Reddit has raised a new $300 million round of funding from investors including Tencent, Sequoia, Fidelity and Andreessen Horowitz among others. The new round of funding values the company at $3 billion, the company announced Monday morning, and brings the total amount raised to around $550 million.
News of the funding was first reported by TechCrunch earlier this month. CNBC followed up Monday morning with an interview with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who told the publication that his company was continuing to build out its ads business. Huffman said that Reddit was also trying to become “a friendly home for users and brands alike,” which involved stepping up its fight against abuse on its platform.
Reddit has been on a roll lately, growing its audience to 330 million monthly active users generating 14 billion page views in 2018. The company has also been doubling down on video last year, clocking some 1.4 billion video views a month at the end of last year. Reddit only introduced native video hosting in August of 2017.
Reddit was founded in 2005, and acquired by Condé Nast Publications in 2006. The site spun out of Condé Nast in 2011. The magazine publisher’s corporate owner Advance Publications, Inc. still holds a substantial stake in the company, but the newest round is said to have diluted that stake.
Tencent’s leading role in the round led to some backlash among Reddit’s audience in recent days, with some users concerned that the influx of Chinese money was incompatible with Reddit’s commitment to free speech.
Reddit is currently unavailable in China, as are some of Tencent’s other Western media investments: The company’s investment arm holds a significant stake in Snapchat’s corporate parent Snap, and owns around 40% of Epic Games. It’s also a business partner of Spotify after a stock swap with the music service in late 2017.
