Collage Completes a Seed Round to Help AI-First Studios Navigate Hollywood
Collage is a new management and investment company aimed at helping AI-first production companies navigate the Hollywood pipeline. It was founded in July by former UTA agent Dante DeSario and media investor Michael Lambert, who worked within the talent agency's independent film group before leaving in March. The Beverly Hills firm has completed a seed funding round whose amount DeSario would not disclose. Variety reports the round was backed by Black Bear and Fundamental Films, 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 others. Collage currently runs on five full-time employees and roughly a dozen part-time staffers.
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The more interesting half of the pitch is triage. DeSario says he wants to show studios which companies are making human-led work and which to stay away from, in an era of seemingly never-ending AI upstarts. That is a reference-desk business: being the one who can tell a studio which of the endless new shops deserves the meeting.
A reference desk that may hold positions of its own. The firm also invests, and DeSario will not say which companies it has backed — so the outfit sorting the trustworthy from the fly-by-night is doing so without disclosing where its money sits. A verdict on which AI shops count as human-led is a judgment call, and this one arrives attached to a portfolio.