OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s stake in Reddit is now price over a billion {dollars} because of a rally within the firm’s inventory value after a superb 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 price 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 each 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 hodgepodge of varied traders: Chinese language tech firm Tencent; Advance Publications, the proprietor of Condé 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 at OpenAI, Altman was a distinguished investor in Silicon Valley. His perch atop the famed startup accelerator Y Combinator gave him prepared entry to a stream of younger and gifted executives, longing for his steerage 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 within the firm’s earliest days. In 2005, Reddit cofounders Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, and Aaron Swartz have been within the inaugural class (or “batch” because it’s referred to) of Y Combinator, when it was nonetheless run by cofounder Paul Graham. On the time, Altman was engaged on his first startup, known as Loopt. In 2014, Altman would change into the president of Y Combinator, giving him a primary have a look at what would change into distinguished startups of their infancy.
Additionally in 2014, Altman led Reddit’s $50 million Collection B funding. In a weblog put up asserting the funding, Altman harkened again to the time he’d spent with Reddit’s cofounders once they have been at Y Combinator.
“I was probably in the first dozen people to use the site, and I shudder to imagine the number of hours I have spent there,” Altman wrote.
From there, Altman saved investing in Reddit. In 2021, he put in $50 million throughout Reddit’s Collection E elevate. Later that yr, Altman added $10 million into Reddit’s coffers, as the corporate saved elevating cash. His investments earned him a serious stake in Reddit, together with voting shares.
When Reddit went public in March, Altman ended up having much more shares than Huffman, 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 for seven years.
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