Reddit should seriously copy Netflix’s earnings call model and answer pre-submitted questions in a AMA.

Have analysts and retail investors submit questions in advance through an AMA-style format. Mngt can answer the useful ones, give retail investors much better access to information beforehand, and ignore the dumb Wall Street questions. It is a total wasted time to have back-forth conversation with WS analysts.

It also gives Spez plenty of time to prepare clear answers instead of winging it live. Carefully select what questions to answer and what to ignore. Last time, the stock tanked while he was speaking.

For a company built around AMAs, Reddit’s own earnings calls should be far more interactive.

Reddit entered Q3 with Q2 ad revenue up 64% YoY to $762M, while total revenue grew 61% to $805M. Reddit Q2 earnings

July: Piper Sandler raised its Q3 Reddit ad-spend estimate by 230 bps after July advertising data came in stronger than expected; users also ended July about 5% above the beginning of the month. July data

August: Average users jumped 8% MoM, Reddit's strongest monthly increase of 2026, while total audience growth accelerated to 18% YoY from 12.8% in July; Piper raised its Q3 Reddit ad-spend forecast by another 30 bps. August data

September: Reddit opened Reddit Max to all advertisers on September 3, which is expanding its broad customer base. Previously it was in beta version and only accessible a small group of advertisers. September / Reddit Max

Reddit had already reported that the number of advertisers using Max increased 60%+ QoQ, while revenue through Max increased 150%+ QoQ before the September-wide rollout. So existing customers are already spending more. Reddit Q2 earnings

Meanwhile, management's Q3 revenue guidance remains only $860–870M. Q3 guidance

July ad estimates were revised sharply higher → August users accelerated → September opened Reddit Max to the entire advertiser base.

We don't have complete September revenue/ad-spend data yet, but every measurable Q3 datapoint available so far has made the quarter look extremely stronger.

Reddit could smash through $1B in revenue this quarter, for the first time in its company history.

Reddit RDDT is benefiting from accelerating AI and machine-learning investments across its advertising, search and consumer platforms, which are improving engagement and strengthening monetization. In the second quarter of 2026, revenues surged 61% year over year to $805 million, while advertising revenues increased 64% to $762 million. Active advertisers grew more than 70%, highlighting growing demand for Reddit’s high-intent audiences.

Reddit Max is emerging as a key AI-driven growth catalyst. The launch and rapid adoption of Reddit Max, an AI-driven suite for ad automation and optimization, has delivered significant results. Advertiser adoption of Max increased by more than 60% sequentially in the second quarter, and revenues from Max campaigns increased by more than 150%. Features like tailored creatives and dynamic product ads are helping brands achieve better outcomes, such as Lenovo’s 40% higher purchase value with Max campaigns compared to standard campaigns.

Steve talked about MA opportunity in Goldman conference, here is my take.

Software stocks are in a distressed period due to AI disruption concerns, and software entertainment stocks are also not being appreciated. e.g., Roblox is down around 70% from its ATH.

It is the perfect timing for Reddit to acquire Discord right now, and it is also in Discord’s best interest to be acquired. If they go for an IPO, it will likely be bad for their private investors because the broader market is not good for the sector they are in.

Reddit has the cash and everything ready to acquire Discord at a reasonable and attractive price ($7 billions). It could also offer a wonderful exit for Discord investors.

This would be the first giant step for Reddit to become a Meta-equivalent social media company. A giant leap forward toward trillion dollar market cap.

This acquisition may not be as impactful as Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, but Discord is still the best asset for Reddit to buy right now.

I just watched Steve Huffman speak at the Goldman Sachs 2026 Communacopia + Technology Conference.

To be fair, Steve did a much better job than during the last ER.

Here are my suggestions:

1. He needs to take a public-speaking training class.
2. He should bring a piece of paper outlining what he needs to talk about every time he goes on stage. It should contain only numbers and key figures.
3. He should start by reminding people how well Reddit has performed over the past two years and that it will continue to perform well over the next 12–18 months. Repeat it every 2 minutes.
4. He used the term “video feed.” No, do not say “video feed.” Instead, call it a “TikTok-like video format” and say users love it.
5. Use the term “AI” and stop using overly technical terms and technical roadmaps. Please. Those are investors not software engineers!
6. Stop explaining how the technology works. Explain it in plain and simple language, using how it will drive revenue growth to 100%.

Some highlights:

Steve needs to talk about figures and numbers, not just a bunch of fancy words.

