Reddit is on a roll. The social media platform just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history and now has a record 97.2 million daily active users, a year-over-year increase of 47 %. Several times during the quarter, that number exceeded 100 million, as Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders was a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news Tuesday in its third-quarter results.

In a remarkable turnaround, Reddit reported a profit of $29.9 million, a huge improvement from the $575 million loss it suffered earlier this year during its first quarter as a company public, although last quarter it reduced this amount to $10 million.

This good performance is explained by advertising revenues of $315.1 million, up 56% compared to the previous year, and by “other revenues” (including agreements concluded with Google and AI to allow using Reddit content to train their AI models), which reached $33.2 million, a whopping 547% increase from a year earlier.

“It was another strong quarter for Reddit and our communities as we achieved important milestones, including new levels of user traffic, revenue growth and profitability,” Huffman said Tuesday.

The CEO said that so far this year, “Reddit” has been the sixth most searched word on Google in the United States as people increasingly turn to the platform for answers, advice and community.

“We saw this unfold in real time when the White House took to Reddit to share critical information during recent hurricanes, reaching populations in affected areas with timely updates,” he said. declared.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the company behind the popular online forum. Last year, for example, Reddit was heavily criticized for its decision to start charging for access to APIs, a move that heavily impacted third-party apps and caused the closure of some.

It is also facing scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over the sale of user-generated content for training large language models operated by Google and OpenAI.