Yuga Labs, home of the Miami-born Bored Ape Yacht Club, announced today its next CEO.
Gaming and tech executive Daniel Allegre will take the helm of the web3 startup in the first half of 2023, succeeding Nicole Muniz, who will stay on as a partner and strategic advisor to the company. Alegre will work closely with Yuga Labs founders Wylie Aronow and Greg Solano in continuing to grow the business, the company said.
Since 2020, Alegre has been the president and COO of Activision Blizzard, the video game company behind hit franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush. Previously , he spent over 16 years at Google, where he held titles such as President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, President of Shopping and Payments, and President of Asia Pacific and Latin America during his career there. He also held leadership positions at global music and media giant Bertelsmann.
Aronow lauded Alegre’s experience across entertainment, e-commerce, and global strategic partnerships and his top role at one of the world’s largest gaming companies. “Nicole, Greg, and I have been on the hunt for someone with Daniel’s skill set for some time. The business, our ambitions, and the complexity of the work have grown beyond our wildest expectations,” he said in the announcement.
Yuga Labs launched with much fanfare last year with its flagship NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club and since that time also acquired NFT brands CryptoPunks and Meebits. In March, well before the crypto winter intensified with the implosion of FTX, Yuga Labs announced it had raised a $450 million seed round led by a16z crypto, Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, at a valuation of $4 billion – making it the largest round of the year for a Miami-based company. Following that raise, Yuga Lab began putting the capital to use as it launched the start of Otherside, an ambitious interactive metaverse project. And this fall, Yuga pledged $1 million in philanthropic dollars to arts and education in Miami-Dade, including $300,000 to the new Venture Miami Scholarship program.
“Since exploding onto the scene with Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2021, Yuga Labs has quickly made a name for itself through a powerful combination of storytelling and community-building. The company’s pipeline of products, partnerships, and IP represents a massive opportunity to define the metaverse in a way that empowers creators and provides users with true ownership of their identity and digital assets,” said Alegre, in a statement. Alegre chose Mutant Ape #3850 as his new profile picture
Otherside will be a large focus for Allegre.
“In order to catapult Otherside and our other ambitious projects to new heights, we’ve known for a long time we wanted to bring in someone with a proven track record of building at the highest possible level,” Aronow Solano wrote in a blog post. “Daniel is a seasoned, visionary executive who shares our passion for innovation and creativity.”
Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg and email her at [email protected]
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