Steve Huffman

Steve Huffman
Huffman in 2017
Steve Huffman
Born	Steve Ladd Huffman 1983 or 1984
Birthplace	Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Co-founder and CEO of Reddit
Known for	Co-founding Reddit, co-founding Hipmunk
Education	University of Virginia (BS)
Children	1
Website	[https://reddit.com/user/spez Official site]

Steve Ladd Huffman (born 1983 or 1984), known online by his Reddit username spez, is an American web developer, entrepreneur, and internet executive who co-founded and serves as chief executive officer of Reddit, one of the most visited websites in the world. Born in Lansing, Michigan, Huffman co-created Reddit in 2005 alongside his University of Virginia roommate Alexis Ohanian, launching the social news aggregation and discussion platform with an initial investment of approximately $12,000. After departing from Reddit in 2009, Huffman co-founded the airfare search engine Hipmunk and taught web development courses before returning to Reddit as CEO in 2015. Under his renewed leadership, Reddit grew into one of the internet's largest platforms and went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RDDT. In November 2025, Forbes reported that Huffman had entered the billionaire ranks, propelled by strong advertising revenue and the company's increasing role in the artificial intelligence data ecosystem. His tenure as CEO has been marked by significant platform changes and several public controversies, including a 2016 incident in which he edited user comments and later content-access policy disputes with third-party developers.

Early Life

Steve Ladd Huffman was born in Lansing, Michigan. He developed an interest in computers and programming from an early age. Huffman attended Wakefield School, a private college-preparatory institution in The Plains, Virginia. During his formative years, he cultivated skills in software development that would later prove foundational to his career in technology.

Huffman has spoken publicly about his worldview and preparedness mindset. In a 2017 profile published in The New Yorker, he was featured among technology executives who had taken steps toward preparedness for potential societal disruptions, sometimes described colloquially as "doomsday prepping." The article detailed how Huffman, like a number of other Silicon Valley figures, had considered contingency plans in the event of large-scale catastrophes. The profile drew widespread media attention and became one of the more frequently cited pieces in discussions about the survivalist tendencies among wealthy technology executives.

Education

Huffman enrolled at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he studied computer science at the university's School of Engineering and Applied Science. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the institution. It was at UVA that Huffman met Alexis Ohanian, who became his college roommate and later his business partner in the founding of Reddit. The two shared interests in technology and entrepreneurship, and their collaboration at the university laid the groundwork for what would become one of the internet's most prominent social media platforms.

Career

Founding of Reddit (2005–2009)

In 2005, shortly after graduating from the University of Virginia, Huffman and Ohanian co-founded Reddit with an initial investment of approximately $12,000. The platform was conceived as a social news aggregation website where users could submit links and content, which other users would then vote up or down to determine their visibility. The site's design was intentionally minimalist, with Huffman serving as the primary developer responsible for building the underlying codebase and architecture.

Reddit was accepted into Y Combinator's inaugural batch of startups in the summer of 2005. The platform grew steadily, attracting a devoted user base drawn to its community-driven model and the breadth of topics covered across its network of "subreddits"—individual forums dedicated to specific subjects. In 2006, Condé Nast Publications acquired Reddit, and the platform continued to expand under its new corporate ownership.

During Reddit's early years, Huffman and the founding team employed a practice of creating fake user accounts to populate the site with content and make it appear more active than it was in its nascent stage. This tactic, which Huffman later acknowledged publicly, was described as a common bootstrapping strategy among early-stage internet platforms seeking to overcome the "cold start" problem of attracting initial users to a platform with little existing content.

Huffman departed from Reddit in 2009, stepping away from day-to-day involvement with the company he had co-founded.

Hipmunk and Teaching (2010–2015)

After leaving Reddit, Huffman co-founded Hipmunk, an airfare and hotel search engine designed to simplify the process of comparing travel options. The startup differentiated itself through a visual interface that displayed flight and hotel search results on a timeline, and introduced a metric called "agony" that ranked flights based on a combination of price, duration, and number of stops rather than price alone. Hipmunk attracted venture capital funding and gained a user base, though it ultimately faced intense competition from established travel search platforms. The company was eventually shut down in 2020.

During this period, Huffman also engaged in educational work related to web development. He taught a course on web development through Udacity, the online education platform. The course, which covered the fundamentals of building web applications, was noted among rankings of popular computer science massive open online courses (MOOCs). Huffman also discussed his approach to software development and entrepreneurship in media appearances, including an interview on the technology podcast Triangulation.

Return to Reddit as CEO (2015–present)

In July 2015, Huffman returned to Reddit as its chief executive officer, replacing interim CEO Ellen Pao, who had resigned amid significant community backlash over platform management decisions. Huffman's return was covered extensively by technology media, with New York magazine profiling him as a figure tasked with restoring stability to a platform in turmoil.

Upon his return, Huffman implemented a series of changes to Reddit's content policies, community guidelines, and technical infrastructure. He worked to establish clearer rules around what types of content were permissible on the platform, banning several subreddits that were deemed to violate newly articulated standards. These decisions generated both support and criticism from different segments of Reddit's user base, reflecting the persistent tension between free expression and content moderation that has defined online platform governance.

