Serena Williams melts over daughter Olympia baking 'IPO cake' for father Alexis Ohanian as Reddit goes public
Serena Williams' six-year-old daughter Olympia recently prepared a special cake for her father Alexis Ohanian as Reddit went public on Thursday, March 21.
Ohanian co-founded Reddit in June 2005 in collaboration with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz, who were his roommates at the University of Virginia. They sold the company to Conde Nast Publications in October 2006.
Reddit put 22 million shares, each worth $34, for its Initial Public Offering (IPO) when the market opened on Thursday morning (March 21). By the end of the business day, each share's price had rocketed to $50.44, registering a growth of 48%.
Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian marked the day by remembering his late mother Anke, who died in 2008 due to brain cancer. She was diagnosed with the illness only a month after Ohanian started working on Reddit.
Ohanian celebrated Reddit's market success on Thursday with his daughter Olympia, who baked him an 'IPO cake'. He posted about it on X (formerly Twitter).
"Your first granddaughter even made me an IPO cake," Ohanian addressed his later mother Anke.
Olympia's sweet gesture moved her mother Serena Williams as the latter couldn't hold her emotions and replied to Ohanian's tweet, writing:
"Awwwwwwwwwwww"
"She was apologizing to me" - Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian on his first conversation with his mother after she was diagnosed with cancer
Earlier on Thursday, March 21, Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian posted an old interview, where he reflected on finding out about his mother Anke's illness while working on Reddit with Steve Huffman.
"About a month and a half into starting Reddit, Steve and I were working our butts off... but then everything just totally changed. I learned that it was terminal brain cancer," Ohanian said in the video (00:20).
Ohanian revealed that his mother Anke apologized to him when she saw him in the hospital after the diagnosis, fearing the news could discourage him from his work.
"What I didn't expect though was that when I would first see her, the words out of her mouth would be 'I'm sorry!'. At a moment, when she should have most been concerned with her own health, she was apologizing to me because she didn't want that weighing on my conscience," he added.
Ohanian then claimed that his mother's gesture inspired him to make Reddit a success.
"So I felt like we had to succeed. When I first had a conversation with Conde Nast about the acquisition, I felt like, 'Okay, this could be a good decision for us!' We did it but the big reason for me why it was going to feel so good to have this validation was because it would validate it for my parents. The feeling of such joy to be able to tell my mother that her confidence in me was not wasted was the best part," he stated.