Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said AI chatbots aren’t a major traffic driver for the social platform despite companies like OpenAI and Google having seen progress in people using AI for search. During Reddit’s Q3 2025 call, the exec noted that Google search and direct access continue to be its top traffic drivers.
“[Chatbots are] not a traffic driver today. I think our relationships with the companies that we work for — or work with directly are healthy, and we both learned a lot over the last couple of years, really the value of Reddit’s data and where our respective products can go and how we can help each other. So I’m looking forward to continuing to work on these things with these partners. But they’re not a major traffic driver today,” Huffman said during the call with analysts.
An analyst asked the company if 50% of the traffic comes from Google and 50% direct, Huffman said that those numbers are “approximate, but pretty close.”
Reddit has had a tricky relationship with LLM builders. The company locked down its data through a new policy change in May 2024 and indicated that any kind of commercial use of its data would need a license. At the same time, the company signed a deal with OpenAI to let it use Reddit data for model training.
The company also has a partnership agreement with Google. On the other hand, the company has ensued a legal battle with AI companies like Anthropic and Perplexity.
Reddit reported a positive quarter with $585 million in revenue, up 68% year-on-year. The company also clocked in 116 million daily active unique users and 444 million weekly active unique users, with 20% growth year-over-year. The company mentioned it recorded 31% year-on-year growth in international daily users. It also said that more than 190 million Americans visit the social network every week.
The company mentioned that it continues to invest in making the search experience a central part of the experience. Huffman said that the company is handling 20% of search volumes through its AI-powered Answers and “that kind of core search box.” He noted that in Q3, 75 million people searched weekly on Reddit. The company has been talking about unifying AI and the core search experience, and Huffman said it is coming in the next few quarters.
What’s more, Reddit is experimenting with a new and simpler onboarding flow to increase early user engagement.
“We want them to see in their first session that Reddit is amazing and has content for them. So our goal is to connect users with relevant content very quickly,” Huffman said.
