A group of 20 Snap alumni have come together to establish 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 said it has backed at least five companies and plans to deploy the remaining capital into at least 15 companies within the next year.
Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap, launched the fund in 2025 to formalize the already growing Snap alumni angel investment community. Although Rivera runs the fund, there are about 20 other founding members and investors, including a handful still at Snap, along with alumni like Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap’s corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, a founding member of Snap’s product and design team.
“We intentionally planned this mix,” Rivera, who currently works in Microsoft’s AI division, told TechCrunch, noting that Ghost Angels wanted to bring in former senior executives as well as executives early in their careers. “This diversity of thought and experience is at the core of how we evaluate deals and support founders.”
A lot has changed since he first started at Snap about 10 years ago. Today, people-building companies have much smaller teams, while “founders are launching quickly and iterating openly.”
“We are seeing experimentation with different monetization models beyond subscription, token (and) usage-based and even results-based advertising,” he said. “Founders are also more at the forefront, with founder-led GTM as a core pillar.”
Naturally, the fund is focused on pre-seed investments in AI startups building for 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” are actually separate. The concept that consumers today know as social media is a platform that relies heavily on advertising, with algorithms driving content and recommendations.
“Many people become disillusioned with the original promise of connecting people in their lives,” Rivera said. TechCrunch reported last year that the next generation of social media was moving away from building generalized platforms and toward niche communities.
“On the social side, we are supporting entrepreneurs who apply AI in creative ways to ultimately deliver on their original promise,” Rivera said. “On the media side, we are dramatically lowering the barriers to creation and distribution by supporting AI native formats and generative creative tools across a variety of media types, from music to games, sports and fashion.”
This post has been updated to clarify where Max Rivera works.
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