Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at Reddit’s IPO a year ago (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Its AI licensing business made up less than 10% of the company’s total revenue last quarter.
Reddit’s licensing deals with Google and OpenAI are great, but using that data for itself is even better, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference this week.
Here’s Huffman during a fireside chat:
“We did a couple of deals last year — one with Google, one with OpenAI — licensing our corpus for training for their LLMs. And then we also started investing in our own work to kind of reveal the value of that corpus. And that’s where our head is at right now. So this is search. This is Reddit Answers. This is training our own models.”
These deals, where tech companies like Google pay Reddit tens of millions of dollars a year to license its trove of conversations in order to train their large language models, made up less than 9% of the company’s total revenue last year. (The AI business is buried in “other” revenue.) The vast majority of its revenue comes from advertising.
Huffman said Reddit of course is still “open and open for business” when it comes to these licensing deals — it’s basically free money, after all — and will “see where this goes.” But using that data itself is really the main event:
“What I know for sure is that there is an incredible amount of value there. And I think we’re actually in the best position to kind of capture it.”
Huffman also seemed to be playing down the idea that Reddit and Google have become frenemies after Reddit blamed a tweak to Google’s search algorithm for its disappointing growth in daily active users last quarter, and after Reddit has launched its own Google-like services. Huffman says he thinks the company can reach a billion daily active users irrespective of Google’s algorithm.
“Big picture, our relationship with Google is great. We collaborate with them. On the search side, obviously, we have a ton of content in their index that makes their search product better.
It’s an amazing channel for us. Particularly, those logged out users coming from Google, though it’s volatile, it’s a great opportunity for us to teach internet consumers broadly that Reddit has the answer to their questions. It also happens to be our least valuable cohort of users from a monetization point of view, so it doesn’t really affect revenue. That’s why you didn’t see any revenue movement related to anything that Google does.
And then we collaborate with Google on the AI side. They’re a customer for our data. We’re a big cloud customer. We’re mutual advertisers. We collaborate on safety. It’s a really deep and healthy partnership.”
“Google” was mentioned 35 times in the conversation, mostly by the Reddit CEO.
A report in the Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.
AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated, and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.
The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue which American AI companies are currently wrestling with.
A report in the Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.
AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated, and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.
The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue which American AI companies are currently wrestling with.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.
Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.
OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, who are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.
According to the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:
Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product, and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this only works out to about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation
But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.
Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.
OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, who are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.
According to the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:
Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product, and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this only works out to about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation
But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.
The ban covers all drones and related components from any foreign manufacturer. DJI dominates the worldwide (nonmilitary) drone market, with a market share greater than 90%, according to some estimates.
In addition to hobbyists, the quadcopter-style drones made by DJI are used heavily by a wide variety of businesses including agriculture, infrastructure inspection, real estate, and also by first responders. Blocking foreign drones leaves many critical industries without a viable US-made alternative, as the industry has struggled to develop new supply chains that don’t come from China and match the quality of DJI’s hardware and software.
Shares of Florida-based drone builder Unusual Machines are up over 8% in early trading. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisor to the company.
DJI has said its drones do not present a security risk, and welcome a national security review, noting that their drones can be used without an internet connection, and all data is saved locally.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr said:
“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List. Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”
The ban covers all drones and related components from any foreign manufacturer. DJI dominates the worldwide (nonmilitary) drone market, with a market share greater than 90%, according to some estimates.
In addition to hobbyists, the quadcopter-style drones made by DJI are used heavily by a wide variety of businesses including agriculture, infrastructure inspection, real estate, and also by first responders. Blocking foreign drones leaves many critical industries without a viable US-made alternative, as the industry has struggled to develop new supply chains that don’t come from China and match the quality of DJI’s hardware and software.
Shares of Florida-based drone builder Unusual Machines are up over 8% in early trading. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisor to the company.
DJI has said its drones do not present a security risk, and welcome a national security review, noting that their drones can be used without an internet connection, and all data is saved locally.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr said:
“I welcome this Executive Branch national security determination, and I am pleased that the FCC has now added foreign drones and related components, which pose an unacceptable national security risk, to the FCC’s Covered List. Following President Trump’s leadership, the FCC will work closely with U.S. drone makers to unleash American drone dominance.”
Tesla’s EU sales fell nearly 40% in the first 11 months of 2025
From January through November this year, Tesla sales fell 39% to 129,000 in the European Union compared with the first 11 months of 2024, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, known as ACEA. In that same time, sales of Chinese competitor BYD grew 240% to 110,000. BYD first outsold Tesla there this spring, but Tesla is still outpacing BYD for the year.
Overall, sales of battery electric vehicles in the EU rose 28%.
Tesla has struggled throughout this year in Europe, its third-biggest market — something CEO Elon Musk has blamed on Europe’s lack of regulatory approval for its Full Self-Driving tech, though the decline likely has more to do with competition from China.
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