Reddit revenue jumps 61% to $805M but warns of choppy search traffic

On July 30, 2026, Reddit reported second-quarter results that beat Wall Street forecasts, but its shares slid more than 10% in after-hours trading after the company warned that search engine traffic had become volatile. Revenue surged 61% from a year earlier to $805 million, while net income climbed 183% to $253 million. The company also forecast third-quarter revenue between $860 million and $870 million, topping analyst expectations. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Steve Huffman described search referrals as “choppy” and noted traffic grew more volatile later in the quarter, though he insisted the commercial business remains strong. The reaction highlights investor anxiety over artificial intelligence’s disruption of search. In 2024 Reddit struck a deal to supply its content to Google for AI training, but Google’s AI-generated summaries may be diverting users, and Reddit has signaled it may not renew the partnership. On a call with analysts, Huffman faced sharp questions about user trends. One analyst said investors perceive a user problem, particularly in the United States, where daily active unique visitors slipped to 53.2 million from 53.5 million in the first quarter. The analyst asked whether logged-out traffic would suffer as search shifts to AI, making it harder to convert visitors into logged-in users, and whether Reddit might stop licensing data to Google and OpenAI next year. Huffman argued that Reddit’s human-centric communities would continue attracting users, saying the platform has content for everyone in the U.S. and is making progress in surfacing it. On the Google relationship, he was less definitive: “I don’t think there’s a binary outcome…we will make sure that we’re maximizing the value for Reddit.”