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OpenAI is going Hollywood

AI-powered animated film

Author

Eddie Yoon
September 08, 2025 • Read time: 6 minutes

👋 Good morning/evening (wherever you are). It’s Monday.

OpenAI is making its Hollywood play.

The company is pushing Critterz, an animated feature built almost entirely with GPT-5 and its in-house tools, as proof that AI can compete with traditional studios. Produced with Native Foreign and Vertigo Films, the movie is being made on a sub-$30M budget in just nine months, far below Pixar or DreamWorks standards.

Planned for a Cannes 2026 premiere, Critterz is more than a film. It’s OpenAI’s high-stakes attempt to win over a hesitant industry and position AI as a viable force in production.

How it’s received will reveal just how close generative AI is to reshaping Hollywood’s economics and creative process.

OK let’s keep going ↓

🔥 Creative pulse

Matt Zien is back, holding a mirror to us all.

I’ll tell you one thing…he’s one of the very few filmmakers in the world using AI to say exactly what we need to hear.

Honest, unfiltered, provocative commentary that feels essential.

PS: If you’re passionate (and obsessed) about AI creative…guess what?! I just launched an AI creative club. It’s only $5/month. Skip the Big Mac and use it for this instead. I’m serious, you’ll thank me later. Click here to join.

Check out our first AMA (open for the entire week), with more special guests coming soon!

One piece of advice, tip, or connection here could change your life. Learn more.

💡 Here’s what you should know

💰 The numbers

  • Nebius and Microsoft signed a $17.4B multiyear AI infrastructure lease, underscoring the hyperscaler rush to secure GPU capacity.

  • Databricks raised $1B in Series K funding at a $100B+ valuation and hit a $4B annualized run rate, with $1B tied directly to AI revenue.

  • Mistral AI closed a €1.7B (~$1.9B) Series C led by ASML, valuing the company at €10B (~$11.7B) and cementing its lead in European AI.

  • Cognition AI secured $400M at a $10.2B valuation, reinforcing its momentum in agentic AI coding systems.

  • Baseten secured $150M in Series D funding to scale its AI inference platform amid rising demand for production-grade model deployment.

  • X Square Robot raised $140M (≈$280M total funding) to develop humanoid robots powered by its own intelligence model, positioning itself as China’s answer to Figure AI and Boston Dynamics.just say

  • Motion raised $38M in Series C funding to scale its AI-powered productivity and virtual agent platform for SMBs.

  • DataCrunch raised €55M (~$59M) in Series A funding to build a European high-performance compute stack and challenge U.S. hyperscalers.

  • Dazl emerged from stealth with $10M seed funding to build an AI-powered app builder that turns quick “vibe coding” prototypes into production-ready software.

  • Reveal HealthTech landed $7.2M in Series A funding to expand its AI-driven healthcare workflow tools.

  • Koah raised $5M to bring high-CTR ads to AI chat apps, already driving 7.5% CTR and $10K+ in 30 days for partners.

🧠 Thought starters

OpenAI’s new piece, Why Language Models Hallucinate, explains why hallucinations remain a stubborn challenge.

Models are rewarded for guessing rather than admitting uncertainty because accuracy-driven benchmarks make them look better when they guess instead of saying “I don’t know.”

Key takeaways:

  • Hallucinations are plausible but false statements, even on simple questions.

  • Evaluation incentives are misaligned, encouraging guessing over humility.

  • Scoring systems should value abstentions over wrong answers.

  • GPT-5 shows progress in reasoning, but hallucinations remain unresolved.

😂 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.

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