Instead of saying Reddit’s TAM is the entire internet, say it is a $3 trillion TAM.

Instead of saying Reddit does not have a social graph, say: “The social graph is old technology, and the interest graph is becoming increasingly important to advertisers. That is why we can maintain 60% revenue growth, and only Reddit has this interest graph. Most importantly, we on the way to become as big as Instagram.”

Instead of saying Reddit is “improving the user experience,” say: “We can increase ad impressions, bring more advertisers onto the platform,” and then provide figures, such as the number of new advertisers onboarded.

Instead of saying Reddit is important to AI, say: “We are negotiating new deals, and if they come through, they will be far bigger than our current deals.” Also mention we are negotiating with multiple customers.

It went down 8% in two days. What is rational behind it? I tried to figure it out but could not explain it.

A company's intrinsic value grows like clockwork. It is slow, steady, and unsexy. Quarter after quarter, they stack cash and compound earnings, yet the stock price just sits there, many people give up here.
Then, suddenly, the market wakes up. Wall Street catches on, and three years of fundamental growth get priced into the stock in three weeks.

As Benjamin Graham said:
In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.

The hardest part of value investing isn't finding the value but it's having the patience to wait out the quiet, incremental, boring, lonely, and anxious phase.
The value creation happens momentarily but the process of waiting takes months, years.

>Ahead of a September 10th hearing, Reddit says Anthropic wants tighter controls on its lawyers, experts, technical records and electronic evidence.

>Anthropic is arguing that Reddit is a competitor in AI development. Anthropic wants to prevent Reddit in-house attorneys involved in AI models, machine learning, licensing, data acquisition, partnerships, product development or related business strategy from reviewing material designated "Highly Confidential - Attorneys' Eyes Only," according to Reddit's description of Anthropic's proposal.

Source: RuntimeWire — https://runtimewire.com/article/reddit-anthropic-ai-rival-discovery-restrictions

Recently I made a post (about 20 hours ago) on r/ValueInvesting about a YouTube video where CNBC interviewed the new CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel. I had my personal opinion about what he said because I am a strong believer in value investing, and what he said made me upset because I think it is a sharp departure from how the old Berkshire Hathaway used to evaluate business decisions when Buffett and Munger were in charge.

When I first posted the video link on Reddit, it had around 2,000 views on YouTube. This was about 20 hours ago.

The Youtube video: youtube.com/watch?v=-X2wrr397dg&si=kRETD45OH1lp30Wd

After I made the post on r/ValueInvesting, it attracted around 110K views on Reddit

2 Hours after YT video published. The Thread (with Video Link) published in ValueInvesting

and as of a result,

The same amount of viewership was added to Youtube number.

Video published 2 Sept 2026 in CNBC Youtube Channel

The viewership of the YouTube video is now around 115K.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/lnSVE2x37n

So what I am trying to say is that people keep underestimating the power of Reddit.

I am a longtime follower of CNBC’s YouTube channel, and it is extremely rare for one of their videos to reach 100K views within 24 hours. In this case, 95%+ of this traffic was driven by Reddit.

It is fair to say, this video probably would never have had a chance of exceeding even 10K views in its lifetime without it, in my guess.

But on reddit, people debate each other and have a thoughtful discussion.

So what I am trying to say is this: Reddit is as powerful and influential as YouTube and Meta.

People go from Reddit because Reddit communities give people with similar interests the opportunity to come under one roof and have discussion, but Youtube is a just tool and video archive.

And despite the fact that everyone here are anonymous and free to share own opinion, it still capable spark an influential, wide-reaching debate and discussion (i.e., 200 thoughtful comments spanning the full spectrum of different ideas.). Something many famous influencers on X could only dream of doing, or may never be able to do.

If they keep doing what they are doing and maintain this momentum, I believe they can become a trillion-dollar company in the foreseeable future.

This is obviously just one personal example, and I cannot prove exactly how many of those YouTube views came directly from Reddit. But the timing, the exact match of numbers, the scale of the Reddit post, and more than 200 thoughtful comments spanning the full spectrum of different ideas made the impact pretty hard for me to ignore. Reddit is not just a place where people read posts. It can drive conversations, influence opinions, and send huge amounts of attention elsewhere on the internet. I think this is exactly why Reddit’s advertising potential is still heavily underestimated.

