avatarsGraveyard archive2016–2021

Brud

Brud was the Los Angeles studio that invented the virtual influencer. Founded by Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou, it launched Lil Miquela on Instagram in April 2016 — a CGI 19-year-old presented as a real person — and let the internet argue about whether she existed while quietly building a media company around her. Miquela amassed millions of followers, released streaming-charting music, fronted campaigns for Prada, Calvin Klein, and Samsung, and made Time's 2018 list of the 25 most influential people on the internet — a fictional character ranked alongside real ones. Sequoia Capital and BoxGroup seeded the company with at least $6 million, and Spark Capital led a round reported at $20-30 million at a pre-money valuation of at least $125 million.

Years active

2016–2021

Peak valuation

$125M

Peak headcount

~32 (at 2021 acquisition)

A robot it-girl appears

Lil Miquela's Instagram account appeared in April 2016 with no explanation: a freckled, CGI-rendered 19-year-old from Downey, California posting selfies, streetwear, and friendship drama as if she were real. For two years her creators stayed anonymous while the internet speculated, an ambiguity that was itself the marketing. Behind her was Brud, a small Los Angeles startup founded by Trevor McFedries — a former DJ and music-industry operator — with Sara DeCou. Brud described itself as a robotics and AI media company, but its real product was narrative: a transmedia character run like a pop star, with storylines, feuds, and brand deals scripted by a writers' room.

Sequoia money for a fictional teenager

Brud raised at least $6 million in early funding from Sequoia Capital, BoxGroup, and others — an unusual bet from blue-chip Silicon Valley on a character studio. In 2018 the storyline turned meta: a pro-Trump virtual influencer named Bermuda 'hacked' Miquela's account, a stunt that outed both characters as Brud creations and generated a wave of coverage. That same year Time named Miquela one of the 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside Kanye West and Rihanna. By early 2019, Spark Capital had led a new round reported at $20-30 million, valuing Brud at $125 million or more, and rival investors were chasing the category Brud had created.

Peak Miquela

At her height Miquela was a genuine commercial force: roughly three million Instagram followers, singles on Spotify, a Calvin Klein campaign in which she kissed Bella Hadid, a Samsung Galaxy campaign, Prada takeovers, and a CAA signing. Industry estimates put her annual brand-deal income in the millions. But the model had a ceiling. Brud's attempts to mint additional characters — Bermuda, Blawko — never approached Miquela's traction, and every dollar of revenue still depended on a writers' room, CGI pipeline, and brand-deal sales team behind a single asset. The company stayed small, around 30 people, and the category it invented began filling with cheaper imitators worldwide.

Absorbed into the NFT boom

On October 4, 2021 — near the exact top of the NFT market — Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shot and the Flow blockchain, acquired Brud in an all-equity deal of undisclosed size, bringing aboard its roughly 32-person team. McFedries was installed atop a new unit, Dapper Collectives, with a mission to turn Miquela and future characters into community-owned media governed by DAOs on Flow. The thesis was that fans would collectively own and steer the next Miquela. Brud ceased to exist as an independent studio, its IP and team now instruments of a Web3 strategy.

The quiet ending

The crypto winter arrived within months. Dapper Labs cut 22% of staff in November 2022, another 20% in February 2023, and 51 more people that July; the DAO-media vision Dapper Collectives was built to pursue never shipped at scale, and the unit's ambitions faded with the market that funded them. McFedries moved on to other projects. Miquela herself survived — still posting, still doing brand work — but as managed IP rather than the vanguard of a new kind of media company. Brud's equity exit, paid in the stock of a private NFT company at its peak, is a period piece of 2021: the pioneer of virtual humans traded itself for crypto paper just before the correction, and the studio that made the internet believe in a fake person disappeared into one of its era's most deflated balance sheets.

What worked, what broke

What worked

Invented the virtual-influencer category with Lil Miquela, launched April 2016 — the template every virtual human studio since has copied.
Got a fictional character named to Time's 2018 list of the 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside real celebrities.
Landed marquee brand campaigns for Miquela including Prada, Calvin Klein (with Bella Hadid), and Samsung's Galaxy campaign.
Attracted blue-chip venture backing — Sequoia Capital and BoxGroup early, then a Spark Capital-led round at a reported $125 million-plus pre-money valuation.
Built Miquela into a multi-platform franchise with millions of followers, charting music on Spotify, and CAA representation.
Executed one of the defining media stunts of the era — the 2018 'Bermuda hack' that revealed Brud's authorship and multiplied its audience.

What broke

Single-asset dependence: Miquela was effectively the whole business, and follow-up characters like Bermuda and Blawko never found comparable traction.
The virtual-influencer model stayed labor-intensive — writers, CGI artists, and deal-makers behind every post — and never became scalable software.
Sold in an all-equity deal to Dapper Labs at the October 2021 NFT peak, converting the company's value into private crypto-company stock months before the market collapsed.
The DAO-based 'community-owned media' thesis Brud was acquired to pursue never materialized as a product with real adoption.
Dapper Labs' successive layoffs (22% in Nov 2022, 20% in Feb 2023, 51 more in July 2023) gutted the resources behind Dapper Collectives.
Category commoditization: by 2021 virtual influencers could be produced far more cheaply worldwide, eroding the premium on Brud's pioneering craft.

Sources

Obituary authored Jul 2, 2026 via Sonnet 4.5 + web_search.

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