TENNIS icon Serena Williams has been kept busy post-retirement thanks to her family.
While she might not be on the court anymore, she is still loved and adored by millions, who want to know more about her tech-famous husband, Alexis Ohanian.
Who is Serena Williams’ husband, Alexis Ohanian?
Born on April 24, 1983, in Brooklyn, New York, Alexis Ohanian is a tech entrepreneur and best-selling author.
He wrote the book Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed, which was published in 2013, and he also famously co-founded the social media app Reddit.
As well as his online ventures and writing he is a political activist – specifically in matters relating to the World Wide Web.
He was dubbed “Mayor of the Internet” after his battles with US lawmakers over proposed bills aimed at cracking down on online copyright breaches.
Ohanian went to school in Ellicott City, Maryland, before graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history.
When did Alexis Ohanian co-found Reddit?
Ohanian launched Reddit in 2005 after creating it with his college roommate, Steve Huffman.
The idea was thought of by Huffman after he originally wanted to make an app to order food online, but after that was rejected by tech entrepreneurs, they came up with the idea to create a site where links could be sorted by popularity.
“Steve and I set out that June to build a website where readers, not editors, would determine the front page of what’s new and interesting by submitting links to be voted on by the community,” Ohanian wrote in his 2013 book, via UVA Magazine.
“We had no ambitions to have the president of the United States conduct a real-time interview with millions of people on our site, which he (President Obama) would end up doing—from Charlottesville, no less—seven years later; we just wanted to create a place where anyone at any time could find what was new and interesting online.”
A year after launching the site, Ohanian and Huffman sold it to Conde Nast for $10 million, but in 2020, Williams’ husband reflected on that decision, expressing regret.
“The deal was months in the making and I wish I’d had more advisors around the table giving me more perspective on the sale,” he explained in a thread on X, formerly Twitter.
“I thought I was getting away with something because for 16 [months] worth of work, I was getting more money than my parents had made their entire working lives.”
Ohanian went on the reveal that his mom had played a role in the selling decision because, at the time, she had been battling terminal brain cancer.
“…My mom’s illness weighted on me the most,” he continued. “She was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer just a couple months into founding the company, so the idea of rewarding her life-long unflagging confidence in me with a $10M exit was tremendously appealing.
“I wish I’d had an investor tell me there were other options (like raising a Series A!) and there would be a path to much greater things given how fast the audience was growing at a time when our engineers had basically stopped working on the product.
“All these mistakes are just lessons, and opportunities for growth, and I hope to do a better job guiding the next Alexis Ohanian, 22 and wide-eyed, who is running a startup that I hope will make MUCH better decisions than I did,” he added.
While Ohanian might’ve sold Reddit for only $10 million, he has since amassed an estimated fortune of $150 million, as of July 2024, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
When did Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian get married?
Ohanian met his future wife in 2015 “by chance” while attending a breakfast at the Cavalieri Hotel in Rome, Italy.
“This big guy comes and he just plops down at the table next to us, and I’m like, ‘Huh! All these tables and he’s sitting here?'” Williams recalled during a 2017 Vanity Fair cover story.
A year later, Ohanian popped the question at the same hotel where they first met.
“It feels good,” Williams said of her engagement during a post-match press conference in January 2017, via People.
“…He’s incredible — a really nice person. I think he definitely treats everyone the same, which is really cool to see. Really, really nice to see,” she added.
How many children do Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian have?
Just 11 weeks before Williams walked down the aisle, she welcomed the couple’s first child, daughter Alexis Olympia, on September 1.
In a CNN opinion piece, Williams opened up about childbirth, revealing that she “almost died” after “her heart rate dropped dramatically during contractions.”
“It began with a pulmonary embolism, which is a condition in which one or more arteries in the lungs becomes blocked by a blood clot. Because of my medical history with this problem, I live in fear of this situation. So, when I fell short of breath, I didn’t wait a second to alert the nurses,” Williams explained.
“This sparked a slew of health complications that I am lucky to have survived.”
She added: “…I am so grateful I had access to such an incredible medical team of doctors and nurses at a hospital with state-of-the-art equipment. They knew exactly how to handle this complicated turn of events. If it weren’t for their professional care, I wouldn’t be here today.”
The couple went on to welcome a second daughter, Adira River, in August 2023, making them a family of four.