 won’t hand China an AI advantage: Analyst
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike