OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s stake in Reddit is now value over a billion {dollars} due to a rally within the firm’s inventory value after a wonderful earnings name.
Altman owns 12.2 million shares of Reddit. With the corporate’s share value now sitting at $114 a share, that makes Altman’s stake in Reddit value about $1.4 billion. Reddit shares soared 40% on Wednesday on the again of an earnings report that projected a rosy future. It reported 100 million day by day customers and had turned a revenue for the primary time.
All that made for a profitable run-up for Altman and Reddit’s different shareholders, which embody a hodge-podge of varied buyers: Chinese language tech firm Tencent; Advance Journal Publishers, the holding of Conde Nast; and Vy Capital, a extremely secretive Dubai-based funding agency that funded a part of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Reddit is hardly Altman’s solely savvy funding. Earlier than changing into one of many enterprise and tech world’s most well-known executives for his management of OpenAI, Altman was a outstanding investor in Silicon Valley. His perch atop the famed startup accelerator Y Combinator gave him prepared entry to a stream of younger and proficient executives, anticipating his steering and cash. A few of Altman’s most profitable bets embody investments in startups turned behemoths like Airbnb, Uber, and Stripe.
Altman crossed paths with Reddit from the corporate’s earliest days. In 2005, Reddit cofounders Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, and Aaron Swartz had been within the augural class (or “batch” as its referred to) of Y Combinator, when it was nonetheless run by its founder Paul Graham. On the time, Altman was engaged on his first startup, known as Loopt. In 2014, Altman would turn out to be the president of Y Combinator, giving him a primary take a look at what would turn out to be outstanding startups of their infancy.
In 2014, Altman led Reddit’s $50 million Collection B funding. In a weblog submit asserting the funding, Altman harkened again to the time he spent with Reddit’s cofounders once they had been at Y Combinator.
“I used to be in all probability within the first dozen folks to make use of the positioning, and I shudder to think about the variety of hours I’ve spent there,” Altman wrote.
From there, Altman stored investing in Reddit. In 2021, he put in $50 million throughout Reddit’s Collection E increase. Later that 12 months, Altman added $10 million into Reddit’s coffers, as the corporate stored elevating cash. His investments earned him a serious stake within the firm, together with voting shares.
When Reddit went public in March, Altman ended up having much more shares than Huffman, who was the corporate’s CEO, based on Reddit’s IPO prospectus.
Altman was additionally on the board of Reddit by 2021. In January 2022, Reddit introduced he would step down from the board after serving on it for seven years.
Knowledge Sheet: Keep on prime of the enterprise of tech with considerate evaluation on the business’s greatest names.
Join right here.
