As the TikTok-fueled market for social video platforms continues to grow, social news aggregation site Reddit has snapped up the short-form video app Dubsmash, both companies announced in separate blog posts on Sunday (Dec. 13).
With the acquisition, Dubsmash’s entire team — including its three co-founders, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and Tim Spech — join Reddit, where Dubsmash will continue to maintain its own platform and brand. Reddit will also integrate Dubsmash’s video creation tools into its platform, which has 430 million monthly active users — accelerating its own focus on video, which began when Reddit first launched native video in 2017.
Both companies will also seek to extend Dubsmash’s focus on underrepresented creators. According to Reddit’s blog post, about 25% of all Black teens in the U.S. are on Dubsmash, and 70% of users are women.
“Both Reddit and Dubsmash share a deep-rooted respect for how communities come together,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. “Dubsmash elevates underrepresented creators, while Reddit fosters a sense of community and belonging across thousands of different topics and passions. It’s clear that our missions closely align and that our community-focused platforms can coexist and grow as we learn from each other.”
While Dubsmash launched as a creation tool for lip-synching videos in 2015, its founders retooled the offering two years later to add social media elements. It has since emerged as a strong competitor in the growing social video app market, which is dominated by TikTok (with 100 million monthly active U.S. users and 2 billion global downloads) but also includes rivals like Triller, Instagram’s Reels, Byte and more.
Dubsmash says that about 30% of its users log in every day, and the platform fosters more than 1 billion video views every month. The company has raised $20.2 million to date over four funding rounds, according to Crunchbase data, with investors including Raine Group’s Fred Davis.
“In our years of building Dubsmash, we’ve learned how video can spark creativity, unlock interactions, and deepen connections within communities,” added co-founder Dash, who is head of Dubsmash. “We want to continue our journey to bring best in class video products to our users, and now Reddit users. We believe in the idea of connecting creators around interests and topics, something Reddit has pioneered, in our growing Dubsmash community.”
Further details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Read Reddit’s full blog post announcement here and Dubsmash’s here.
