Reddit CEO says chatbots are not traffic drivers

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said AI chatbots are not a major traffic driver for the social platform even though companies like OpenAI and Google have seen progress in people using AI for search. During Reddit’s Q3 2025 call, the CEO noted that Google search and direct reach continue to be the top traffic drivers.

“[Chatbots are] Not today’s traffic driver. I think our relationships with the companies that we work for – or work with directly, are healthy, and we’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years, really the value of Reddit data and where our products can go and how we can help each other. So I’m looking forward to continuing to work on these things with these partners. “But they’re not a major driver of traffic today,” Hoffman said during the call with analysts.

An analyst asked the company if 50% of traffic comes from Google and 50% directly, and Hoffman said those numbers are “approximate, but very close.”

Reddit has had a difficult relationship with LLM creators. The company secured its data with a new policy change in May 2024, and noted that any kind of commercial use of its data would need a license. Meanwhile, the company has signed a deal with OpenAI to allow it to use Reddit data for model training.

The company also has a partnership agreement with Google. On the other hand, the company has been involved in a legal battle with AI companies such as Anthropic and Perplexity.

Reddit reported a positive quarter with revenue of $585 million, up 68% year over year. The company also recorded 116 million daily active unique users and 444 million weekly active unique users, with a 20% year-on-year growth. The company reported that it recorded a 31% annual growth in the number of international daily users. She also said that more than 190 million Americans visit the social network every week.

The company said it continues to invest in making the search experience a core part of the experience. The company handles 20% of search volumes through its AI-powered answers and “those kind of organic search boxes,” Hoffman said. He noted that in the third quarter, 75 million people searched Reddit weekly. The company has been talking about unifying its AI and core search experience, and Hoffman said that would come in the next few quarters.

Furthermore, Reddit is piloting a new, simpler onboarding flow to increase early user engagement.

“We want them to see in their first session that Reddit is cool and has content for them,” Hoffman said. “So our goal is to connect users to relevant content very quickly.”