Reddit CEO says chatbots are not a traffic driver

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says AI chatbots aren’t a major traffic driver for the social platform, despite companies like OpenAI and Google seeing progress in people using AI for search. During Reddit’s Q3 2025 call, the executive noted that Google search and direct access continue to be its top traffic drivers.

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

When an analyst asked the company if 50% of traffic came from Google and 50% came directly, Huffman said those numbers were “estimates, but pretty close.”

Reddit has a complicated relationship with LLM creators. Company A new policy change in May 2024 locked down its data and indicated that any commercial use of its data would require a license. At the same time the company Signed an agreement with OpenAI It allows using Reddit data for model training.

The company also has A partnership agreement with Google. On the other hand, the company has entered into a legal battle with the AI ​​company anthropological And Confusion.

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

The company noted that it continues to invest in making the search experience a central part of the experience. Huffman says the company is handling 20% ​​of search volume through its AI-powered answers and “this kind of original search box.” He noted that in Q3, 75 million people searched Reddit weekly. The company has been talked about Integrating AI and the original search experienceAnd Huffman says that’s coming in the next few quarters.

What’s more, Reddit is experimenting with a new and simpler onboarding flow to increase initial user 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,” says Huffman.