Kevin Rose

Rose became known for co-creating the social news site Digg and has since continued to work in media, podcasting, entrepreneurship, and investing.⁠[1]

In 2004, Kevin Rose co-founded the internet television network Revision3 and created the social news platform Digg, and later took part in projects including Diggnation and Pownce; he was a general partner at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry Ventures from 2012 to 2015 and CEO of the watch media company HODINKEE from 2019 to 2021. His co-founding of PROOF in 2021 continued his shift from media, products, and investing toward digital art collector communities.⁠[2]

The public investment portfolio listed across Kevin Rose’s personal website and True Ventures materials includes Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Square, Medium, Nextdoor, Blue Bottle Coffee, RippleRippleRipple is an American fintech company, legally named Ripple Labs Inc., that provides banks, payment providers, funds, and businesses with blockchain- and digital asset-based cross-border payments, digital asset custody, a U.S. dollar stablecoin, prime brokerage, and corporate treasury management services. Its business makes extensive use of the public XRP Ledger blockchain and its native token XRP, but neither is the same as the company itself; from 2020 to 2025, the company fought a nearly five-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over whether its XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings.Open the full entry, Wealthfront, Oura, SolanaSolanaSolana is a proof-of-stake (PoS) public blockchain designed for high throughput and low latency, with SOL as its native token; it was developed by Solana Labs and launched Mainnet Beta in March 2020. It is known for design choices such as its Proof of History clock and parallel execution, suffered several network-wide outages in its early years, and became one of the crypto industry’s focal points in events including the FTX collapse, U.S. SEC lawsuits, and the listing of Solana ETFs.Open the full entry, OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry, AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, Magic Spoon, Art Blocks, and Endel. The public profiles do not distinguish, name by name, between his personal funds and the funds of the firms he worked for.⁠[3]

For Rose’s time as a general partner at Google Ventures (later GV), his personal profile states that he backed projects including Nextdoor, Ripple, Blue Bottle, UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry, and Slack.⁠[2]

An analysis of on-chain transactions by The Information found that Kevin Rose spent a cumulative 779 ETHEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry buying CryptoPunks that year while receiving 844 ETH from selling CryptoPunks. These figures reflect digital asset transactions visible in public wallets; the analysis did not fully account, on the same basis, for acquisition costs, gas, taxes, unrealized gains or losses, or other wallets.⁠[4]

He co-founded PROOF with Justin Mezzell, developed its podcast and collector community into a membership system, and launched 10,000 Moonbirds in April 2022.⁠[1]

Rose said publicly that his krovault.eth wallet lost 40 NFTs in an apparent phishing attack, including about 25 Chromie Squiggles and one Autoglyph; media put the loss at more than $1 million based on valuations at the time.⁠[5]

In February 2024, Yuga LabsYuga LabsYuga Labs is a company that develops NFT brands, digital content, and virtual worlds; it launched Bored Ape Yacht Club in 2021, and its businesses include BAYC-related collections and Otherside, along with participation in building the ApeChain ecosystem. The company acquired CryptoPunks, Meebits, Moonbirds, and 10KTF, and later transferred these projects one after another. In 2026, Michael Figge became chief executive officer and Greg Solano became chairman.Open the full entry acquired PROOF’s team, intellectual property, and art assets, including PROOF Collective, Moonbirds, Oddities, Mythics, and Grails. The announcement stated that Rose would become an adviser to Yuga after a short transition and that some PROOF team members would join Yuga.⁠[6]

On-chain data showed Rose selling about $1.2 million worth of NFTs, including Chromie Squiggles; he denied fully exiting Web3 and described the move as paring down his collection.⁠[7]

In 2025, Rose relaunched Digg with RedditRedditReddit is an online platform that organizes content and discussion around interest-based communities, founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Users take part in communities by posting, commenting, and voting; its operating company, Reddit, Inc., listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2024.Open the full entry co-founder Alexis OhanianAlexis OhanianAlexis Ohanian (born April 24, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and author, a co-founder of Reddit and the founder of the venture capital firm Seven Seven Six. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2005, co-founded Initialized Capital, and later expanded his work into women’s sports, climate philanthropy, and investment software.Open the full entry and Justin Mezzell; his updated personal profile states that at Basic Intelligence (the company developing Digg) he is exploring early identification of trends and influence across social networks while continuing to invest in technology. His personal timeline lists Mezzell as Digg’s new CEO. This phase shows that Rose’s main public work was no longer centered on the day-to-day operation of Moonbirds.⁠[8]

In February 2025, True Ventures announced that Kevin Rose had joined its team of full-time partners, focusing on AI opportunities in health, consumer, and enterprise. The announcement also recalled his early investments in Twitter, Square, Nextdoor, Wealthfront, and Facebook.⁠[9]

Moonbirds’ product and community were run jointly by the PROOF team, with Justin Mezzell holding core product and art responsibilities.⁠[10]