What Is Alexis Ohanian's Net Worth and Salary?
Alexis Ohanian is an American technology entrepreneur who has a net worth of $150 million. Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit. Alexis and Steve Huffman co-founded Reddit in 2005. They sold it to Conde Nast in 2006 for somewhere between $10 million and $20 million. When Reddit filed to go public in February 2024, its SEC filings showed that Alexis does not own a significant (larger than 5%) stake in Reddit today. The same filing showed that Steve Huffman owns around 3% of Reddit, thanks almost entirely to stock grants that were given to him in 2023. The filing showed that Sam Altman owns 8.7% of Reddit. And in an interesting twist, Ohanian's name does not appear once in the filing.
Ohanian is also notable for being married to tennis star Serena Williams. Through his venture capital firm, Initialized Capital, Alexis has invested in a number of successful startups, including Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, and Flexport. Initialized was a very early investor in Coinbase, having invested $200,000 into the company in 2012. Today, Initialized reportedly has $3.2 billion worth of assets under management.
Early Life
Alexis Ohanian was born Alexis Kerry Ohanian on April 24, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of Anke and Chris Ohanian. His grandparents came to the U.S. as refugees after the Armenian Genocide. Ohanian attended Howard High School in Ellicott City, Maryland. He gave the student address at his graduation ceremony in 2001.
A 2005 graduate of the University of Virginia, Alexis began focusing on business and the internet while in college and was a member of the professional business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi. He majored in commerce and history.
After college, Ohanian went on to found multiple Internet startups. Alexis and his friend Steve Huffman originally pitched the idea of MyMobileMenu to Y Combinator. The company passed on the idea but heavily encouraged the two to come up with their next one.
Alexis and Steve co-founded Reddit in 2005, a news website where users post and rank the news content. Reddit was part of Y Combinator's first batch of startups in the summer of 2005. It was purchased a year later by Conde Nast for an undisclosed amount of somewhere between $10-20 million.
Ohanian worked closely with Reddit as a member of its board of directors. He returned full-time to Reddit with Huffman in July 2015 and to lead the now-independent company. He stepped back from Reddit in February 2018 to focus his efforts on investing. He also resigned from Reddit's board on June 5, 2020, asking to be replaced by a Black candidate in response to the killing of George Floyd. Michael Seibel, a Black entrepreneur, was named a Reddit board member on June 10, 2020.
(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
Other Companies
In 2007, Ohanian founded Breadpig, an online company that finds, develops, and markets "geeky" things and then gives all of the profits to organizations that are in need of funding aid, including the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Room to Read, a program working to construct a primary school in Laos. The site has raised over $150,000 since it launched in 2007. He is no longer involved with the day-to-day operations of Breadpig. He is also the marketing director for Hipmunk, an online travel company. In June 2010, Alexis launched Das Kapital Capital, a company that focuses on startup investing, advising, and consulting. Ohanian was named the Ambassador to the East for Y Combinator. He was also a full-time partner at Y Combinator before stepping down in 2016.
Initialized Capital
In 2010, Ohanian co-founded Initialized Capital and made seed investments in startups, including Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, Zenefits, and Cruise, totaling over $500 million. He was ranked the #1 investor for network centrality in 2014 by CB Insights. Alexis invested $3 million in childcare startup Kinside in 2019, also under his company Initialized Capital.
As of this writing, Initialized Capital has more than $3 billion in assets under management. The company has raised money in three investment rounds as of this writing. In December 2021, the company raised $700 million from a consortium of investors.
Ether Investment
In a February 2023 interview, Alexis revealed that he paid $15,000 for a chunk of Ethereum cryptocurrency back in 2014. Using some rough math, if he still held that entire stake when he gave the interview in February 2023, those coins would be worth $80 million. If he owned that full stake back in November 2021, it was worth north of $230 million.
Other Ventures
Ohanian teamed up in December 2012 with Lester Chambers of The Chamber Brothers to launch a Kickstarter with the intention of making a new album entitled "Lester's Time Has Come." It raised over $61,000. Two years later, Alexis raised $12,244 for the non-profit Black Girls Code on Tilt.com.
Ohanian published a book, "Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed," on October 1, 2013. It ranked #4 on the "Wall Street Journal" bestseller list. That same year, he began hosting a weekly online series for "The Verge" called "Small Empires with Alexis Ohanian."
In 2017, Ohanian worked with teenager Rayouf Alhumedhi to campaign for Apple to introduce a hijab emoji. Alexis helped arrange an AMA for Alhumedhi about her idea and responded to critics. Apple released its version of the hijab emoji on July 17, 2017.
Alexis has launched three podcasts: "NYRD Radio" in October 2014, "Upvoted" in January 2015, and "Business Dad" in January 2020.
Activism
Ohanian is a passionate supporter of net neutrality and keeping the internet open. In 2010 and 2011, he spoke out against Congress's Stop Online Piracy Act, as well as the Senate's PROTECT IP Act. The two bills were eventually defeated, thanks to an Ohanian-led Internet-enabled campaign–he spoke to Congress, helped launch the national anti-SOPA/PIPA protests in 2012, and spoke at the NY Tech Meetup rally in New York. He also teamed up with Reddit General Manager Erik Martin and embarked on the Internet 2012 Bus Tour from Denver, CO, to Danville, KY, campaigning for the open Internet during the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. In response to his open internet activism, "The Daily Dot" ranked Alexis #1 on its list of the top ten most influential activists of 2012. "Forbes" magazine also awarded him the moniker "Mayor of the Internet." In May 2014, Ohanian lobbied the FCC to support net neutrality, which culminated on January 15, 2015, in a day-long phone-a-thon with Congress and the FCC. Alexis utilized Tilt.com to launch "Save Net Neutrality: Billboard in FCC's Backyard," a crowdfunding campaign that protested the FCC's plans to eliminate net neutrality.
Ohanian is also a fierce advocate for universal paid paternity leave. He wrote about his experience in the "New York Times" following his daughter's birth after his wife nearly died while giving birth, and he found himself in the position of the main caretaker for his family. In June 2019, he announced plans to bring a pledge of federal paid family leave legislation to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Personal Life
In October 2015, rumors swirled that Alexis was dating tennis superstar Serena Williams. On December 29, 2016, Serena and Alexis announced that they were, in fact, engaged after spending a little over a year quietly dating away from the press. They married in November 2017 and welcomed a daughter a few months prior, in September 2017. It was revealed in early 2023 that the couple is expecting another child. The family resides in Florida.
Alexis Ohanian purchased a Brooklyn condo in 2011 for $1.245 million. In 2022, he listed it for sale at $2.3 million.
