Reddit on Wednesday priced its shares at $34 for its initial public offering, two people with knowledge of the matter said. The pricing was at the high end of expectations, in a sign of investor demand for growing tech companies.

The San Francisco-based social media company had estimated that its shares would be priced at $31 to $34. The $34 price put Reddit’s value at $6.4 billion, below the $10 billion valuation it fetched in a private fund-raising round in 2021. The company raised $748 million in the offering, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Its shares will begin trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RDDT.

The pricing was a favorable signal for start-ups and venture capitalists, who have been closely watching Reddit’s offering as a test for private tech companies angling to brave the public markets. Activity has been slow, with just over 100 companies going public in the United States last year, roughly a quarter of the number that went public in 2021, according to data compiled by Renaissance Capital, which manages exchange-traded funds that focus on I.P.O.s.

Shares of one of last year’s hottest tech company debuts — Instacart, the grocery delivery company — are up roughly 58 percent this year. Shares of Arm, a chip designer that also went public last year, are up about 90 percent in the same period.

The offering is a boon to Reddit’s largest shareholders. They include a co-founder, Steve Huffman, who holds a 3.3 percent stake; Advance Magazine Publishers, which is affiliated with the parent company of Condé Nast; and a unit of Tencent, the Chinese internet giant, called Tencent Cloud Europe. Alexis Ohanian, the other co-founder, was not listed in Reddit’s filings as a principal shareholder.