Reddit Reports 80 Million Weekly Users of AI-Powered Search

Reddit has reported a 30 percent year-over-year increase in weekly active users on its search feature, with 80 million people now using the company's AI-powered search each week. The announcement came during the firm's fourth-quarter earnings call, where executives underlined artificial intelligence as a key driver of product innovation and potential revenue.

Chief Executive Steve Huffman described Reddit's generative AI search as especially well-suited for queries lacking definitive answers. Rather than delivering a single response, the AI aggregates varied perspectives from Reddit's communities to provide comprehensive answers. "There’s a type of query we’re, I think, particularly good at — I think, the best on the internet — which is questions that have no answers, where the answer actually is multiple perspectives from lots of people," Huffman noted.

This approach leverages large language models (LLMs), a branch of artificial intelligence that processes and generates human-like text based on extensive data sources. By pulling relevant content from a large pool of user discussions, Reddit's search can synthesize and present nuanced results beyond standard navigational queries.

The company has been steadily advancing its generative AI tools. The Reddit Answers feature, powered by LLM technology, saw rapid adoption over the past year, expanding from one million weekly active users in early 2025 to 15 million by late 2025. Huffman cited "a lot of growth" and "a lot of potential" for further expansion. Though search tools currently remain unmonetized, Reddit leaders stressed their potential as future revenue streams.

To improve user experience, Reddit is rolling out updates to its AI-generated answers, including more media-rich and multimedia formats beyond traditional text responses. Pilot tests are now in progress, with new dynamic agents set to provide visual enhancements and more interactive results.

Reddit is also making its AI Answers available in five additional languages, further broadening accessibility for non-English speakers and expanding the reach of its AI functionalities. This expansion aligns with Reddit’s positioning as an information platform as well as a social network.

Additionally, the company plans to unify its AI search and traditional search experiences. Significant progress has been made toward merging the core infrastructure of Reddit Answers with the site’s main search engine, aiming to streamline usage for all visitors.

Looking ahead, Reddit intends to remove distinctions between logged-in and logged-out users on the platform by the third quarter of 2026. This change will allow for AI-driven personalization of the site for every visitor, using machine learning to deliver more relevant content from the outset.

Beyond product improvements, Reddit’s content-licensing division—which enables third parties to train AI models on Reddit data—continues to show strong performance. In the fourth quarter, revenue recorded in the "other" category (excluding advertising) rose eight percent year-over-year to $36 million, with full-year 2025 figures up 22 percent to $140 million.

As generative AI transforms online search, Reddit is moving decisively to position itself at the intersection of community-driven knowledge and advanced artificial intelligence, modernizing its infrastructure and product suite to capture new opportunities.

Source: dataconomy.com