On Thursday, Reddit suggested its AI-powered search engine represents a major future opportunity for its business, both as a product and as a significant revenue driver. During the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, executives provided an update on plans to merge traditional and AI search. They noted that while search is not yet monetized, it represents an enormous market and opportunity.
The company believes generative AI search will be superior for most queries. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stated the platform is particularly adept at handling questions that have no single answer, where the response requires multiple perspectives from many people. He argued Reddit might be the best on the internet for this.
Huffman explained that traditional search functions more like navigation, helping users find the right link to a topic or subreddit. He added that large language models can excel at this type of search as well, if not better, and that this is the direction Reddit is moving.
The executive shared user growth metrics, noting that weekly active users for search grew 30% over the past year, from 60 million to 80 million users. Meanwhile, weekly active users for the AI-powered Reddit Answers feature grew dramatically, from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter. Huffman said the company sees a lot of growth and potential in this area.
Reddit is working to modernize the AI answers interface by making responses more media-rich, with pilots for this already underway. The company is also rethinking its positioning, evolving from just a social site to a destination for answers.
Reddit told investors it will eliminate the distinction between logged-in and logged-out users starting in the third quarter of 2026. The goal is to personalize the site using AI and machine learning to make it relevant for every visitor.
The company announced in 2025 its plan to combine its AI search feature, Reddit Answers, with its traditional search engine to improve the user experience. By the fourth quarter, Reddit reported significant progress in unifying its core search and its AI feature. It also released Reddit Answers in five new languages and is piloting dynamic agents alongside search results that include media beyond text.
While Reddit sees great value in its own AI answers, it is also sharing access to its data. The company’s content licensing business, which allows other companies to train their AI models on Reddit data, is growing. This revenue is reported as part of Reddit’s “other” revenues, which are non-advertising. This “other” revenue increased 8% year-over-year to reach $36 million in the fourth quarter, and was up 22% to reach $140 million for the full year 2025.