A group of 20 former Snap employees has quietly assembled a new investment vehicle called Ghost Angels, a fund designed to back the next generation of artificial intelligence-powered social media companies. The fund, which declined to disclose its total capitalization, has already deployed capital into at least five startups and aims to invest in a total of 15 or more companies within the next year. The launch marks one of the most organized efforts by a major tech company’s alumni network to formalize angel investing into a dedicated fund structure.
The Ghost Angels Fund: Structure and Leadership
Max Rivera, who previously led global partnerships at Snap, founded the fund in 2025 to bring structure to what had already become an active but informal community of Snap alumni making angel investments. Rivera currently works at Microsoft’s AI lab, giving him a dual vantage point as both an operator inside one of the world’s largest AI companies and an investor in early-stage startups. He described the fund’s formation as a natural progression: the alumni network had been making investments independently, and Ghost Angels provided a formal vehicle to coordinate capital, deal flow, and collective expertise.
The fund includes roughly 20 founder members and investors, with a small number of participants still employed at Snap alongside alumni who left years ago. Notable members include Alexandra Levitt, who ran Snap’s corporate accelerator program, and Will Wu, a founding member of Snap’s product and design team. Rivera emphasized that the membership was deliberately composed to span senior executives and earlier-career professionals, creating what he described as a diversity of thought and experience that shapes how the group evaluates deals and supports founders.
What is Ghost Angels and what does it invest in?
Ghost Angels is a fund founded by Snap alumni that invests exclusively in pre-seed to seed stage AI startups building in the social media and consumer sectors. The fund targets companies that are reimagining how people connect, create, and consume media, with a particular emphasis on AI-native formats and generative creative tools. It has backed at least five companies to date and plans to deploy its remaining capital into approximately 15 startups within the next year.
Investment Thesis: AI as the Infrastructure for a New Social Layer
The fund’s investment strategy is rooted in a conviction that the social media landscape is undergoing a fundamental structural change. Rivera noted that one of the most significant trends he has observed is the decoupling of “social” and “media” as they have historically been understood. The current generation of mainstream social platforms operates on an advertising-driven model where algorithmic recommendations dictate what users see, a paradigm that Rivera argues has moved away from the original promise of connecting people with those who matter in their lives.
“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.”
This bifurcation informs every investment decision the fund makes. Ghost Angels is looking for startups that treat AI not as a feature enhancement layered onto an existing social app, but as the core infrastructure enabling entirely new forms of interaction and content creation. The fund sees particular opportunity in founders who are building for niche communities rather than trying to capture the entire consumer market at once, a trend that has accelerated as users increasingly seek out smaller, more intentional digital spaces.
Founding in a New Era of Startup Building
Rivera reflected on how much the startup landscape has shifted since he first joined Snap nearly a decade ago. The companies being built today operate with significantly leaner teams, and founders are launching products faster and iterating in public rather than developing in stealth for extended periods. This changes how investors need to evaluate opportunities, according to Rivera, because the pace of experimentation and the speed of market feedback are far more compressed than they were even five years ago.
Another notable shift is in monetization strategy. Rivera observed that founders are moving beyond the advertising-only model that has dominated social media for the past two decades. New startups are experimenting with subscription models, token-based systems, usage-based pricing, and even outcome-based revenue structures. At the same time, founder-led go-to-market strategies have become a central pillar of how early-stage companies build traction, with founders themselves acting as the primary distribution channel and brand voice for their products.
Portfolio and Deployment Strategy
Ghost Angels has already made undisclosed investments in five companies, though the fund has not publicly named its portfolio startups. The plan is to deploy the remaining capital within the next year, targeting at least 15 total investments. The fund operates at the pre-seed and seed stages, which aligns with the thesis that the most transformative social media companies will emerge from small teams building with AI from the ground up, rather than from established players retrofitting AI onto existing platforms.
The 20-member structure allows Ghost Angels to offer portfolio companies access to a broad network of expertise spanning partnerships, product design, corporate development, and engineering. Rivera noted that the diversity within the group is intentional: by including both former senior executives and those earlier in their careers, the fund can provide founders with mentorship and operational guidance that matches their specific stage and needs. An early-stage founder might benefit most from a product designer who has been through multiple launch cycles, while a slightly more mature startup might need introductions to partnership channels or corporate accelerator programs.
The Broader Context: Alumni Networks as Institutional Investors
Ghost Angels is not the first alumni-backed fund to emerge from a major technology company, but it comes at a time when such networks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Snap’s alumni community has long been active in angel investing, but the formalization of that activity into a dedicated fund signals a maturation of the ecosystem. By pooling capital and decision-making, groups like Ghost Angels can act with more conviction, move faster on deals, and provide more substantial support to portfolio companies than individual angels typically can.
The fund’s focus on AI social media startups also places it at the intersection of two of the most active areas of venture capital today. Investment in AI startups has surged, while social media continues to attract founders who see opportunity in the discontent with existing platforms. Ghost Angels occupies a specific niche: it is not a generalist AI fund, nor is it a traditional consumer social media fund. It is explicitly targeting companies where the two domains converge.
The fact that the fund includes current Snap employees alongside alumni is also noteworthy. It suggests that Snap itself views the alumni investing community as an extension of its broader ecosystem, or at least does not discourage participation. This stands in contrast to some companies that restrict employees from outside investing activities. The inclusion of active Snap employees gives Ghost Angels a unique pipeline into the thinking and product direction of one of the most influential social media companies, even as the fund backs potential competitors.
Implications for the Social Media Landscape
The emergence of Ghost Angels is likely to accelerate the already active cycle of innovation in social media. By providing pre-seed and seed capital specifically to AIa-native social startups, the fund is effectively subsidizing experimentation at the earliest stages. Founders who might otherwise struggle to articulate their vision to generalist investors now have a dedicated source of capital from people who understand the social media space intimately.
The fund’s thesis that “social” and “media” are splitting into separate domains also has significant implications for how the next generation of platforms will be built and categorized. If Rivera is correct, the market may see a growing divergence between platforms focused on authentic connection between known individuals and platforms focused on AI-generated or AI-curated media consumption. These two categories may require fundamentally different product architectures, monetization strategies, and regulatory approaches. Ghost Angels is betting that the most successful companies will specialize in one or the other, rather than trying to serve both functions on a single platform.
The emphasis on AI-native formats across music, gaming, sports, and fashion also suggests that Ghost Angels sees opportunity in vertical-specific social experiences rather than horizontal platforms that try to be everything to everyone. This aligns with the broader industry trend toward niche communities and interest-based networks, a shift that has been underway for several years and shows no signs of reversing.
Looking Ahead: Deployment and Market Impact
With most of its capital still unallocated, Ghost Angels is positioned to be an active investor over the next 12 months. The fund’s focus on pre-seed and seed stages means it is likely to be among the first institutional investors in many of the companies it backs, giving it significant influence over how those startups develop their product strategies and go-to-market plans. The involvement of former Snap executives also means that portfolio companies may benefit from deep operational experience in building consumer products at scale, a resource that is difficult to replicate through generalist venture capital.
The fund’s success will ultimately depend on whether its thesis about the future of social media proves correct. If AI-native, niche-focused social startups can achieve meaningful scale and sustainable monetization, Ghost Angels will have positioned itself at the forefront of a new wave of consumer technology. If the next generation of social media instead ends up looking more like an evolution of existing platforms, the fund’s bet on a fundamental split between social and media may prove premature. Either way, the formation of Ghost Angels is a clear signal that the Snap alumni network believes the window for a new generation of social companies is wide open, and they intend to be the ones backing the founders who walk through it.
