OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman Earns Over $200 Million In 1 Day; The Secret To His Big Win Is Reddit - Find Out!

Samuel Harris Altman, best known as CEO of OpenAI, started his new year 2024 on a roller coaster ride. And days have only been sweeter for him. After the whole resignation and comeback fiasco in OpenAI, the American entrepreneur bagged a massive win. To be precise, we're talking about gains of more than 200 million dollars in just 1 day. This is due to the listing of the social network forum, Reddit!

How Big of a Shareholder Sam Altman is at Reddit?

Altman, who is a leading figure in the booming AI market, is one of the largest shareholders of Reddit. His shareholding post IPO stood at 7.6% in Reddit, as per the IPO filing.

In number of shares, Altman's holding in Reddit's Class A shares is to the tune of 789,456 equities, while in Class B shares, he holds 11,369,103 equities. Together, his shareholding is around 1,21,58,559 equity shares or 7.6% stake in Reddit.

Reddit launched its IPO for $34 per share. Altman's holding at that time was valued at around 413.39 million dollars.

But right after a blockbuster listing, Reddit did not just make retail investors rich, but shareholders like Altman won big too.

On March 21, which is the debut day, Reddit shares gained by 48.35% to end at $50.44 per share. The stock rose as much as 70% on this day to hit a new 52-week high of $57.8 per share compared to its IPO issue price.

On the 52-week high, Altman's shareholding was valued at over 702.76 million dollars. However, on the closing price of Thursday, his shareholding was valued at around 613.27 million dollars.

That's a massive earning in the span of 1-day.

Altman has been with Reddit for a longer duration. He was even a board member till January 2022 before stepping down.

Apart from Class A and Class B shares in Reddit, in February 2021, Altman also bought Reddit's Shares of Series E Preferred Stock to the tune of 1,177,184 equity shares which were valued at around 49.99 million dollars, as per the data in IPO pages.

Further, in August 2021, Altman was also among the investors to buy Series F preferred stock from Reddit. He holds 161,828 shares of Series F-1 Preferred Stock to the tune of 10 million dollars.

Coming to Reddit, riding on the back of bulls, the American social news aggregation network touched a market value of $8.2 billion.

Reddit is home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection. Whether you're into breaking news, sports, TV fan theories, or a never-ending stream of the internet's cutest animals, there's a community on Reddit for you.

As per the filing, Reddit has over 100k active communities, while its average daily active unique is 73 million, and the average weekly active unique is 267 million and has over 1 billion cumulative posts.

With a public listing, Reddit plans to advance its mission of becoming a stronger company and provide meaningful benefits to its 1,00,000 subreddits. The company aims to do this while keeping Reddit a real and authentic place to build and find community.

Can Sam Altman Cash His Gains In Reddit?

As of now, Altman cannot book profits on Reddit. This is because of a lock-up period that usually comes with every IPO that goes public. In Reddit IPO, the lock-up period is 6 months since its IPO launch.

Reddit is publicly trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker, RDDT.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan, and BofA Securities are acting as lead book-running managers for the offering. Citigroup, Deutsche Bank Securities, and MUFG are acting as joint book-running managers. Citizens JMP, Needham & Company, Piper Sandler, Raymond James, Academy Securities, Loop Capital Markets, Ramirez & Co., Inc., Roth Capital Partners, and Telsey Advisory Group are acting as co-managers for the offering.