Reddit's financial situation is looking good but uncertainty about its relationship to Google and the new AI-ified web are stirring market concerns.

Reddit reported a strong second quarter but spooked investors by mentioning in an investor letter that traffic from search engines had grown “choppy.” The company’s total revenue of $805 million jumped 61% compared to the year-ago quarter while net income was $253 million, up 183%. These beat Wall Street’s expectations. Plus, the company said it expects to hit revenue of $860 million to $870 million with healthy earnings before taxes next quarter as well, which beat expected guidance. Normally, telling investors that they can expect even better results to come would cause a stock to rise. But the stock slid over 10% in after-hours trading. The culprit was likely CEO Steve Huffman’s warning in that separate letter to shareholders. “Search referrals were choppy in the quarter, and traffic was more volatile later in the quarter, but the bigger picture is unchanged: the commercial business is strong,” he wrote. AI is clearly changing the search engine landscape — and investors seem to fear that Reddit’s traffic may suffer. In 2024, Reddit signed a contract to provide its content to Google for the purposes of AI training. However, Google’s deployment of AI summaries appears to be peeling away audience share from Reddit, and the site has signaled it’s not sure whether it will renew the partnership with the search giant. Another sticking point has been whether Reddit’s audience is growing in the right places or not. Reddit’s global users are up, but the platform saw U.S. users, in terms of daily active uniques, endure a very slight decline — 53.2 million from 53.5 million in Q1. During Thursday’s earnings call, some analysts aggressively questioned AI’s impact on Reddit’s audience.