Reddit CEO dismisses AI chatbots as traffic driver

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has revealed that artificial intelligence chatbots are not a major traffic driver for the platform. This revelation comes as companies like OpenAI and Google have confirmed more people are using artificial intelligence for their search.

During Reddit’s Q3 2025 call, Huffman pointed out that its top traffic drivers remain Google Search and direct access.

“[Chatbots are] not a traffic driver today. I think our relationships with the companies that we work for, or work with directly, are healthy, and we both learned a lot over the last couple of years, really the value of Reddit’s data and where our respective 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 traffic driver today,” Huffman said during the call with analysts.

Reddit CEO reveals major traffic drivers

During the call, an analyst asked if the company sees 50% of its traffic from Google and the other 50% from direct access. Huffman answered that the numbers are “approximate, but pretty close.”

The platform has enjoyed a tricky relationship with LLM builders over the past few months. In May 2024, Reddit locked down its data through a new policy change. It indicated at the time that any kind of commercial use of its data would need a license. The company also signed a deal with OpenAI at the time.

As part of its agreement, it allowed the artificial intelligence company to use its data to train its model. In the statement released at the time by OpenAI, it said the partnership will provide access to “real-time, structured and unique content” like posts and replies, allowing its tools and models to “better understand and showcase” that content. It also mentioned that it would incorporate Reddit content into ChatGPT, the popular OpenAI chatbot, highlighting that both companies will work together to bring AI-powered features to users and moderators.

The company also announced a partnership with Google. Like its deal with OpenAI, Reddit allowed Google to use posts from the platform to train its artificial model and improve devices such as Google Search. The arrangement was valued at $60 million at the time. The terms of the deal gave Reddit access to Google AI models for improving its internal site search and other features.

Legal bouts with AI firms 

On the other hand, the company has entered into a legal battle with AI companies like Anthropic and Perplexity. As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, Reddit claimed that it caught Perplexity scraping its data after a series of warnings not to scrape the platform for content. In the lawsuit it initiated afterward, the platform claimed that Perplexity continued to use Reddit data to generate AI answers, ignoring earlier warnings not to do so. “In truth, there is no license between Perplexity and Reddit,” a part of the lawsuit noted.

Meanwhile, Reddit reported a positive quarter with $585 million in revenue, up 68% year-on-year. The company also registered 116 million daily active unique users and 444 million weekly active unique users, with 20% growth year-over-year. The firm mentioned that it registered 315 year-on-year growth in international daily users. It added that more than 190 million Americans visit the social network every week. The company said it is also investing in making other areas better than before.

One of the areas that it wants to invest in is the search experience. Huffman claimed that the company is handling 20% of search volumes through its AI-powered Answers and “that kind of core search box.”

He also added that in Q3, 75 million people searched on Reddit. In addition, Reddit is deploying a new onboarding flow to increase early use engagement. “We want them to see in their first session that Reddit is amazing and has content for them. So our goal is to connect users with relevant content very quickly,” Huffman said.

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