Reddit Establishes New Partnership With OpenAI

After striking a data sharing deal with Google back in February, which will see Reddit data incorporated into Google’s AI offerings, Reddit has now also come to terms with OpenAI on a new agreement that will see Reddit info integrated into ChatGPT and other OpenAI projects

The deal is primarily focused on bringing Reddit insights into ChatGPT to provide more insightful, contextual answers to queries.

As explained by Reddit:

“OpenAI will bring Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products, helping users discover and engage with Reddit communities. To do so, OpenAI will access Reddit’s Data API, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit. This will enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics.”

Which could be highly valuable, because Reddit’s highly engaged, user-moderated communities are able to provide valuable, direct consumer insight into a range of products and services, as well as expert notes on new developments.

And with Reddit usage rising, that should continue to become even more useful over time. Reddit‘s now up to 306 million weekly active users, and with 100,000 active communities, and more than 16 billion posts and comments, there’s a heap of insight there, with Reddit’s up and downvoting system helping to highlight the most relevant and helpful engagement, as voted by users.

But that’s not all, the new deal with OpenAI will also benefit Reddit’s platform as well:

“The partnership will also enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to redditors and mods. Reddit will be building on OpenAI’s platform of AI models to bring its powerful vision to life.”

That could be significant. Reddit’s been working to provide moderators with more tools in order to improve community management, while ChatGPT-enabled discovery on Reddit could also provide value for users in seeking out the specific answers they need.

Finally, OpenAI will also become a Reddit ad partner, feeding more revenue over time into Reddit’s business.

It seems like a good deal for Reddit, which recently went public, and has been looking for new avenues to maximize its revenue potential. Subreddit conversation is crucial to this, because with so much insight, into many niche subjects, Reddit is a key target for those developing LLMs in order to power next gen AI models.

So while advertising will be Reddit’s key revenue path, as it is for all social apps, data sales could also be a solid secondary driver, which is a business element that Reddit’s now steadily building up.

Though it is also worth noting that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman owns an 8.7% stake in Reddit, which likely helped facilitate the deal. That may or may not be relevant in the scope of this arrangement, but it’s another factor in this deal.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what comes next, both for ChatGPT and Reddit, as a result.