Getty Image / Taylor Hill
Reddit co-founder and husband to the G.O.A.T. Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian, has announced a massive multi-year gift to the University of Virginia’s Women’s Basketball program. This comes in the wake of a huge financial windfall for Alexis Ohanian after Reddit went public in March.
Alexis Ohanian graduated from UVA back in 2005 and it was on that campus in Charlottesville where he built and launched Reddit. ‘The Front Page of the Internet’ was just a kernel of a seed back then, often competing head-to-head with DIGG, and it has since grown into 9th most visited website in the world with a lucrative deal in place with Google.
A girl dad twice over and husband to arguably the greatest female athlete of all-time, Alexis Ohanian continues to set an example of what modern masculinity looks like by showing up 24/7/365 to support the women in his life and nurture their growth and passion. And in an announcement video on Thursday afternoon, Alexis Ohanian announced his multi-year gift to UVA Women’s Basketball and made mention that without UVA then Reddit wouldn’t exist.
I'm very blessed — I had a great year. There'd be no @reddit without @uva so it's only fitting my first big investment into women's basketball would be a multi-year commitment to @UVAWomensHoops #GoHOOS https://t.co/dlOnXBZ2IN pic.twitter.com/slpqsIh7U3
— Alexis Ohanian 🇦🇲 (@alexisohanian) December 12, 2024
While the total value of the “multi-year transformational gift” to the UVA Women’s Basketball has not been divulged it is believed to be enough to bring the program up to speed in the modern NIL era and put it on par with the UVA men’s program which competes regularly for ACC titles.
Reached for comment by ESPN, Alexis Ohanian told the Worldwide Leader of Sports “starting Angel City and seeing the wave of investment in women’s sports really has been inspiring. Women’s basketball has popped up constantly on my radar, and lots of folks have been asking me about it. It’s my alma mater. I am in New York a lot for work and I live in Florida, so Charlottesville is an easy stop in between, so I’ll be catching quite a few games.”
It’s unclear exactly how what Alexis Ohanian’s net worth these days is but as the Reddit co-founder he made a fortune when the company went public. Various estimates put his net worth at around $150 million. It is tricky because he is also a philanthropist so it’s unclear how much of his money goes toward charitable endeavors.
Regardless of what his actual personal net worth is, and not to mention him being married to Serena Williams (est. net worth $340 million), Alexis Ohanian is living very comfortably these days and continuing to support women in his life, and in this case that means boosting the UVA Women’s Basketball program.
It is also worth noting that this UVA donation is far from the first time Alexis Ohanian has gotten involved in women’s sports. He’s an owner of NWSL team Angel City FC in Los Angeles and co-owns the Los Angeles Golf Club (LAGC) with Serena Williams, which is one of the 6 founding teams of Rory and Tiger’s TGL. And as recently as last month, Ohanian was on the record saying a women’s sports team will be worth over $1 billion within the next six years.
I’d believe a man with a proven track record of success like Alexis Ohanian when he says something like that. Now, only time will tell if the infusion of cash is enough to overhaul the UVA program.