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STORY: Shares of Reddit soared above their $34 IPO price on Thursday, climbing as much as 70% above that level in their first hour of trading.

The California company priced its IPO at the top end of its range and its selling shareholders raised $748 million.

Reddit's long-awaited entry as a publicly traded company has been in the works for more than two years.

It confidentially filed for an IPO in Dec. 2021, but the stock rout due to the Federal Reserve's steep interest rate hikes led to a delay.

Trading in the stock over the next few weeks will be under scrutiny and could determine whether the IPO market can sustain a recent gradual recovery driven by increasing bets of a soft landing for the economy.

Reddit's popularity rose to new heights during the so-called "meme-stock" saga of 2021 in which a group of retail investors collaborated on its forum "wallstreetbets" to buy shares of highly shorted companies like GameStop.

As part of its plan to reward its user base, Reddit has reserved 8% of the shares on offer for eligible users and moderators, certain board members, as well as friends and family members of its employees and directors.

The company has said it was "in the early stages of monetizing (its) business" and is yet to turn an annual profit.

The CEO told CNBC in an interview Thursday that it did make money in the second half of 2023.