The Reddit app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken on July 13, 2021. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / Illustration / File Photo

Jan. 7 (Reuters) – Social media platform Reddit Inc, whose message boards have become at the heart of the stock trading frenzy in 2021, calls on Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N) for its first public offering, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

Reddit had confidential filed for an IPO in December and is targeting a valuation of more than $ 15 billion at the time of its IPO. It was valued at $ 10 billion in a private fundraiser led by Fidelity Management in August. Read more

A second source familiar with the matter said that JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) is also a major underwriters on the deal.

Goldman Sachs and Reddit did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase declined to comment.

Reddit, which was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, has over 50 million daily active users and over 100,000 communities.

His message boards, especially his WallStreetBets thread, were at the heart of a pitched battle between small traders and large hedge funds and had helped drive big gains in heavily shorted stocks of companies such as GameStop (GME. N) and AMC (AMC .N), while popularizing the term memes actions.

Globally, IPOs have raised a record $ 594 billion in 2021, benefiting from stock market rallies, with technology and healthcare the main sectors driving IPO volumes .

There were 426 tech IPOs last year and 332 healthcare-related transactions, collectively accounting for nearly 42% of IPO proceeds raised by companies around the world, according to Refinitiv. Read more

Bloomberg News first reported the news.

Reporting by Chavi Mehta and Anirban Sen in Bangalore; Krystal Hu in Toronto; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Arun Koyyur

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