San Francisco, Feb 9 (IANS): Online public discussion platform Reddit has raised $250 million in the new Series E funding round.

The company, now in its 16th year of operation with more than 50 million daily users, has raised nearly $800 million to date, including a Tencent-led $300 million Series D in February 2019.

"We have raised more than $250 million in Series E funding from existing and new investors. We decided that now was the right opportunity to make strategic investments in Reddit including video, advertising, consumer products, and expanding into international markets," the company said in a statement late on Monday.

The company said that it is "readying to double the number of Reddit employees this year".

The new funding comes after a renewed public attention on the platform where subreddit r/WallStreetBets helped raise the issue of GameStop stock that rose and fell sharply.

"We have come a long way in recent years to focus more on the needs of the hundreds of thousands of communities that make up Reddit and on creating feature-rich, safe, engaging, spaces for meaningful conversations for our 50+ million daily users," Reddit said.

"We have also continued to scale our Advertising business, which is now poised to deliver performance and engagement in addition to brand awareness".

Reddit said that it continues to invest in building and improving the ways people on Reddit connect.

Its more recent developments include acquiring the short-form video platform Dubsmash to bring highly-polished video creation tools to its platform and encourage under-represented creators to find a home on Reddit.