Reddit is testing a new way to turn its most popular conversations into audio and video, as the social media company seeks to expand how users consume its text-heavy content and capture engagement that is increasingly shifting toward short-form and spoken media.

Starting Monday, Reddit will test an initial version of what it calls a “video Reddit” experience across select communities. The experiment will include both narrated video and audio versions of posts as the company evaluates which formats users prefer and whether either can be scaled across the platform.

The initiative was first disclosed during Reddit’s second-quarter earnings call in July, when CEO Steve Huffman told analysts that users were already consuming Reddit content in similar formats on other platforms.

Popular Reddit stories are frequently repackaged on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, where creators use text-to-speech narration or read posts aloud. Those videos are often paired with the original text displayed on screen or unrelated background footage, including video-game playthroughs and cooking clips.

“There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content,” Huffman said during the earnings call.

“I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well,” he added.

Reddit’s move brings that behavior inside its own platform rather than leaving third-party creators and social networks to capture the audience and engagement generated by Reddit’s content. The initial rollout is deliberately limited. Reddit said the tests are intended to help it understand how audio and video formats could be useful to users and whether they can be presented in a way that remains consistent with the platform’s culture.

Users will be able to select “read” or “play” for posts where the feature is available. The experiment will initially cover only selected English-language posts and will be available through Reddit’s iOS and Android applications.

Importantly, the new formats will not replace Reddit’s traditional text-based posts. Users will continue to be able to read the original post and participate in its comments in the usual way. Instead, Reddit is positioning audio and video as additional ways to consume conversations. A user could listen to a narrated post while exercising, walking, or doing errands, while a video version could turn a written discussion into a more conventional audiovisual experience.

Reddit Wants to Capture Engagement Happening Elsewhere

The experiment addresses a longstanding problem for Reddit: some of the platform’s most popular content already travels well beyond Reddit. Stories from Reddit communities have become raw material for creators on short-form video platforms, particularly when posts involve unusual personal experiences, relationship disputes, workplace conflicts, mysteries or other highly shareable narratives.

Those creators can package Reddit conversations into videos and capture views, advertising revenue, and audience attention without requiring users to return to Reddit.

By developing its own audio and video formats, Reddit could potentially retain more of that consumption within its ecosystem. The strategy also fits a broader shift in how people consume written information. Users listen to articles, posts, and discussions rather than reading them directly, particularly on mobile devices and while performing other activities.

For Reddit, the challenge is making that transition without stripping away the community interaction that differentiates the platform from conventional content publishers. The company’s decision to retain the original posts and comments suggests it does not intend to turn Reddit into a purely video-driven social network. Instead, it is testing whether audiovisual formats can serve as another entry point into Reddit’s existing communities.

Reddit Has Experimented With Video Before

The company has a history of trying to expand beyond its traditional text-and-image format. Reddit previously introduced native video hosting and experimented with versions of a TikTok-style video feed. More recently, it introduced video in comments, which Reddit says now accounts for more than 10% of video posts on the platform.

The latest initiative represents a somewhat different approach because the company is using Reddit’s existing text-based discussions as the foundation for audiovisual content. That could allow Reddit to create a large amount of video and audio programming without depending entirely on users to produce original video.

It also gives the company a way to test which types of Reddit conversations translate effectively into spoken or visual formats. Not every Reddit discussion is likely to work as a narrated story, and the company’s early tests could help determine whether users prefer certain communities, topics, or post structures.

Copyright And Authenticity Remain Important Questions

The experiment also raises questions about how Reddit handles the transformation of user-generated content. Reddit’s value comes largely from conversations created by its users, and converting those conversations into professionally packaged audio or video introduces questions about attribution, consent, and the boundaries between platform distribution and creator ownership.

Reddit is also attempting to solve an authenticity problem. Much of the existing third-party content based on Reddit uses automated narration and unrelated background footage, formats that can make genuine user discussions feel manufactured for engagement.

The company says its early experiments will examine whether it can create audiovisual versions that still feel authentic to Reddit.

That may be critical to the strategy’s success. Reddit’s strongest advantage is not simply the volume of text on its platform but the communities and conversations built around specific interests. If turning those discussions into videos makes them feel detached from their original communities, Reddit could lose some of the characteristics that make the content valuable in the first place.

For now, the company is treating the project as an experiment rather than a major redesign. If users embrace narrated and video versions of Reddit posts, however, the test could give the company a new way to increase time spent on the platform, capture consumption that currently occurs on competing social networks, and extend the reach of its enormous archive of user-generated conversations.

Nvidia has agreed to provide a guarantee of up to $105 billion to support OpenAI’s lease of a massive data center campus in Ohio being developed by SoftBank-owned SB Energy, deepening the chipmaker’s role in financing the infrastructure required to sustain the artificial intelligence boom.

Nvidia said Monday it will also invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, adding to a growing portfolio of infrastructure investments designed to expand the computing capacity available to customers using its chips.

