Reddit hinted Thursday that its AI-powered search engine could be the next big opportunity for its business — not just as a product, but as a revenue driver that impacts its bottom line. On Thursday’s fourth-quarter earnings call, the company provided an update on its plans to integrate traditional search with AI search, hinting that search, while not yet monetized, “is a huge market and opportunity.”
In particular, the company believes that generative AI search is “suitable for most queries.”
“There’s a type of query that we’re particularly good at, and I would argue is the best on the internet. It’s an unanswerable question, and the answer actually comes from multiple perspectives from many people,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Traditional search, on the other hand, is more like navigation and is a way to find the right link to a topic or subreddit. But an LLM can be just as good at this, if not more, he said. “That’s the direction we’re headed.”
The executive also noted that Search’s weekly active users have increased 30% over the past year, from 60 million users to 80 million users. Meanwhile, weekly active users on AI-powered Reddit Answers grew from 1 million in Q1 2025 to 15 million by Q4.
“I think we’re seeing a lot of growth in this space and a lot of potential,” Huffman added.
Reddit said it is working to modernize its AI answer interface by making answers more media-rich, and that pilots are already underway.
The company is also thinking about how it can position itself as it becomes more than just a social site and a place where people come for answers. Reddit told investors on a conference call that starting in the third quarter of 2026, it will eliminate the distinction between logged-in and logged-out users and use AI and machine learning to personalize the site and make it relevant no matter who visits it.
In 2025, the company announced plans to combine its AI search feature Reddit Answers with traditional search engines to improve the end-user experience. Reddit said in the fourth quarter that it made “significant progress” in integrating its core search and AI capabilities. We’re also launching five new languages in Reddit Answers and piloting dynamic agents with search results that include “media beyond text.”
Reddit believes AI answers are valuable, but that doesn’t mean it’s left alone. The company’s content licensing business, which allows other companies to train AI models based on its data, is also growing. That 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 22% to $140 million in 2025.
