Snap Alums Launch Ghost Angels Fund to Back Next-Gen Social Media

A group of twenty Snap alumni, including former senior executives and early employees, have come together to launch Ghost Angels, a fund aimed at backing the next generation of social media companies. The fund, founded by Max Rivera, who once led global partnerships at Snap, has already invested in at least five companies and plans to deploy its remaining capital into at least fifteen more within the next year. Rivera, who currently works at Microsoft's AI lab, started Ghost Angels in 2025 to formalize the growing Snap alumni angel-investing community.

The fund's founder members and investors include a mix of former senior executives and those earlier in their careers, such as Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap's corporate accelerator, and Will Wu, a founding member of Snap's product and design team. The fund's investment strategy is focused on pre-seed to seed AI startups in social media and consumer spaces. Rivera notes that the landscape has changed significantly since he first started at Snap nearly ten years ago.

Today, company builders have leaner teams and are launching and iterating quickly. Rivera highlights that founders are experimenting with different monetization models beyond advertising, including subscriptions, token-based, usage-based, and outcome-based models. He also notes that founders are more prominent, with founder-led go-to-market strategies being a key pillar.

The fund is backing founders who are applying AI in creative ways to deliver on the original promise of social media, as well as those building AI-native formats and generative creative tools across different media types. Rivera believes that the next generation of social media is moving away from building generalized platforms and toward niche communities. "On the social side, we're backing founders that are applying AI in creative ways to finally deliver on that original promise," Rivera said.

"On the media side, [we're 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."