Reddit suggested on Thursday that its AI-powered search engine could be the next big opportunity for the business, not just on the product side but as a revenue driver that impacts the bottom line. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, the company provided an update on its plans to integrate AI search with traditional search and hinted that search is a “huge market and opportunity,” even though it has not yet been monetized.
In particular, the company believes that generative AI search “will be better for most queries.”
“There are types of queries that we’re particularly good at, and I would argue are the best on the Internet. These are questions that have no answer, and the answer really is many different perspectives from many people,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Meanwhile, traditional search is more similar to navigation. This is a way to find the right link to a topic or subreddit, he said. But an LLM can also do this well, he said. “So this is the direction we are going.”
He also said that over the past year, weekly active search users have increased by 30%, from 60 million to 80 million. Meanwhile, weekly active users of AI-powered Reddit Answers grew from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million in the fourth quarter.
“We see a lot of growth there and we think there’s a lot of potential,” Huffman added.
Reddit said it is working to modernize its AI response interface by making responses more media-rich, and a pilot for this is already underway.
The company is also thinking about how it can position itself as more than just a social site but a place where people come to seek answers. Reddit told investors on the call that starting in the third quarter of 2026, it will aim to eliminate the distinction between logged in and logged out users and use AI and machine learning to personalize the site and make it relevant to everyone who shows up.
The company announced plans to combine its AI search feature, Reddit Answers, with its traditional search engine in 2025 to improve the end-user experience. In the fourth quarter, Reddit said it had made “significant progress” in integrating its core search and AI capabilities. It’s also launched five new languages on Reddit Answers and is testing dynamic agents with search results that include “media beyond text.”
Reddit sees the value in AI answers, but doesn’t maintain them itself. The company’s content licensing business, which allows other companies to train AI models based on its data, is also growing. This business revenue is reported as part of Reddit’s “other” revenue (i.e., non-advertising revenue). This “other” revenue increased 8% year-over-year to $36 million in the fourth quarter, and will increase 22% to $140 million in 2025.