Recently Meta revealed a suite of new products focusing on lifestyle, troubleshooting, and personal advice. Meta seems to have realized they are already way behind in the frontier model race, so instead of trying to compete directly with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google on raw model capability, they are focusing on models that can generate real value and advertising opportunities, basically the personal assistant category.

I think Reddit should do the same.

A standalone “Reddit Answer” AI chatbot could give Reddit several major advantages.

1. Leverage in data deal negotiations

Rather than constantly negotiating with some of these bad players, Reddit should go on the attack and gain territory in the AI chatbot market itself.

Reddit Answer should primarily use Reddit results, or maybe also integrate some content from Facebook Group pages to provide real-life experience, product selection advice, troubleshooting, and general life advice.

At the same time, Reddit would control the data pipeline and learn exactly what types of Reddit data are valuable and what are not.

I think Reddit is already moving in this direction with Reddit Answers, but the problem is that it is still integrated into the existing Reddit search bar. That probably explains why Steve keeps saying things along the lines of “Redditors want Reddit, not an AI Overview.”

Fine. Then don't turn Reddit into an AI Overview.

Build a separate product.

2. Be part of the AI trade and expand Reddit's product offering

Reddit needs to become part of the AI story itself.

Look at Perplexity. It generates pennies compared with Reddit's revenue, yet the market gives it an enormous valuation because investors see it as an AI company.

A standalone Reddit Answer app could be the first step toward Reddit building an actual family of apps.

There also isn't some massive technological debt here. The core Reddit data already exists, the recommendation infrastructure exists, and AI models already exist. Delivery should be relatively quick.

I think good management should be able to push something like this out extremely fast, within 2–3 weeks if they really made it a company priority and asked engineers to work 18-hour days instead of just collecting paychecks and dumping stock.

By using a multi-model approach, Reddit could also become a customer of basically every major AI model builder, including Chinese model companies that are desperately trying to break into the US market.

Instead of being dependent on one AI company, Reddit could sit above them.

3. Prove that value and authenticity are what ultimately win the AI race

By building a standalone app, Reddit could effectively compete with products like Google Gemini and ChatGPT in one specific category.

The app should be explicitly marketed around one idea:

Real answers based on real people's experiences.

Not generic AI-generated advice.

Not SEO garbage.

Not 15 affiliate marketing websites repeating the same thing.

Actual experiences from people who bought the product, visited the place, fixed the problem, went through the breakup, dealt with the landlord, built the PC, changed careers, or made the mistake already.

That focus could make Reddit Answer one of the strongest AI products in this specific category.

More importantly, Reddit could start proving the value of its data instead of simply telling AI companies that its data is valuable.

Once Reddit builds the intelligence layer on top of the raw data, it can sell much more than API access. It could eventually sell Reddit Answer technology, recommendation systems, sentiment signals, product intelligence, and other tools to third parties for integration.

That moves Reddit further up the AI supply chain instead of remaining just another provider of raw data.

Reddit has one of the largest collections of authentic human experience on the internet. It should stop acting like a data supplier and start acting like an AI product company.

Major catalysts in the next 2 weeks could send Reddit to $200 by the end of September and $250 by the end of October.

1. The long-awaited appearance from Spez

Steve Huffman will speak at the upcoming Goldman Sachs conference. This is a very good opportunity for him to correct his sloppy "choppy" wording from the last earnings call and give the market a much stronger signal about Reddit's advertising business.

What Steve should talk about at the upcoming meeting:

• Data licensing needs to be connected with advertising.

I think Steve should say clearly that future data licensing deals should be coupled with an advertising approach.

AI model builders don't have real-time access to Reddit data unless they work with Reddit. Reddit can use its upvote/downvote system, community structure and user intent to provide extremely valuable signals for advertising through OpenAI, Gemini and other AI products. This helps Model builder to maintain a good balance between monetization & user experience.

They obviously still need to work out exactly how this will work, but Google Shopping already seems to be exploring this possibility by integrating more closely with Reddit advertising.

see New Google+Reddit ad format

• Explain what leverage Reddit actually has in data licensing negotiations.

Instead of just repeatedly saying "we have leverage," Steve needs to explain what that leverage actually is.

Explain the leverage. Don't just tell investors that leverage exists (see above).

• Reveal more of Reddit's AI roadmap.

I think Steve could potentially provide more clarity that Reddit's AI strategy will look more like a multi-model approach rather than trying to build the most powerful frontier model itself.

He should say this loudly: models themselves will increasingly become commodities.

