Ran Neuner
Ran Neuner is a South African businessman, TV presenter and cryptocurrency investor. He served as co-founder of The Creative Counsel, South Africa's largest advertising agency. After its foundation in 2001 was sold in 2015 for over US$115 million (1.5 billion ZAR). In recent years, Neuner has become known for his work and investing in the field of cryptocurrency.
In 2017, he became the presenter of the CNBC Africa show, Cryptotrader.
Early life and education
Neuner was born in Israel, before moving to South Africa with his family. He studied at King David High School and later Crawford College in South Africa. Neuner attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where earned a bachelor's degree studying finance in the late 1990s.
Career
Neuner's early career consisted of running small businesses, which included an import business. In 2001, he founded an advertising agency with his school friend, Gil Oved. Over the next decade the agency grew rapidly, and by the early 2010s had been recognised as one of the largest ad agencies in Africa. Neuner and Oved admitted in The Sunday Times that in order to expand across the continent, they needed investment. In 2015, this led to the biggest sale of an ad agency in African history, in a deal worth at least 1 billion rand. The sale of the business was acknowledged by Ernst & Young, with Neuner winner of the "Exceptional Award" at the South African award ceremony in 2016.
Neuner's expertise in crypto led him to land one of the most prominent presenting roles in his native South Africa, when he became the lead presenter on CNBC Africa's Cryptotrader. The show started airing in 2017, and moved to the Nasdaq studios in Manhattan in 2019. A year later, he launched a $10 million Runway Fund fund.
In 2024, Neuner was one of the investors most impacted by the dramatic financial collapse of the Terra StableCoin. Within days, billions was wiped from its value costing the investor an estimated $134 million. He had been investing in the stablecoin since at least 2021. Neuner had invested over 50% of his investment portfolio in Terra. After the loss, he spoke extensively in the mainstream media and also crypto-focused publications AbOUT the risks of investing big in speculative crypto projects, or get rich quick concepts within the industry.
He stated in an interview with Fortune that the collapse of such a prominent tier 1 coin would create a bear market in digital assets for years to come. This investing narrative continued into 2026, with Neuner's position on many crypto-assets such as Bitcoin that they could lose value in the short term.