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Activision Blizzard's COO and President is leaving the company to become the CEO of the NFT company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club
Daniel Alegre, who has been Activision Blizzard's COO and President since 2020, is leaving once his contract expires next year on March 31, 2023. Alegre announced back on December 16, 2023, that he would be leaving to pursue another opportunity. At the time, he did not give many details about what exactly this opportunity is. That is until he revealed that he would be joining Yuga Labs. For those not familiar, Yuga Labs is the company behind the notorious Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs.
Alegre is not only joining Yuga Labs, but he is taking over as the company's CEO. Nicole Muniz, its previous CEO, is staying as a partner and strategic advisor of the company. Alegre had the following to say regarding his upcoming position:
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. I look forward to working with the passionate, creative team at Yuga to innovate, inspire, and shape the future of the internet together.
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If taken at face value, people can see this move as Alegre branching out to the NFT market. They can also see this as him helping a well-known blockchain company develop. However, it may also be that he was preparing for the ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. The deal is currently pending, thanks to the FTC blocking it, as well as investigations from both the UK and the EU. Should the deal go through, nothing is stopping Microsoft from removing any of its employees. After all, Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard's CEO, is the only executive with change-of-control protection. That is, Kotick will receive a huge amount of money should he be removed from office.
Going back, this move by Alegre could be a contingency plan for this possibility. It's possible that he already made plans to account for the acquisition going through. Of course, this is just speculation on my part. What isn't, however, is that Alegre is definitely leaving Activision Blizzard and joining Yuga Labs next year. What happens next is something we'll have to wait for next year.
That's all the information we have about Alegre leaving Activision Blizzard to join an NFT company. If you want to stay updated on gaming news, you can check out our gaming news articles.