Comment Editing Controversy (2016)

In November 2016, Huffman became embroiled in one of the most notable controversies of his tenure when it was discovered that he had secretly edited comments made by users of the subreddit r/The_Donald, a community associated with supporters of Donald Trump. The comments in question had been directed at Huffman personally, and he had altered them so that the insults were redirected toward the moderators of r/The_Donald instead.

The revelation that the CEO of one of the internet's largest platforms had the ability and willingness to silently alter user-generated content without any indication that the content had been modified provoked widespread outcry. Critics argued that the action undermined the integrity of all content on the platform, as it demonstrated that administrators could change any user's posts at will. The incident also raised questions about the evidentiary reliability of Reddit posts, particularly in legal or journalistic contexts.

Huffman subsequently issued a public apology, acknowledging that his actions were inappropriate and stating that he had let his frustration get the better of him. The apology coincided with the banning of r/Pizzagate, a subreddit dedicated to promoting a debunked conspiracy theory, which had further inflamed tensions on the platform.

Net Neutrality Advocacy (2017)

In December 2017, during the period leading up to the Federal Communications Commission's vote to repeal net neutrality regulations established during the Obama administration, Huffman and Reddit took a public stance in favor of maintaining net neutrality protections. Reddit facilitated prominent displays of net neutrality advocacy on its platform, and Huffman voiced opposition to the proposed repeal in media interviews.

In a Bloomberg Television interview, Huffman argued that the repeal of net neutrality would stifle competition by allowing internet service providers to favor their own content and services over those of competitors and smaller companies. The Columbia Journalism Review analyzed Reddit's role in the net neutrality debate, noting the platform's capacity to mobilize public engagement on policy issues.

Combating Hate Speech

Under Huffman's leadership, Reddit participated in broader technology industry efforts to address online hate speech and extremism. The Anti-Defamation League enlisted Reddit alongside other major technology companies in initiatives aimed at combating hate and harassment on digital platforms. These efforts involved establishing policies and tools to identify and remove content that promoted hatred or violence against individuals or groups based on protected characteristics.

Platform Changes and AI Strategy (2023–present)

In the years preceding and following Reddit's initial public offering, Huffman oversaw significant changes to the platform's business model and strategic direction. Among the most consequential was the introduction of charges for access to Reddit's application programming interface (API) in 2023, a decision that resulted in the shutdown of numerous popular third-party Reddit applications and sparked widespread user protests across the platform.

In December 2025, Huffman announced that Reddit would discontinue its r/popular default feed, stating that it "gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture." The change reflected Huffman's broader vision of Reddit as a network of distinct communities rather than a monolithic platform with a single front page experience.

Huffman has increasingly positioned Reddit as a critical data source for artificial intelligence development. As AI companies sought large-scale, human-generated text data for training large language models, Reddit's vast archive of user discussions became a valuable asset. Time magazine named Huffman to its list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI for 2025, noting his belief that Reddit represents "the internet's" repository of authentic human-generated content in an era of increasing AI-generated material online.

Stock Transactions

As CEO of a publicly traded company, Huffman's stock transactions have been subject to public disclosure requirements. In February 2026, regulatory filings showed that Huffman sold 18,000 shares of Reddit stock.

Personal Life

Huffman has one child. He is known on Reddit by his username "spez," which he has used since the platform's earliest days and which has become widely recognized among the site's user community.

Huffman's profile in The New Yorker in 2017 revealed that he had undergone LASIK eye surgery, which he described partly as a practical measure in the context of his survivalist preparedness mindset—reasoning that corrective lenses would be difficult to obtain in a societal collapse scenario. The detail became one of the most frequently cited anecdotes about Huffman in subsequent media coverage.

Recognition

In November 2025, both Forbes and Fortune reported that Huffman had become a billionaire, approximately twenty years after co-founding Reddit with a $12,000 investment. Forbes attributed the milestone to strong advertising sales at Reddit and the company's growing importance in the AI data ecosystem.

In August 2025, Time magazine included Huffman on its annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI, recognizing his role in positioning Reddit as a significant source of human-generated content for AI training purposes.

The UVA Magazine profiled Huffman as a notable alumnus of the University of Virginia, highlighting his role in building Reddit into a major internet platform.

Huffman has been featured in numerous technology media profiles and interviews over the course of his career, including appearances in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and other outlets.

Legacy

Reddit, under Huffman's co-founding and leadership, has grown into one of the most visited websites globally. As of 2025, the platform ranks among the top ten websites worldwide by traffic, serving as a central hub for online discussion across an enormous range of topics, from technology and science to politics, entertainment, and niche hobbyist communities. The platform's structure—built around user-created and user-moderated communities called subreddits—has been influential in shaping how online communities are organized and governed.

Huffman's career has also been emblematic of broader tensions in the technology industry regarding content moderation, platform governance, and the responsibilities of technology companies toward their users and society. His decisions as CEO—from banning specific subreddits to altering API access policies to editing user comments—have served as case studies in the challenges of managing large-scale online platforms. The comment-editing incident of 2016, in particular, raised fundamental questions about the trustworthiness of digital platforms and the power that platform administrators hold over user-generated content.

His strategic pivot toward positioning Reddit's data as a resource for AI development represents a significant evolution in the company's business model and reflects the broader trend of technology companies recognizing the commercial value of large-scale human-generated text data in the age of generative AI.