OpenAI’s Altman Listed as Major Reddit Shareholder in IPO Filing

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman is one of the biggest shareholders in Reddit Inc., according to the regulatory filing hailing the social media company’s plans for an initial public offering.

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Entities affiliated with Altman hold 8.7% of Reddit’s outstanding shares, according to the S-1, which was made public Thursday. That includes 789,456 Class A shares and 11.4 million Class B shares. Reddit’s largest shareholder is Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., part of the Newhouse family publishing empire, with about a third of the voting power.

Altman has longstanding ties with the San Francisco-based social media company. Altman and Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian were part of the inaugural class at the accelerator Y Combinator in 2005. And Altman was even briefly the company’s interim chief executive officer after former CEO Yishan Wong resigned.

“Although my 8 days as the CEO of reddit have been sort of fun, I am happy they are coming to a close,” he wrote, announcing the hiring of interim CEO Ellen Pao.

In its filing Thursday, Reddit said it plans to grow its business in part through data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, in addition to work on its own AI products. Those licensing deals will allow the company to use its trove of content as bigger revenue generator. On Thursday Reddit announced a deal with Alphabet Inc.’s Google that included AI training, but it has not announced a partnership with Altman’s OpenAI.

“Reddit’s vast and unmatched archive of real, timely, and relevant human conversation on literally any topic is an invaluable dataset for a variety of purposes, including search, AI training, and research,” Reddit co-founder and current CEO Huffman wrote in a letter included in the filing.

Read More: Reddit Files Publicly for IPO After Two Years on Sidelines

(Updates with context starting in the second paragraph.)

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