Snap alumni launch Ghost Angels fund to back AI startups redefining social media

Snap Alumni Unite to Launch Investment Fund

A group of 20 Snap alumni has launched Ghost Angels, an angel fund for social media and consumer AI startups that aims to back the next generation of social media platforms 1

1

. Max Rivera, who led global partnerships at Snap and currently works at Microsoft's AI lab, started the fund in 2025 to formalize an already-growing Snap alumni angel-investing community 2

2

. The investment fund has backed at least five companies so far and plans to deploy remaining capital into at least 15 more within the next year, though the total fund size remains undisclosed 1

1

.

The roughly 20 founder members include Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap's corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, a founding member of Snap's product and design team 2

2

. Rivera emphasized the intentional mix of former senior executives alongside those earlier in their careers, with a small number still working at Snap. "That diversity of thought and experience is core to how we evaluate deals and support founders," Rivera told TechCrunch 1

1

.

The Split Between Social and Media

Ghost Angels focuses on investing in pre-seed to seed early-stage startups building AI-driven solutions in social media and consumer sectors 1

1

. Rivera identified a significant trend: "social" and "media" have actually split into two distinct categories. What consumers recognize as social media today relies heavily on ads, with algorithms driving content and recommendations. "A lot of people are disillusioned with that relative to the original promise of connecting people in your life," Rivera explained 1

1

.

On the social side, Ghost Angels backs founders applying AI in creative ways to deliver on the original promise of human connection 1

1

. The next generation of social media is moving away from generalized platforms and toward niche communities 2

2

. On the media side, the fund supports AI-native formats and generative creative tools across different media types, from music to gaming, sports, and fashion, that dramatically lower the barrier to content creation and distribution 1

1

.

How Founders Are Building Differently

Rivera has observed significant shifts in how founders operate compared to when he joined Snap nearly a decade ago. Today's teams are much leaner, while founders launch fast and iterate in public 1

1

. Monetization strategies are also evolving beyond traditional advertising models. "We're seeing experimentation of different monetization models beyond ads with subscriptions, token [and] usage-based, or even outcome-based," Rivera said 1

1

. Founder-led go-to-market strategies have become a key pillar for these companies 1

1

.

Molly DeWolf Swenson, co-founder and CEO of portfolio company Mozi, highlighted the value proposition: "The Snap alumni network is full of brilliant, influential people who inherently understand the problem space I'm playing in" 2

2

. The fund offers not just capital but domain expertise from people who helped build one of the defining social platforms of the last decade 2

2

.

Market Validation and Future Outlook

Recent market moves validate the Ghost Angels thesis. Meta's launch of Forum this week, a standalone app built from Facebook Groups designed to capture community discussion, demonstrates how incumbents are sensing the split between social and media 2

2

. The fact that Meta is unbundling Groups into a separate app confirms that niche community tools represent the next category 2

2

.

The broader startup landscape rewards AI-native approaches that build for new categories rather than optimizing existing ones 2

2

. Ghost Angels is betting that platforms built for AI-native interaction, not retrofitted with AI features, will define the future of social media. The Snap alumni network's culture of experimentation, early investment in AR, and willingness to build products that looked strange before they looked obvious has produced a generation of product thinkers now positioned to identify the next cycle 2

2

.