Sam Altman's Reddit stake worth over $600 million after first day pop on NYSE

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he has no equity in the $80 billion artificial intelligence startup he co-founded in 2015.

His Reddit ownership is another matter altogether.

Following Reddit's stock market debut on Thursday, Altman's stake in the social media site ballooned by $200 million to over $613 million. Shares of the 19-year-old company jumped 48% in New York Stock Exchange trading to close at $50.44.

Altman, 38, is among the biggest Reddit shareholders, with control of 7.6% of outstanding shares after the offering, according to the company's prospectus. That's behind only Condé Nast parent Advance Magazine Publishers and Chinese internet giant Tencent.

Like other insiders, Altman is restricted from selling Reddit shares for six months during the so-called lock-up period.

Prior to the emergence of OpenAI in recent years, due most notably to the popularity of its ChatGPT chatbot, Altman was best known as a startup investor and as the president of Y Combinator, a poition he exited in 2019. Altman's investment portfolio includes past or present stakes in Airbnb, Uber, Instacart, Stripe and Asana.

Reddit was one of his top bets. He was even on the company's board until around January 2022, when the company said he'd recently stepped down.

In 2014, Altman led Reddit's $50 million Series B funding round, after using the service every day for nine years, he wrote in a blog post. He called the website "an example of something that started out looking like a silly toy for wasting time and has become something very interesting."

In 2021, as the tech market was booming, Altman invested a combined $60 million in Reddit over two financing rounds. Those investments have yet to bear much fruit as Reddit's valuation, even after Thursday's