By Alexis Ohanian at CES 2026. Photo: Xuthoria / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Alexis Ohanian has spent more than two decades building, funding and promoting internet companies, and the work has touched most of the way ordinary people use the web. He co-founded Reddit as a college graduate, helped start one of Silicon Valley’s best-known seed investment firms, and now runs his own venture firm while also owning stakes in women’s sports teams.
From Brooklyn to Reddit
Ohanian was born April 24, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in the Maryland suburbs. He graduated from Howard High School in Columbia, Maryland, and then from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history.
The company that became Reddit grew out of a failed pitch. Ohanian and his college roommate, Steve Huffman, applied to Y Combinator with an idea for ordering food by mobile phone. The accelerator turned it down but encouraged them to come back with something else. Reddit, the link-sharing and discussion site, was part of Y Combinator’s first batch in the summer of 2005.
Condé Nast bought Reddit in 2006 for an undisclosed sum, reported at $10 million to $20 million. Ohanian returned to lead the independent company with Huffman in July 2015, then stepped back in February 2018 to concentrate on investing. In June 2020 he resigned from Reddit’s board and asked that a Black candidate take his seat. Michael Seibel was named days later.
A Colorado stop in 2012
Ohanian’s clearest tie to the Front Range came during the 2012 presidential campaign. After the fight over the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills, he and Reddit general manager Erik Martin set out on the Internet 2012 Bus Tour to talk about online freedom. It started in Denver, where the first presidential debate was held at the University of Denver on October 3. NBC News reported that the two hosted a debate-watching party for local Reddit users at a downtown Denver bar, Katie Mullen’s.
The bus left Denver the next morning. Its first detour was to Boulder, to the venture capital firm Foundry Group, where Ohanian and Martin met managing director Ryan McIntyre. The eight-day trip then rolled east toward Kentucky, the site of the vice presidential debate.
That is the extent of the Colorado connection found in the record. Ohanian lives in Florida, and nothing reviewed for this profile ties him to Wyoming.
Investor and team owner
In 2010 Ohanian co-founded Initialized Capital, whose early bets included Instacart, Zenefits, Opendoor and Cruise. He also worked at Y Combinator in several roles from 2010 to 2016. He left Initialized in June 2020 and announced a new firm, 776, in June 2021. Through it he funds the 776 Foundation Fellowship, which gives $100,000 over two years to students age 23 or younger working on climate-related startups.
Sports have become a second line of business. In July 2020 he became the founding control owner of a women-majority group awarded a National Women’s Soccer League expansion team, Angel City FC, which began play in 2022. In 2024 he launched Athlos, a women’s-only track and field event. On May 14, 2025, he bought a 10% stake in Chelsea Women FC for £20 million and joined its board.
He returned to media in 2025. In March of that year he and Kevin Rose bought Digg and relaunched it as a news aggregator. The site’s open beta began January 14, 2026. In July 2025, 776 led a $6 million seed round in Ticket Wallet, a ticket resale platform.
Advocacy and family
Ohanian was a leading voice in the January 18, 2012, online protests against SOPA and PIPA, and he lobbied on net neutrality in 2014 and 2015. He wrote in the New York Times about taking paternity leave and pushed for federal paid family leave in 2019. His book, Without Their Permission, came out in October 2013 and reached fourth on the Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business list.
He married tennis player Serena Williams on November 16, 2017, in New Orleans. They have two daughters, Alexis Olympia, born in September 2017, and Adira River, born in August 2023. He had surgery on November 28, 2024, to remove thyroid nodules.
Sources: Wikipedia; NBC News coverage of the Internet 2012 Bus Tour.
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