Dante DeSario, a former talent agent at UTA, and media investor Michael Lambert have launched Collage, a management and investment company built for AI-native production companies. The launch was reported between 19 and 22 October 2026, and the firm says it has just closed a seed round. Its stated aim is to sit between traditional Hollywood and the new studios and artists who make work with generative tools. Behind it is a view that the new studios have the creative energy but lack the business scaffolding that traditional production companies take for granted.
“We saw extraordinary creative companies emerging around generative production, but very little infrastructure around them,”
Dante DeSario, Collage co-founder, in a statement · deadline.com ↗
The company was founded in July and has five full-time staff plus roughly a dozen part-timers. Variety places it in Beverly Hills, while Deadline calls it L.A.-based. Lambert had worked in UTA's independent film group before leaving in March. The seed amount was not disclosed. Black Bear and Fundamental Films led the round, with Blue Deer Media, GOAL Ventures, AGC Studios and a list of producers and advisers including Roy Lee, Marty Bowen and Todd Lieberman also named. DeSario declined to say which companies Collage has itself backed.
Collage launches with a client roster that includes Asteria, the AI studio of Bryn Mooser, the real-time 3D animation house DEFECT, the AI-native and hybrid producer Matriarch, and Secret Level, the Jason Zada company behind Coca-Cola's AI advertising. Native Foreign and Obsidian are on the list too. For them it offers scene-by-scene breakdowns of scripts into generative, hybrid or traditional methods, help finding suppliers, pricing and sizing a project, and oversight of quality, legal matters and delivery. It also promises help with guilds, copyright questions and technical demos, plus shared back-office systems, investor introductions and pooled purchasing of office space and computing. Investment is meant to be selective, made directly or through Collage Capital vehicles.
Collage co-founders Michael Lambert and Dante DeSario
Collage · Image: Variety
DeSario describes AI as a boon for the business, one that could bring back a model of many modest hits and open film-making to people who never got a first chance. He argues that Hollywood is savvier about the technology than it admits, and that some filmmakers who criticise AI in public use it in private. He also says he wants studios to be able to see who is doing human-led work and who to steer clear of, and he talks of producing an AI "Toy Story moment".
About Asteria
Asteria Studios calls itself an ethical AI film and animation studio, and was co-founded by the actor and director Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser.
Its first project to be announced was Uncanny Valley, a hybrid film mixing live action with AI, reported on 29 April 2025. Lyonne directs it from a script she wrote with Brit Marling, who also stars, and Jaron Lanier is involved. The film uses Marey, a model developed by engineers at Moonvalley, which Asteria described as the first clean foundational AI model. No release date had been given in that report.
His interest dates to February 2024, when an early Sora demo caught his attention. Refused access, he reportedly phoned around pretending to be from OpenAI to reach the seven filmmakers given early use, and later signed some of them. He then spent about two and a half years explaining the technology to industry players, a stretch he now treats as the groundwork for Collage. The coverage notes that studios are more open to AI even as much of the creative community opposes it. No dated next step is given, though more investments and signings are implied.
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