To me, it comes across as a clumsy attempt to open a new line of negotiation, one which headed in the direction of Reddit buying Apollo outright.

Christian is clearly thinking on his feet, so obviously he doesn't have a value proposition for reddit. All he is really doing is letting reddit know he might be open to it, the details could be negotiated later.

Reddit clearly has all the power here (Apollo is fully dependant on reddit), so they would have been able to negotiate it down. Maybe all the way to $1 million?

Anyway, reddit clearly weren't open to it, so it fell flat on it's face.