Reddit just printed a monster quarter and still watched investors freak out. The beat was real. The scare was Google’s AI Overviews, and CEO Steve Huffman spent earnings week saying the quiet part out loud: the old “10 blue links” economy built the open web. The summary box has not replaced that value exchange.
The beat, then the bruise
Per Reddit’s Q2 2026 results release:
| Metric | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|
| Revenue | **$805M** (+61% YoY) |
| Daily active uniques | **130.3M** (+18%) |
| Net income | **$253M** |
| Diluted EPS | **$1.25** |
| Q3 revenue guide | **$860M–$870M** |
Huffman’s on-record framing in that release:
In an increasingly automated web, the value of real human perspective has never been higher. Reddit’s commercial momentum reflects that.
The market heard a different sentence from the shareholder letter and call chatter: search referrals were choppy, and later in the quarter traffic got more volatile. Shares sold off hard after the print anyway. Strong ads, soft discovery story.
Huffman’s charge against AI Overviews
On the earnings circuit, Huffman drew a straight line from product design to publisher economics:
If we look at the Google ecosystem, the 10 blue links have driven a tremendous amount of value for the whole ecosystem. AI Overviews has yet to make a similar level of positive impact, and that seems consistent across the broader landscape.
And the line that will get screenshot forever:
Some of the tension is that people want Reddit, they don’t necessarily want a summary of Reddit. They want the human perspective, the multiple perspectives, the lived experience that we provide.
