Reddit soared as much as 11% in early trading on Wednesday after the social media firm floored investors with strong revenue growth and improving profitability in the first earnings since its market debut.

The company surprised Wall Street late on Tuesday with a forecast that it could post an adjusted profit in the second quarter, and its revenue outlook was also far above estimates.

The projections followed better-than-expected results for the first three months of 2024, showing that Reddit’s push to grow its advertising business and content licensing deals with AI-focused companies such as Google were paying off.

“We suspected that Reddit would come out strong out of the gates, and Reddit exceeded our bullish expectations,” Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik said in a client note.

“Reddit appears to be reaping the benefits of a strong digital ad market, buoyed by some ‘free’ IPO marketing, alongside increased traffic courtesy of their new favorite AI partner Google.”

Several analysts have said that despite being founded in 2005, Reddit was still in the early stages of the process of generating ad revenue and should benefit in the coming quarters from expanded ad targeting and measurement tools, among others.

The company’s more than 100,000 discussion forums, or subreddits, filled with user-generated content topics ranging from history to gaming have made it an attractive partner for companies looking to train their data-hungry AI models.

At least 7 analysts raised their price target on Reddit’s stock, pushing the median view to $55, according to LSEG data. The company priced its much-awaited initial public offering at $34 in March.

Reddit remains in the early days of developing its ads business, Piper Sandler analysts said, adding that a large international user opportunity remains untapped. 

 Shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust jumped 2.4% on Monday after the exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the price of bitcoin saw its first day of inflow since January.

The move marks a major milestone for GBTC, which has seen $17.46 billion in withdrawals since it converted from a trust to an easily tradable ETF in January, due to the higher fees it charges compared with rivals.

Some of the outflows were also tied to the wave of bankruptcies in the crypto industry, as companies that collapsed in the last two years pulled money out of the fund to repay their creditors.

GBTC saw inflows of $63 million on Friday, according to investment management firm Farside Investors. It currently manages $18.08 billion in assets, according to its website.

However, its position as the biggest spot bitcoin ETF by assets under management (AUM) has come under threat from BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, which manages $16.91 billion, according to its website.

Grayscale said in March that it would seek approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to spin off a portion of GBTC’s assets into a new, lower-fee Bitcoin Mini Trust. The company has yet to decide on the fees for the Mini Trust.

Spot bitcoin ETFs, which were approved by the SEC in January following a decade of rejection, provide investors with bitcoin exposure without the need to directly hold the cryptocurrency. 

China’s top engineering and rail design experts have exciting news: they’re planning to build the country’s very first hyperloop train line!

This futuristic project will connect two bustling cities, Shanghai and Hangzhou, spanning a distance of 150km (about 93 miles).

What makes this project so special? Well, it’s all about speed! The hyperloop train will travel inside a special vacuum tunnel, allowing it to reach mind-blowing speeds of up to 1,000km/h (that’s about 621mph!).

Before choosing the Shanghai-Hangzhou route, the experts carefully evaluated several options.

They considered factors like economic potential, population density, and existing transport infrastructure. In the end, they decided that connecting Shanghai and Hangzhou would bring the most benefits to the region.

This project is a big deal for China, and it’s being led by some of the country’s top engineers and scientists.

They’re excited about the potential for this hyperloop train to revolutionize transportation and boost economic growth in the area.