Reddit just turned a profit for the first time. As part of its third quarter earnings results released on Tuesday, the company reported a profit of $29.9 million, along with $348.4 million in revenue — a 68 percent increase year over year.
The company hasn’t been profitable at any point in its nearly 20-year history. Since going public, Reddit lost $575 million during its first quarter on the market, but it decreased that loss to $10 million last quarter and is now finally in the black.
Reddit’s advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while “other” revenue reached $33.2 million on account of “data licensing agreements signed earlier this year.” Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.
Our entire economy is being propped up by the AI grift now. 8 of the 10 largest companies by market cap are either spending all of their CapEx on training AI or selling the hardware necessary to do it (the only exceptions are Saudi Aramco and Berkshire Hathaway). This is just an insane funneling of money into one industry that can only result in one of two outcomes- 1. AGI is achieved and whoever wields it will have godlike power or 2. there is a market crash the likes of which we have never seen before. Guess which is more likely.
I currently train AI (its a gig economy type job). The amount of money being thrown around to produce training data is absolutely insane. Ill make 10 or so prompts in a day (takes like 5-6 hrs) and make $700. And the projects have thousands of others so do the math…
At least the gravy train is spilling over onto me right now but im certain it will dry up in an instant when this AI bubble finally bursts