Former AKQA creative chiefs launch !F Creative Capital, trading craft for equity.
Hugo Veiga and Diego Machado, AKQA's former global chief creative officers, have launched !F Creative Capital, a company that puts creative work into businesses in exchange for equity. Its early projects include work for Cristiano Ronaldo's club Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia.
According to Campaign Middle East, the pair spent the past year building the company before announcing it on 29 October. Brazilian trade title Meio & Mensagem reported in mid-2025 that they would leave AKQA that June, after six years in the global role. The new company says it already works in the US, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Brazil, Portugal and Switzerland.
The model has four parts. Ventures takes equity in consumer brands, with Carlo Ancelotti's personal brand, Authentic Fruits and the AI plagiarism checker CheckMy.Music named as examples, and runs owned brands such as SN!FF, a pet product, and Baitts, a toothpick brand. Commissions uses small senior teams without timesheets; current clients include Corona, Portugal's MEO, Ronaldo's Globe Soccer Awards and Al-Nassr, for which !F created a belief system called Victory State of Mind. Entertainment is co-producing a feature film across China and the US for 2027. A School of Creative Entrepreneurship, running eight-week sprints, is due in 2027.
Much is still unknown. The announcement gives no figures for the size of the equity stakes, revenue or headcount, and it does not say how the company values its time against equity. The client and project list comes from the company itself, and only Campaign Middle East's report was available at the time of writing.
For Saudi and Gulf marketers the interesting part is the Al-Nassr work and the wider point about pricing. Sports clubs, founders and family businesses in the region are often short of cash for top creative talent but have equity or long-term upside to offer. If the !F model works, expect more senior creatives in the Gulf to ask for a share of what they help build, not just a fee.
Why it matters
Two of the industry's best-known creatives are betting that creative talent should be paid in ownership, and their first Saudi client is Al-Nassr.
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