Reddit does not need the most advanced reasoning model in the world. It needs models that are cheap, fast and good enough to organize, summarize and search Reddit's enormous amount of human-generated information.

Such as reveal a stand-alone app called "Reddit Answer"

Reddit sits in a very interesting position between all of them.

• Reddit should become the Netflix of real-time news.

This is probably the biggest opportunity that nobody talks about enough.

Reddit's largest shareholder is the Newhouse family, a 5th-generation publishing dynasty. Reddit has arguably become one of their most successful investments in more than 100 years.

They should double down on this advantage.

Integrate their broader network of publications and news sources deeper into Reddit and turn Reddit into the go-to destination for real-time news and discussion across politics, business, fashion, technology, sports, lifestyle and basically everything else.

News breaks somewhere.

Then people go to Reddit to discuss what it actually means.

Reddit should own both parts of that experience.

2. The demurrer ruling

This is probably the most certain near-term catalyst. I think the ruling will likely favor Reddit.

My base case is that maybe 2 claims get dropped without leave to amend, while the rest proceed. That would be super bullish because the case basically moves forward into discovery.

The worse case, in my view, is that some claims are dismissed with leave to amend. Even then, discovery could still proceed on the surviving claims, so I would still consider that moderately bullish.

https://preview.redd.it/bbq0lax0ppmh1.png?width=737&format=png&auto=webp&s=325a28c60bb3eabb37a67444fc5134879c6ef3b7

Reddit ad integration with Shopify is doing well. They also introduced Reddit community targeting for Shopify sellers.

Brands have doubled down on Reddit to win over LLMs. Then citations to ChatGPT fell off a cliff. Here’s what some experts think may have happened.

My take away: Advertising business is doing great.

Growing financing obligations could compound the pain of a downturn

By 

Asa Fitch

Aug. 25, 2026 5:30 am ET

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is increasingly tapping the company’s financial strength to keep customers buying. Manami Yamada/Reuters

Nvidia’s NVDA -2.91%decrease; down pointing triangle current financial position looks rock solid to say the least. But the financial engineering it is using to keep revenue growing introduces risks that could eventually cause real pain.

Nearly four years into an artificial intelligence boom that has brought Nvidia hundreds of billions of dollars in profit, the company is increasingly tapping its financial strength to keep customers buying its chips. Those chips have become the ubiquitous computational workhorses of the AI boom, a status quo Nvidia has an interest in maintaining.

Nvidia recently provided backstops that could put it on the hook for some $230 billion in lease obligations and residual-value deals, including a $105 billion backstop for an OpenAI lease in Ohio and potentially up to $125 billion in “residual-value support” for financing deals with Wall Street heavyweights. That support would likely entail Nvidia’s assuring that the value of assets backing loans won’t fall below a predetermined level.

Nvidia also recently signed deals with two young cloud-computing companies in Australia where it acts as a customer of last resort if they can’t find others to rent their computing power to. In exchange, Nvidia gets a share of the companies’ revenue from those assets above an agreed-upon level. The backstops give lenders confidence to extend financing with which the companies buy Nvidia’s chips.

Those promises don’t include Nvidia’s agreement last year to buy unsold cloud-computing capacity from CoreWeave as part of a $6.3 billion deal. Nor do they include the equity stakes Nvidia has taken in many of the cloud companies and AI labs that it is providing backstops for, including CoreWeave. The company had $72.5 billion of public and private-company stakes at the end of its last fiscal quarter.

Nvidia can easily absorb some big impacts, with more than $80 billion of cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet as of its last fiscal quarter. It also isn’t likely that Nvidia would be liable for its entire lease backstops, which reduce over time.

But Nvidia’s venture into finance appears poised to become much deeper. The company described its deals with the two cloud-computing players in Australia as a “new business model,” suggesting it could act as a financial guarantor many more times over. And its financial backstops for OpenAI and the Wall Street firms create an expectation that Nvidia will lend more support to other large data center projects. 

Part of what Nvidia is doing is spreading its bets so it is less reliant on a handful of tech giants like Amazon.com and Microsoft. Those companies are running out of financial steam.

Yields on AI-linked Big Tech bonds are surging because there is such a large supply of them. With no end in sight for debt issuances, borrowing costs for AI projects will likely stay high. And the tech companies are already heavily committed to data center projects, with $904 billion of leases not yet started and $1.52 trillion of purchase commitments largely related to AI, per their most recent financial statements.

