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A group of 20 Snap alumni has come together to launch a fund called Ghost Angels to back the next generation of social media. The fund declined to disclose how much it has raised so far, but says it has backed at least five companies and plans to deploy the remaining capital within the next year into at least 15 companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap, started the fund in 2025 to formalize the already-growing Snap alumni angel-investing community. Though Rivera runs the fund, there are around 20 other founder members and investors, including a small number of those still at Snap, alongside alumni like Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap\u2019s corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, who was a founding member of Snap\u2019s product and design team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were intentional about the mix,\u201d Rivera, who currently works at Microsoft\u2019s AI lab, told TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels wanted to bring in former senior executives alongside those earlier in their careers, too. \u201cThat diversity of thought and experience is core to how we evaluate deals and support founders.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much has changed since he first started at Snap nearly 10 years ago. Today, the people building companies have much leaner teams, while \u201cfounders are launching fast and iterating in public.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing experimentation of different monetization models beyond ads with subscriptions, token [and] usage-based, or even outcome-based,\u201d he said. \u201cFounders are also more in the forefront, with founder-led GTM as a key pillar.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Naturally, the fund is focused on investing in pre-seed to seed AI startups that are building in social media and consumer. Rivera said one of the biggest trends he has noticed about the next generation of social media is how \u201csocial\u201d and \u201cmedia\u201d have actually split. The idea of what consumers know as social media today is a platform that relies heavily on ads, with an algorithm driving content and recommendations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people are disillusioned with that relative to the original promise of connecting people in your life,\u201d Rivera said. TechCrunch reported last year<\/a> that the next generation of social media was moving away from building generalized platforms and toward niche communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOn the social side, we\u2019re backing founders that are applying AI in creative ways to finally deliver on that original promise,\u201d Rivera continued. \u201cOn the media side, [we\u2019re backing] AI native formats and generative creative tools across different media types, from music to gaming, sports, and fashion, that are dramatically lowering the barrier to creation and distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n