Why Collage Was Founded to Link AI-First Studios Such as Asteria With Hollywood

Collage, a management and investment company founded by former UTA agent Dante DeSario and media investor Michael Lambert, launched as a bridge between AI-first studios and Hollywood. Variety and Deadline both reported the launch on 19 October 2026, and the company has completed a seed round.

Variety names AI studios Asteria, Native Foreign, Obsidian and Secret Level among the initial companies. Deadline’s list is longer, adding Defect, Lipstick, Matriarch and Lux Meridian. Deadline describes Asteria as the company behind the Continuum software platform, Native Foreign as the creator of the OpenAI-backed franchise Critterz, and Secret Level as behind the hybrid horror feature Terrarium. Variety and Mezha place the company in Beverly Hills, while Deadline describes it as Los Angeles-based.

How Collage Describes Its Management and Investment Work

Collage is both a management and an investment company. On the management side, it aims to connect AI-native production companies with studios, streamers, filmmakers and brands. Deadline describes the firm as a management company focused on AI-native production, and lists its services as identifying top suppliers, matching production methods to projects, pricing and sizing projects, and helping to ensure proper management of quality, legal and delivery aspects.

Variety reports that the firm helps AI-focused production companies work through Hollywood guilds, “studio bureaucrats” and copyright issues, and demonstrates what their technology can do. It also aims to help studios identify human-led work.

The WGA’s 2023 contract summary is one set of rules of this kind. It says companies cannot require writers to use AI tools and must tell writers when materials they are given were AI-generated. It also says the WGA reserves the right to assert that exploitation of writers’ material to train AI is prohibited by MBA or other law.

On the investment side, Collage says it will invest selectively, either directly or through vehicles managed by Collage Capital. As reported by Variety, DeSario declined to name the companies the firm has already invested in.

Seed Round and Backers
Collage has completed a seed round with an undisclosed amount. Deadline names Black Bear and Fundamental Films as seed investors, and lists Dennis Miller, AGC Studios and Roy Lee among other backers and advisers.

Seed Backers, Advisers and Team Size

Collage has completed a seed round, but the amount has not been disclosed. Deadline names Black Bear and Fundamental Films as seed investors, and lists Dennis Miller, Blue Deer Media, GOAL Ventures, AGC Studios, Roy Lee, Marty Bowen, Todd Lieberman, Todd Garner, Barry Porter, George Huber, Max Michael and Ric Roman Waugh among other investors and senior advisers.

Variety reports that the company was founded in July and has five full-time employees and roughly a dozen part-time staff.

Deadline credits DeSario, a former agent in UTA’s independent film group, with packaging and arranging financing for hundreds of films. It also lists Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid among those films, which Deadline says sold to A24 for a UTA-record price in the high-teens millions. Lambert is described as a media investor.

Why Collage Says It Was Built

DeSario frames the firm as filling a gap. Deadline reports that he saw creative companies emerging around generative production, with little infrastructure around them.

Deadline says he argues Hollywood needs a trusted way to find and work with these companies, while the companies need help with business development, operations, technology relationships and capital. Collage was built to connect the two sides.

Variety reports that the idea began in February 2024, when DeSario saw an early demo of OpenAI’s Sora video generator. He says he wants to help filmmakers get their projects made, and argues AI filmmaking requires real craft and taste.

Deadline’s account also says the entertainment industry has moved from high anxiety about AI and job losses toward a more pragmatic stance, and that traditional players are increasingly reaching across to Silicon Valley.

The structure places management services and investment inside one company, which will also invest selectively in companies.

Collage offers management services and also invests selectively in companies.

What Remains Unannounced as of 20 October

Variety reports that DeSario would not disclose which companies the firm has invested in. The seed amount has not been disclosed.

Variety and Deadline both reported the launch on 19 October.

Related coverage: What Paramount’s $110 Billion Warner Bros. Settlement Requires of Studios and Unions; How the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger case tests Hollywood’s competitive structure; SAG-AFTRA’s contract ratified June 4 limits synthetic performers and runs to June 2030.

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