Who is Lil Miquela?
Lil Miquela is a computer generated character run as a full media property.
The persona is a 19 year old Brazilian American from Downey, California.
She has stayed 19 for 10 years.
Who created Lil Miquela
Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou built her at Brud, a Los Angeles startup.
McFedries was a touring DJ and an early Spotify hire before he started making characters.
Brud left the question open on purpose.
For nearly 2 years nobody could tell whether Miquela was a real model shot through heavy filters or a character rendered from scratch.
It ended in April 2018.
A second Brud character called Bermuda "hacked" the account, and both were confirmed as CGI in the same move.
What Lil Miquela has done
Time named her one of the 25 most influential people on the internet in June 2018.
Her first single "Not Mine" came out in August 2017.
More releases followed through 2022, including "Hate Me" with Baauer.
Prada handed her their Instagram account during Milan Fashion Week in February 2018.
Calvin Klein put her in a campaign with Bella Hadid in May 2018.
In 2020 she signed with CAA, the first digital character to get a talent agency.
How Lil Miquela makes money
Sponsored posts are estimated at $7,500 to $10,000 each.
Music, merch and agency representation sit underneath the sponsorships.
Treat the figures as press and agency estimates, not numbers Brud has published.
What to copy if you are building one
The character came before the technology.
Brud spent its budget on a backstory, a friend group and a running plot, then rendered images to serve it.
Accounts that skipped that and posted a photoreal face every day mostly stalled under 100k.
The reveal was planned too.
Miquela never claimed to be human and never fully denied it, so the confirmation became content instead of a correction.
