Us social networking forum Reddit is seeking to hire investment bank advisers and lawyers to conduct an IPO in New York, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Reddit was valued at $10 billion in a round of private financing last month. By IPO early next year, Reddit hopes it will be valued at more than $15 billion, according to a source.

Sources warned that the timing and size of the company's IPO depends on market conditions. A spokesman for Reddit declined to comment.

Driven by the retail trading frenzy, Reddit has seen explosive growth and has become the preferred destination for retail investors to chase and discuss "meme" stocks such as GameStop since the beginning of this year. Most Wall Street analysts believe that "meme" stocks are grossly overvalued.

Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman, Alexis Ohanian and Aaron Swartz in 2005. As of October last year, Reddit had about 52 million daily active users and more than 100000 communities. Huffman has said the platform gained millions of new users at the height of the retail trading frenzy earlier this year, but has not released more recent user data.

Most of Reddit's revenue comes from advertising. The company reported advertising revenue of $100 million in the second quarter, nearly three times that of the same period last year.

Investors in Reddit include Fidelity Investments, US private venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Tencent.