Nicole Muniz announced on December 19, 2022, that she was stepping down as chief executive of Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club1. Her successor would arrive from traditional gaming. Daniel Alegre, then president and chief operating officer of Activision Blizzard, a company Cointelegraph valued at around $60 billion, was named the new Yuga Labs CEO on December 19, 20222. His Activision Blizzard contract ran through March 31, 2023, and he was set to start the Yuga Labs job in the first half of that year.
One of Yuga Labs' 8 leadership moves on the record came in 2022
Leadership moves CryptoLately has verified at Yuga Labs, by year
- 2022: 1
- 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2 |
| 2024 | 3 |
| 2025 | 0 |
| 2026 | 2 |
18 CEO exits on the record in 2022
CEO exits CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2022: 18
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 7 |
| 2020 | 9 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 18 |
| 2023 | 11 |
| 2024 | 20 |
| 2025 | 20 |
| 2026 | 18 |
The move
Muniz posted her own farewell on X. “Being CEO of Yuga has been an incredible journey. Stoked to welcome Daniel to the team and can't wait to see the awesomeness under his leadership. As for me, stay tuned. There's a lot to build in this new era of the internet,” she wrote1. She planned to stay on at Yuga Labs as a partner and strategic adviser, Cointelegraph reported2. Alegre had announced his own exit from Activision Blizzard on December 16, 2022, three days before Muniz's post. He wrote on X that he planned to leave at the end of the first quarter of 2023, Cointelegraph reported.
Co-founder Wylie Aronow framed the hire as the end of a search. “We've been on the hunt for someone with Daniel's skill set for some time,” Aronow said, tying the search to a "vision of a truly interoperable metaverse"2. Alegre, in his own statement, called the company's pipeline of products, partnerships and intellectual property a "massive opportunity to define the metaverse".
Before and after the handoff
Yuga Labs, founded in 2021, had built the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections2. On November 15, 2022, it bought 10KTF, an NFT game Cointelegraph said digital artist Mike "Beeple" Winkelmann founded. Its metaverse project, Otherside, had drawn 4,500 participants to a tech demo on July 16, 2022. Alegre, for his part, had run Activision Blizzard's day-to-day business since 2020, overseeing franchises including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft before his jump to Yuga Labs.
What came next
Alegre took the chief executive seat at Yuga Labs in 2023. He held it for about ten months before the company moved him out, The Block reported on February 21, 20243. Greg Solano, a Yuga Labs co-founder known pseudonymously as Garga, took over as chief executive that same day, and Alegre exited the role he had accepted when Muniz stepped aside.
Sources
- Nicole Muniz, post on X, December 19, 2022, https://x.com/VStrangeYUGA/status/1604826108414894082
- Stephen Katte, "'Huge signal and validation' — Top Activision exec to take Yuga Labs' helm," Cointelegraph, December 20, 2022, https://cointelegraph.com/news/huge-signal-and-validation-top-activision-exec-to-take-yuga-labs-helm
- Zack Abrams, "Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano, a.k.a. Garga, to take over CEO role," The Block, February 21, 2024, https://www.theblock.co/news/web3/2024-02-21-yuga-labs-co-founder-greg-solano-a-k-a-garga-to-take-over-ceo-role-278443