Reddit Weighs Cutting Google AI Access as $60M Deal Expires

Reddit shares fell about 9% Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal reported that executives had internally discussed ending Google's access to its content for AI training, with the current $60-million-a-year deal nearing expiration. CNBC's writeup frames it as a straight standoff: Reddit is reconsidering the arrangement because Google's AI Overviews are eating the referral traffic the deal was implicitly premised on, and executives reportedly want usage-based fees in any next contract.

The math the market is trying to price is unusually visible. The Google agreement was signed in February 2024 for roughly $60 million a year, and a similar deal with OpenAI announced three months later is estimated at about $70 million a year. Both are up for renewal in 2026. Wells Fargo, per the reporting, thinks combined annual revenue from these licenses could surge to about $550 million upon renegotiation, more than quadrupling the current run rate of roughly $130 million. That is the upside case. The downside case is that Reddit walks and the ad business, already exposed to declining click-throughs, absorbs the loss without a cushion.

The traffic backdrop is what makes the standoff serious. A Pew Research study cited in the coverage found users clicked traditional search links in about 15% of searches without an AI Overview, falling to 8% when one appeared, and just 1% for links inside the summary itself. Reddit is currently the second most-cited source in AI Overviews, so the arithmetic cuts both ways: the more Google's summaries win, the less the free referral traffic is worth, but also the more the underlying training data becomes leverage.

Reddit is not the only publisher doing this math. According to the reporting, USA Today's organic Google traffic fell by almost half between June 2025 and June 2026, Politico declined 23%, CNN lost around 25%, and Business Insider plunged more than 85%; USA Today, Politico, the Economist, People Inc. and Reuters are all said to be weighing how, or even if, to keep working with Google. The honest caveat is that the WSJ item is about internal discussions, not a decision, and the specific terms Reddit is pushing for beyond usage-based fees are not spelled out.

Watch what actually gets signed. If Reddit lands anywhere close to the Wells Fargo upside case, content licensing becomes a durable line item across the publisher industry rather than an IPO-era curiosity; if it walks, the message is that even the second-most-cited voice in AI search could not extract enough to justify the trade.