Sources: Reddit is raising funding at a valuation of around $1.7B
The link-sharing website bulks up with venture capital — Snoop Dogg, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel among earlier backers — Reddit is one of the few relics of the mid-2000s internet that has not only survived but thrived in recent years.
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-2017 Reddit was still a Condé Nast-era property raising venture money for the first time in years, with Snoop Dogg, Marc Andreessen, and Peter Thiel among its earlier backers. The reported ~$1.7B round was confirmed weeks later when Reddit closed $200M at a $1.8B valuation, with a16z and Sequoia in and Advance Publications keeping its majority stake.
That round started a steady re-rating arc: a $300M Series D at $3B in 2019 with Tencent aboard, a $10B+ mark by late 2021 after more than $1B raised over its lifetime, and finally a March 2024 NYSE debut that closed up 48% at ~$9.5B. This 2017 report is the first data point in that climb.
First-order effects
- The round gives Reddit fresh capital while leaving Advance Publications' majority control intact, letting it fund product without ceding governance to the new money from a16z and Sequoia.
Second-order effects
- A confirmed ~$1.8B price sets the reference point for later rounds — Tencent's entry at $3B in 2019 and the run to $10B+ by 2021 all price off this baseline.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, community platforms built on user-moderated forums can sustain decade-long private valuations into public listings — Reddit's 2024 IPO validating the mid-2000s relic thesis this round quietly bet on.
The trend: Reddit's path from a $1.7B venture round to a multi-billion-dollar public listing tracks the broader institutionalization of early-social-era platforms as mainstream investable assets.