The agreement is seen as the latest indication that Nvidia is moving beyond its traditional role as a supplier of AI processors and increasingly helping finance the data centers, power systems and other infrastructure needed to deploy them. It also raises fresh questions about the financial relationships developing across the AI industry, as chipmakers, cloud providers, model developers and infrastructure companies increasingly invest in one another.

The Ohio project, in Pike County, will have as much as 8 gigawatts of computing capacity, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure developments announced in the United States. The first 800 megawatts is expected to come online in 2028, while OpenAI will lease the facility for 20 years.

Nvidia will be the site’s exclusive chip supplier.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang defended the financing arrangement, rejecting suggestions that it represents circular financing in which AI companies effectively use money from their suppliers and investors to purchase the suppliers’ products.

“We are securing long-lived infrastructure for Nvidia compute so OpenAI can deploy the most productive AI factories that can be upgraded repeatedly with each new generation delivering more intelligence and better economics,” Huang said.

Nvidia said its guarantee will cover only a portion of the project’s lease and power payments, as well as a commitment to maintain a minimum value for the site. It will not guarantee the entire cost of construction or all of OpenAI’s obligations.

Under the proposed structure, OpenAI would remain responsible for rent. If OpenAI defaults, Nvidia would cover the difference between the guaranteed minimum value and whatever SB Energy can recover by leasing or selling the facility.

The final financing structure has not yet been determined, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Reuters. The project is expected to combine equity and debt. Equity could include money raised through a potential SB Energy initial public offering as well as direct investment from SoftBank.

Once the equity component is established, the remaining financing could come from project-finance loans and potentially public debt such as bonds, the people said.

Nvidia’s Infrastructure Bet

The deal represents an unusually large commitment by Nvidia to infrastructure that will ultimately create additional demand for its own processors.

Nvidia has pursued this strategy as AI developers race to secure scarce computing capacity. The company is effectively helping ensure that the physical infrastructure needed to deploy successive generations of its chips is built ahead of demand.

Huang said the Ohio facility could generate as much as $200 billion in Nvidia revenue over time. Including a potential 3.75-gigawatt expansion, Nvidia expects to sell OpenAI a total of 16 gigawatts of computing capacity and could generate as much as $600 billion in revenue from OpenAI through 2030.

That creates a powerful commercial incentive for Nvidia to help solve one of the biggest constraints facing the AI industry: the availability of suitable data centers with enough electricity and grid capacity.

Nvidia’s latest commitment follows a separate initiative announced last week in which the company partnered with six major financial institutions, including BlackRock, to establish financing platforms targeting more than $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure.

The scale of those commitments has intensified scrutiny over whether the industry’s rapid expansion is being supported by complex financial arrangements among companies that ultimately depend on one another.

“Investors are right to be worried about what seems to be a never-ending loop of AI deals but realistically the field of players isn’t all that vast and there was always going to be a degree of circular financing,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell.

“The biggest test is whether these investments ultimately generate decent returns for all those laying out cash and that’s something that can only be figured out further down the line,” she said.

Power Emerges As The Next AI Bottleneck

The Ohio project also reveals a challenge that is becoming as important to AI development as chips themselves: electricity. The proposed campus will initially have 4.25 gigawatts of capacity, eventually rising to as much as 8 gigawatts. One gigawatt of computing power is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of about 750,000 U.S. homes on average.

To support the development, SoftBank and SB Energy plan to build at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation and spend $4.2 billion on regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio.

The scale of that investment highlights why AI infrastructure is now being planned around access to electricity rather than simply the availability of land. The U.S. power grid is already facing constraints in some regions, while data center projects have encountered opposition from communities concerned about electricity prices, water consumption, and the broader impact of large-scale facilities on local infrastructure.

The Ohio project is expected to create about 35,000 construction jobs through 2032 and roughly 2,500 permanent operating positions, according to OpenAI.

People familiar with the project said the risk of significant construction delays from local opposition is relatively low because Ohio officials have supported the development because of its expected economic benefits. OpenAI and SoftBank have also committed $80 million to community projects.

The project involves federal land and has participation from the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Energy.

A Test of The AI Infrastructure Economy

The Ohio development is part of a broader race to build what the AI industry calls “AI factories”: large computing facilities designed to train and run increasingly sophisticated models.

While securing these sites can help Nvidia create a predictable market for successive generations of its processors, it is expected to grant OpenAI essential long-term access to computing capacity as it scales its models and AI services.

But the economics of the arrangement will ultimately depend on whether demand for AI computing grows quickly enough to justify the enormous capital expenditure required to build and operate these facilities.

The 20-year lease provides OpenAI with long-term access to capacity, while Nvidia’s guarantee shifts part of the financial risk of the project onto the chipmaker. That creates an unusual alignment of interests. Nvidia benefits when OpenAI expands its computing footprint because the company is the exclusive chip supplier to the Ohio site. OpenAI benefits by securing infrastructure for future model development. SoftBank and SB Energy gain a major long-term customer for a large infrastructure project.

The arrangement therefore ties together the fortunes of three major participants in the AI infrastructure buildout.