AI Evangelist Sam Altman’s Reddit Stock Worth $600M After IPO

Sam Altman’s bet on Reddit has paid off big time. The OpenAI chief executive, who controls 7.6 percent of the social media company’s shares, saw his stake leap by $200 million to $613 million in the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, CNBC reports. Reddit’s stock price surged by 48 percent on Thursday to close at $50.04 for a market cap of $9.5 billion. A regular user of Reddit, Altman sank money into the company in 2014 and again in 2021 and served on its board until 2022. He is barred from selling his shares for six months after the initial public offering. The 38-year-old, who is estimated to be worth $2 billion, has no equity in OpenAI, the controversial creator of ChatGPT, which ousted him as chief executive and then brought him back. He isn’t the only person getting richer off Reddit’s debut. The company set aside 8 percent of shares so moderators and power users could invest and thousands took advantage of that, according to Axios.