(Omer Taha Cetin/Getty Images)

Reddit’s stock briefly pumped yesterday after an old news article resurfaced — it’s deeply in the red today

An old Reuters article about a Reddit-Google partnership sent RDDT sharply higher yesterday.

3/18/25 11:33AM

With Reddit’s stock down ~50% since its early February peak, investors in Reddit haven’t had much to celebrate in the last month or so, as the AI momentum reversal has wrecked many of the highest-flying stocks of 2024.

But for a brief moment yesterday, traders sprung into action to bid up the stock, with Reddit breaking out of its market malaise and shares surging ~12% from 2:45 to 3:05 p.m. ET.

The apparent catalyst? A partnership with none other than Google, with numerous outlets running with a headline — Google expands Reddit partnership — that appears to have originated on Reuters, detailing how Reddit will be able to “use Google’s Vertex AI.” The only problem is that the news was more than a year old. A blog post from Google’s website dated February 22, 2024, confirms the details that many of the syndicated versions of the piece — such as this one, which remains on MSN — discussed.

Within about an hour the stock had soared ~12% higher before promptly giving up all the gains, and retail traders, writing on Reddit, weren’t happy:

RDDT Reuters pump and dump
byu/steamcube instocks

Reuters itself appears to have withdrawn the article entirely, with a piece in its place that reads:

“March 17 (Reuters) - A story on Google expanding its partnership with Reddit was based on outdated information and has been withdrawn.
There will be no substitute.”

So, why is Reddit getting hammered again this morning? There are a few possible reasons:

Reddit is strongly correlated with the “risk-on momentum trade” in Big Tech stocks. With the market down, led lower by names like Meta and Tesla, Reddit is coming under pressure.
Unfavorable analyst coverage: according to Barron’s, Redburn analysts launched coverage of the social networking site on Monday with a sell rating and a price target of $75.
Comments made by the company’s CEO last week, which implied that it was more valuable to use its data internally than license it to Google or OpenAI. Part of some investors’ bull theses on the stock was that it would continue to sign lucrative AI licensing deals.

Jon Keegan2h

EU calls for bids to build “AI gigafactories” in 2026

The European Union wants to shore up its domestic AI infrastructure, and reduce its dependence on American tech companies.

To further this goal, the bloc is planning on accepting bids to build EU-based “AI gigafactories,” according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

EU Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen announced that bids would begin in January or February, according to the report.

As the AI arms race heats up, countries are racing to secure their own sovereign AI infrastructure, including building their own AI models that reflect countries’ culture and language, and control over cloud computing resources.

Europe is lagging behind the US and Asia in AI infrastructure. But it may be hard for the EU to fully break free of American tech — unlike the US and China, there is no European alternative for the powerful GPUs needed to train and run AI models. It’s very likely that any AI gigafactories in the EU will be filled with GPUs from Nvidia.

EU to Open Bidding for AI Gigafactories in Early 2026

EU Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen announced that bids would begin in January or February, according to the report.

Jon Keegan4h

Google’s AI chip business could be a $900 billion boon for the company

Google may be sitting on a massive new business that it has yet to fully exploit.

Google’s custom tensor processing unit (TPU) AI chips have been getting a lot of attention recently, making the tech world wonder if there are other ways to power its AI dreams rather than just by using Nvidia’s GPUs.

Bloomberg spoke with analysts who estimate that, if it does decide to sell its chips to others, Google could capture 20% of the AI market, making it a $900 billion business. For comparison, Google Cloud pulled in $43.2 billion of revenue last year.

Even if Google just sticks with renting access to its TPUs, it will continue to drive down costs and increase margins as it ekes out performance improvements, such as the 30x improvement in power efficiency that the latest generation of TPUs has delivered for the company.

Alphabet’s AI Chips Are a Potential $900 Billion ‘Secret Sauce’

Rani Molla5h

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has explored bringing his feud with Tesla’s Elon Musk to space

Billionaires, they’re just like us: they want to bring their terrestrial beefs to outer space.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has explored buying or partnering with a rocket company to compete with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Wall Street Journal reports. The two billionaires have had numerous public feuds over the years that have played out in the courts and on social media. They also both lead AI companies that have insatiable needs for data centers and have publicly discussed building data centers in space.

Altman seems like he thinks this could be more than science fiction. He reportedly reached out to rocket maker Stoke Space to potentially make equity investments in the company to get a controlling stake, though the talks are no longer active, WSJ reports.

Or perhaps he just wanted a Sherwood bobblehead of himself.

Jon Keegan6h

Report: Meta to slash metaverse, VR spending by up to 30%

Four years after changing its name to reflect its focus on the loosely defined “metaverse,” Meta is planning deep cuts to the company’s money-losing virtual reality efforts, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Meta’s Reality Labs division, home to the teams working on metaverse products — which include Quest VR headsets, Horizon Worlds, and its Ray-Ban Meta glasses — has lost about $70 billion since the company started breaking out the unit in 2020.

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.