Inside Netflix’s AI era

👋 Good morning or evening, wherever you are. It’s Tuesday.

Netflix is openly building AI into the core of entertainment.

Generative AI now runs through its entire platform, from recommendations and ads to full production workflows. Happy Gilmore 2 used AI with volumetric capture to de-age actors, while Billionaires’ Bunker used it for pre-visualization, wardrobe, and set design.

In August, Netflix released official AI production guidelines to help creators use these tools responsibly and set a new standard for how studios integrate technology into creative work.'

Read the full Q3 2025 letter.

Hollywood’s AI moment has arrived.

The conversation is over.

The next era of storytelling will be powered by AI, and it’s time for creative leaders to start creating.

Streaming will lead the shift because that’s where attention, data, and distribution already live.

Traditional studios will follow, and that shift may even pull audiences back to theaters.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

Don’t sleep on Billy’s ads.

They represent the rise of the omnicreative, someone who can think like a growth marketer, create like a filmmaker, and use AI like a technologist.

Billy’s work captures what this moment is about. AI shows and movies are on the way, but AI ads are already here.

There’s 2 critical things to understand about media right now:

1. AI UGC ads perform just as well, if not better, than real UGC. Ask any top marketing/growth team, and they’ll confirm it.

2. AI can now create “perfect" people. Many argue these are not real, but what is real about most brands? Would you rather use real people to market inferior products OR use synthetic people to market superior ones?

P.S. If you’re passionate about AI creative, join the club. The people inside will pull you higher than you could go alone.

Inside you’ll find filmmakers and festival-recognized directors, Cannes Lions jurors, studio veterans, award-winning creatives from film, gaming, music, and ads, plus early builders of the AI tools shaping the industry.

It’s global, it’s full of ambitious creators, and it’s where the next wave of breakthroughs is happening.

One insight or connection inside could change your life. Join now.

💡 Here’s what you should know

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Atlas, an “AI-first” web browser built on Chromium.

For now, it’s an alpha test to gather user data before they build their own full browser.

Note: Be aware of prompt injection attacks, a risk unique to AI and agentic browsers where hidden prompts on websites can trigger actions or access sensitive data.

Google just launched its AI-first coding experience with Gemini inside AI Studio.

YouTube is testing Likeness Detection to spot AI-generated uses of creators’ faces.

OpenAI is paying former bankers $150 an hour to train its AI on financial modeling.

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic is close to signing a multibillion-dollar compute deal with Google.

Samsung announced the launch of the Perplexity TV App.

Internal Amazon documents reveal plans to automate 75% of operations and avoid hiring 600,000 workers by 2033.

💰 The numbers

• Meta formed a $27B joint venture with Blue Owl Capital to fund and develop its Hyperion AI data center in Louisiana, with Blue Owl owning 80% and Meta retaining 20% plus operational control.

• Veeam acquired Securiti AI for $1.7B in a cash-and-stock deal to integrate its data command center with Veeam’s data resilience suite and strengthen enterprise data governance for the AI era.

• Fal.ai raised $250M at a $4B+ valuation led by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia to scale its multimodal AI platform powering image, video, and audio models for 2M+ developers.

• Sesame raised $250M Series B led by Sequoia and Spark to launch its beta for voice-first AI agents and smart glasses built by Oculus co-founders Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell.

• LangChain raised $125M at a $1.25B valuation led by IVP with CapitalG, Sapphire, Sequoia, and Benchmark to expand its open source agent-building platform and launch updates to LangGraph and LangSmith.

• Serval raised $47M Series A led by Redpoint with General Catalyst and First Round to bring agentic AI agents to IT service management for clients like Perplexity, Mercor, and Together AI.

• Hyro raised $45M led by Healthier Capital to expand its agentic AI platform automating call center workflows for major health systems including Intermountain, Sutter, and Bon Secours.

• Findem raised $36M Series C led by Silver Lake Waterman, with $15M in growth financing from JPMorgan, to scale its AI-powered hiring platform used by 12K+ customers including Adobe and RingCentral.

• Nexos AI raised €30M Series A (~$35M) co-led by Index Ventures and Evantic Capital to expand its secure AI adoption platform built by Nord Security founders, enabling enterprises to safely integrate 200+ AI models.

• Citi Foundation committed $25M to fund 50 global nonprofits providing digital literacy, AI training, and career guidance for low-income youth facing automation and unemployment challenges.

🧠 Thought starters

5 things to think about…

1.) AI is the most concentrated wave of genius in human history.

Nothing like this has ever existed. AI represents the highest density of intelligence, talent, and ambition ever assembled. Individual genius can fail, but collective genius does not miss patterns.

2.) Stop worrying about the bubble.

That fear has been around for three years and says more about mindset than the market. A bubble can even be good because it slows the world down long enough for the builders to move ahead while the rest quietly hope to catch up.

3.) Film directors are stunned. The real show hasn’t even begun.

Scenes that once took months and millions in VFX are now recreated in weeks. The next phase will go even further. By next year, top AI artists will be able to reproduce any scene from any film in history with complete accuracy.

That level of creative possibility has never existed before.

4.) The most valuable position at a company.

Interns and scouts who specialize in researching and acquiring forgotten IP will become some of the most valuable people in media. Spending under $10,000 on batches of dormant IP and turning them into seven-figure AI show deals will become normal discussions to have at lunch.

5.) The real creative moat is a mix of IP and predictive confidence.

The ability to absorb every known storyline, remix it through data, and prove with near certainty that it will reach 100 million views before production begins. That can already be shadow tested through Instagram reels, TikTok cold accounts (0 followers), and YouTube Shorts.

😂 Meme of the day

Thanks for reading,

Eddie

Join the AI Creative Club (you’ll find me there). It’s not only for artists and filmmakers…it’s for anyone who recognizes this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn as much as you can about AI to multiply your impact...to become superhuman. Remember, creativity is just intelligence having fun. This club is for ultra curious people, and if you’ve made it this far…you’re pretty damn curious and probably the smartest one in your circle of friends. It would be my honor to have you in there.

👋 Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (Twitter).

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