A group of 20 Snap alumni have come together to launch a fund called Ghost Angels to support 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 over the next year to at least 15 companies.
Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap, started the fund in 2025 to formalize Snap’s already growing alumni angel investor community. Although Rivera runs the fund, there are about 20 other founding members and investors, including a small number of those still at Snap, along with alumni like Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap’s corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, who was a founding member of Snap’s design and product team.
“We were intentional with the combination,” Rivera, who currently works in Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division, told TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels also wanted to bring in former top executives along with those who were early in their careers. “That diversity of thought and experience is critical to evaluating deals and supporting founders.”
A lot has changed since he started at Snap almost 10 years ago. Today, people who start companies have much more agile teams, while “founders launch quickly and iterate publicly.”
“We are seeing experimentation of different monetization models beyond subscription-based, token-based (and) usage-based, or even results-based ads,” he said. “The founders are also more at the forefront, with GTM led by them as a key pillar.”
Naturally, the fund focuses on investing in early-stage and early-stage AI startups that are building on social media and consumers. Rivera said one of the biggest trends he’s noticed about the next generation of social media is how “social” and “media” have actually become divided. The idea of what consumers know today as social media is a platform that relies heavily on ads, with an algorithm that drives content and recommendations.
“A lot of people are disillusioned with that in relation to the original promise of connecting the people in your life,” Rivera said. TechCrunch reported last year that the next generation of social media was moving away from building widespread platforms and toward niche communities.
“On the social side, we support founders who are applying AI creatively to finally deliver on that original promise,” Rivera continued. “When it comes to media, (we support) native AI formats and generative creative tools across different types of media, from music to gaming, sports to fashion, which are dramatically lowering the barrier to creation and distribution.”
This post was updated to clarify where Max Rivera works.
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