The billion-dollar AI company no one is talking about – and why you should care – ZDNet
Source: ZDNet
What if I told you that the biggest winner in this AI arms race isn’t OpenAI, Meta, Google… or even DeepSeek?
This company is quietly winning, and nobody’s talking about it. 🫣
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“One day, a magical company will change the world and revolutionize AI blah blah blah…”
They’re getting paid. Today. Money in the bank. Not “potentially” winning. They are already winning.
It ain’t Nvidia, either. When I say zero hype, I MEAN ZERO. It’s giving diamond in the rough vibes.
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The wildest part is they have been around for 20+ years and only now started making real money.
Buckle up. This is gonna be a good one. Like a Martin Scorsese movie, I PROMISE YOU… you won’t see this plot twist coming. 🤞
To understand how I discovered this juggernaut hiding in plain sight, first, you need to know who I am and what I do for a living.
I’m a founder with a successful exit under my belt. These days, I’m the exec chair for a group of ecom brands, but at my core, I’m an award-winning performance marketer.
Needless to say, data and insights are my jam. We operate more like a data company than an ecom brand. Our secret sauce? Pairing data and insights with ideas that generate revenue.
If you’re into data-driven business, marketing insights, and strategies, check out my free newsletter, No Fluff Just Facts. I break down what’s working in business with no fluff, just marketing insights and trends that matter.
Before I jump into the who, I need to bring you up to speed.
I know I need to come out with it, but this context is critical for you to spot the next trend on your own.
As you know, there is so much hype and speculation about AI that DeepSeek made an announcement and the market crashed by trillions of dollars. Yes, trillion with a T. 🤯
There is no denying that AI is here and will play a role in our future, but how do you identify the real from the fake?
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Who got rich during the gold rush? The guy selling the shovel.
Who got rich during the dot-com bubble? The telecom companies.
When investing, whether financially or allocating resources, I prefer to bet on the industry rather than a single company. This is especially true in the early stages when success depends on many factors aligning.
So, with that mindset, I started thinking: If we’re betting on AI as an industry, who wins? Where’s the opportunity?
To grasp why this sleeper company is winning, you must first understand how AI is shaping up behind the scenes.
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Right now, AI is in a hyper-growth phase. It’s more like the early days of the dot-com boom: money flying everywhere, but very few companies are actually making money.
The Model Builders — OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic. These are the companies building massive AI models. They need a considerable amount of data and computing power, meaning they are currently spending way more than they’re making.
The Infrastructure Providers – Nvidia, AWS, Microsoft Azure. These companies sell the computing power, cloud storage, and GPUs that AI models desperately need. They’re making money, but they’re not the whole story.
The Data Owners – This is where things get interesting. AI models need training data to get smarter. The problem? Most of the internet’s data is free and unstructured.
Using the gold rush as our blueprint, we see the real opportunities fall into two categories: Infrastructure and Data Owners.
I immediately ruled out Nvidia. Why? Too obvious. 😅
Besides, I’m not looking for a stock pick; I’m looking for opportunities from which I can benefit.
With that in mind, what I discovered was mind-blowing.
Yup. That Reddit. I told you this was a Martin Scorsese plot twist.
If you’re unfamiliar with Reddit, it is a social media platform and discussion site where users share content, discuss topics, and vote on posts. It’s often called “The Front Page of the Internet.”
Founded in 2005 by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, it was initially meant to be a food-ordering app called My Mobile Menu.
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Here is why they are winning… AI models need human-generated content for training. Reddit just so happens to have one of the largest human conversation datasets in the world.
What makes this so valuable is the quality of the conversations. The internet is full of junk, but Reddit’s discussions are real, unfiltered, and human. Unlike algorithm-driven platforms, this is raw, natural interaction, which is precisely what AI needs to understand human behavior.
In May 2024, Reddit signed a deal with OpenAI to sell access to its data, which led to its first profitable quarter ever in Q3 2024, with 68% revenue growth to $348.4 million and a net income of $29.9 million.
In the last six months, Reddit’
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