There is thus some logic in Nvidia trying to generate sales from smaller and less-creditworthy companies. But history also provides examples of companies for whom courting less-creditworthy customers backfired spectacularly.

In the dot-com bubble, telecom-equipment leaders like Lucent Technologies, which was spun out of AT&T in the mid-1990s, sought to court a new breed of small-time operators created following industry deregulation in the U.S.

To boost sales in a fast-growing market, Lucent extended financing to these less-creditworthy customers for purchases of its products. It guaranteed third-party loans to customers. And it made off-the-books guarantees to distributors of its products, according to an SEC complaint in 2004 that resulted in a settlement. It agreed to buy back any unsold equipment from those distributors, but improperly recognized the sales to distributors as revenue, the SEC alleged.

Lucent’s financial engineering was a major factor in its downfall. It ended up downsizing to about a third of its original workforce and merged with France’s Alcatel in 2006.

Vendor financing “helped make possible growth rates that did not seem possible,” Lisa Heffernan wrote in a 2004 book about the company’s demise. “Vendor financing,” she wrote, “opened doors that were shut for a reason.”

Nvidia, of course, is no Lucent. It is far stronger financially. All indications are that supplies of AI chips aren’t likely to catch up with demand for at least another year or two. But the scale of the financing deals it is entering into looks increasingly risky in the longer term.

“The question is, is this a trend?” said Wolfe Research analyst Chris Caso. “Does this become the principal way of financing these data centers, and the chip company provides backstops? That would be more concerning, in my view.”

The overarching problem for Nvidia is that its deals concentrate the risk it is taking on AI.

Participating in a larger slice of the industry downstream of those chips, including lease backstops, residual-value guarantees and even equity stakes in customers, compounds the risks of an eventual weakening in AI chip demand. Instead of a simple reduction in revenue and profit, a downturn scenario could stress Nvidia’s balance sheet. Reductions in the value of its investments could hit profit further.

It isn’t clear what kinds of internal controls Nvidia has to guard against getting overextended financially. Nor has the company said whether it is setting aside cash reserves as a buffer for specific financing or lease backstops. Analysts will likely ask questions about those measures when the company reports earnings on Wednesday. Investors have a lot of confidence in Nvidia’s technological prowess but might have less in its financial engineering.

Nvidia’s venture into financing could help it fulfill shifting demand. But it leaves the company with vanishingly little room for error as it tries to stay at the forefront of the AI boom.

My take away: AI demand is increasingly supported by financing relationships among chipmakers, hyperscalers, AI laboratories, and financial institutions. This financing allows customers to keep purchasing infrastructure even when their independent revenue may not justify the spending. The system can continue while capital remains available, but a reduction in hyperscaler spending, weak AI monetization, or rapid hardware depreciation could break the cycle and set off a tsunami across the financial system.

past comments

I have been thinking about what the best way forward is for both Google and Reddit. I think if Google wants to keep its search moat alive, it eventually needs a platform that aggregates content providers instead of dealing with thousands of them individually.

YouTube already plays this role for video. Reddit could increasingly play the same role for discussions, articles, communities and other web content. Content providers distribute on Reddit, Reddit aggregates the traffic and discussion, and Google can use Reddit as one big content layer for Search and AI.

Trying to make licensing deals with every individual publisher would be expensive and almost impossible to scale.

This is why I think Google would probably love to acquire Reddit, but antitrust makes that very difficult. A more realistic outcome could be Google taking an equity stake of Reddit (5%), similar to its relationship with Anthropic, combined with a very large and fat data licensing agreement, i.e., initially 200 millions/year and scaled to 2-3 billion/year gradually.

Google gets Reddit deeply tied into its ecosystem without owning it outright, while potentially gaining some influence over Reddit's long-term strategic direction.

Helping publishers thrive on Reddit

This is backed by a recent surge of publishers coming to Reddit and being quite active (e.g., u/bloomberg, u/financialtimes). They are deriving significant traffic from Reddit, and this trend will continue to explode.

see also:

1. Everyone Is Misreading Reddit’s DAU Decline

2. Reddit Advertising Model and Role to Content Provider

Recently, when I post on Reddit and want to change something in the article, such as fixing a typo after it has been posted, I open the post editor.

If there is a table, if the first heading in row 1, column 1 is missing, e.g.,

After I made the edit and repost it, the second column gets deleted. e.g.,:

The bug make a new table looks like this:

Please fix it. It is a cross-platform issue.