Yuga Labs Announces Activision Blizzard Gaming Veteran As New CEO: What You Need To Know

Web3 company Yuga Labs is naming a new CEO Monday who will start work in 2023 and help the company expand its efforts in gaming and the metaverse. 

What Happened: Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs, announced that its new CEO is Daniel Alegre.

Alegre comes to Yuga Labs from Activision Blizzard Inc ATVI, where he is the president and chief operating officer.

While at Activision Blizzard, Alegre helped built out the video game company’s roster of iconic franchises including “Call of Duty,” “Diablo,” “Overwatch,” “Candy Crush” and “World of Warcraft.”

Prior to working at Activision Blizzard, Alegre spent 16 years at Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL in roles that included president of global retail and shopping and president of Asia-Pacific and Japan.

“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. We are thrilled to have him join the team to help with our vision of a truly interoperable metaverse,” Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie Aronow said.

'A Massive Opportunity': The company said that Alegre will “expedite its ambitious vision for blockchain gaming, metaverse development, and community-building.”

Alegre praised the storytelling and community-building that Yuga Labs has accomplished in less than two years.

“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,” Alegre said.

“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.”

Current Yuga Labs CEO Nicole Muniz will stay with the company as a partner and strategic advisor.

Related Link: Yuga Labs Co-Founders Launch Podcast On NFTs, Crypto, Metaverse And Art: Here Are The Details 

Why It’s Important: The hiring of Alegre could show the importance that gaming will play for the evolution of Yuga Labs moving forward. Otherside is a gamified metaverse that will involve Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and the Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs.

Alegre's hiring follows several key job announcements by Yuga Labs in 2022 including the hiring of its first chief gaming officer.

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano was a featured guest at the 2022 Future of Crypto event by Benzinga, where he shared more on the vision of Otherside moving forward.

In a letter welcoming Alegre to the club, Aronow and Solano shared more on the vision of Yuga Labs and Otherside.

“We have a clear vision of how Yuga can continue to lead in Web3, and we’re unshakeable in our conviction of how NFTs will reinvigorate the gaming, entertainment, and lifestyle industries while opening up a space of possibility we can’t conceive of yet (though we are starting to),” Aronow and Solano said.

The co-founders praise the leadership and experience that Alegre brings to Yuga Labs.

“When it comes to the metaverse we’re competing with giants. 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.”

Growth At Yuga Labs: The new CEO announcement follows the hiring of Spencer Tucker as chief gaming officer and the acquisition of WENEW, which brought Michael Figge onboard as chief content officer and Beeple as an advisor to Yuga Labs.

Yuga Labs was valued at $4 billion in March 2022 with a $450-million seed funding round.

The floor price of Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs is 1.365 Ethereum ETH/USD, or around $1,615 at the time of writing. Otherdeed is one of several Yuga Labs collections that has passed the $1-billion milestone in sales volume for transactions.

Read Next: Yuga Labs Announces $1 Million Initiative To Support Arts And Education 

A Mutant Ape NFT owned by new Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre. Photo courtesy of Yuga Labs.