Reddit built a surprisingly tidy business out of something most platforms give away for free: its users’ words. Now that business model is wobbling, and the stock market noticed immediately.
Reddit shares fell roughly 6% in premarket trading on July 22, 2026, after the Wall Street Journal reported that renewal talks for its AI data-licensing deal with Google have hit turbulence. The report indicated Reddit executives are weighing whether to restrict Google’s access to the platform’s content altogether, a negotiating posture that signals these talks are anything but routine.
What the deal is actually worth
The original Google agreement, signed in February 2024 just ahead of Reddit’s IPO filing, was valued at approximately $60 million per year. That gave Google the right to use Reddit’s enormous archive of human-written, human-debated content to train its AI models.
Reddit also has a separate licensing arrangement with OpenAI, estimated at around $70 million annually. Together, those two deals contributed roughly $140 million in AI licensing revenue in 2025.
