He Coded Reddit at 21. Then Came Back to Save It.

In June 2023, thousands of Reddit communities went dark on the same day.

Forums about gaming, science, jokes and cooking all switched to private. Millions of users could not get in. It was a protest, and it was aimed at one man.

That man was Steve Huffman, Reddit's co-founder and CEO. Users called him by his old username: spez.

Many people predicted Reddit would be crushed. Less than a year later, Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange. By 2026 it was growing fast and telling the biggest AI companies in the world that they needed it.

To see how he got there, we have to go back to a kid in Virginia who loved computers.

A Virginia kid who loved code

Steve Huffman grew up in Virginia. He started programming as a kid and never really stopped.

He went to the University of Virginia to study computer science. His roommate was a talkative business student named Alexis Ohanian.

Steve could build things. Alexis could sell things. They wanted to start a company together.

A no that became a yes

In 2005, they pitched an idea for ordering food by phone to investor Paul Graham. He turned them down.

Then he called them back. He liked the two young men, and he gave them a new idea: build the front page of the web.

They joined the very first batch of Y Combinator. Steve wrote the code. In June 2005, Reddit went live.

At first, the site was a ghost town. So Steve and Alexis posted links from lots of fake accounts to make it look busy. Slowly, real people came and never left.

Selling, leaving and building again

In 2006, magazine company Condé Nast bought Reddit. Steve stayed a few more years, then left in 2009.

He did not sit still. In 2010 he co-founded Hipmunk, a travel search site that made comparing flights easier with a simple visual timeline.

Meanwhile, Reddit kept growing, but it also kept getting messier. Fights between users. Hard questions about hate speech. Leaders who came and went.

The founder returns

In July 2015, Reddit asked Steve to come back as CEO.

He returned to a company in crisis. The community was angry. Moderators were upset. The site's tech was old.

His early years back were bumpy. In 2016 he admitted he had secretly edited some user comments that insulted him. Users were furious, and he apologised.

But he stayed, and he started to rebuild. He cleaned up rules, banned some of the worst communities, redesigned the site and built a real advertising business.

The day Reddit went dark

In 2023, Reddit decided to charge money for access to its data, called the API. Apps built by outside developers would now have to pay.

Some popular third party apps said the price would kill them. Moderators, who run Reddit's communities for free, were angry. In June 2023, thousands of subreddits went dark in protest.

Steve did not back down. He said Reddit could not keep giving its data away for free.

That choice looked terrible at the time. Soon, it would look very smart.

Ringing the bell

In March 2024, Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange at $34 a share.

Before the IPO, Reddit let some of its most active users buy shares too. Steve said the best investors in Reddit are the people who use Reddit.

Human voices in an AI world

Then AI exploded.

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's AI need huge amounts of real human writing to learn from. Reddit has more than 20 years of people asking questions, sharing stories and arguing.

Those API fees suddenly mattered a lot. Google and OpenAI signed content licensing deals to use Reddit data.

On Reddit's first quarter 2026 earnings call, Steve said it plainly.

"There is no artificial intelligence without actual intelligence. And that comes from Reddit."

That quarter, revenue jumped 69 percent to $663 million. Reddit said it had around 500 million weekly users. Steve set a big goal: double Reddit's daily users in the United States from about 50 million to 100 million.

The ride was not smooth. In the second quarter of 2026, revenue grew 61 percent to $804.9 million, but the stock fell more than 20 percent after the report. Steve used that moment to criticise Google's AI summaries, saying search traffic had become choppy. In a letter to investors he wrote that people want the real thing.

"As the internet becomes flooded with synthetic content, people are craving real human perspective."

Where he is now

Today, Steve Huffman is co-founder, CEO and president of Reddit, a public company worth tens of billions of dollars. He is betting that in an internet full of AI, real people talking to real people becomes more valuable, not less.

Why the story matters

Steve Huffman's story is about coming back.

He built Reddit as a young coder, sold it and walked away. When it was in trouble, he returned. He made unpopular calls, like charging for data, and faced the angriest users on the internet. He made mistakes and admitted them.

For young founders, the lesson is simple. Your first idea may get rejected. Your community may turn on you. What matters is whether you can take the heat and still see what your company is really worth.

He did not win by being loved. He won by being right about what Reddit was worth.

The Record

From: Virginia, USA

Studied: Computer science, University of Virginia

Username: spez

Built: Reddit (with Alexis Ohanian), Hipmunk (with Adam Goldstein)

Role: Co-founder, CEO and president of Reddit

Timeline

2005 Graduates from UVA. Launches Reddit through Y Combinator.

2006 Reddit is sold to Condé Nast.

2009 Leaves Reddit.

2010 Co-founds Hipmunk.

2015 Returns to Reddit as CEO.

2016 Admits editing user comments and apologises.

2023 API pricing sparks a huge subreddit blackout.

2024 Reddit goes public on the NYSE.

2026 Q1 revenue up 69 percent. Warns AI giants they need Reddit.

2026 Gives a TED talk on a better internet.