Former Luma AI Executive Verena Puhm Launches AI-Native Production Company Matriarch
Verena Puhm, most recently Head of Dream Lab LA at the AI video company Luma AI, has launched a Los Angeles-based production company called Matriarch. The company develops and produces AI-native and hybrid productions — projects built partly or wholly with artificial intelligence tools — and also takes on work for third parties and brands. Deadline
Matriarch is self-funded. Puhm is joined by producer Morenike Dosu, whose résumé spans the visual effects houses MPC and Framestore and the animation studio DreamWorks. The company's consultants include James Stowe and Courtney Feemster, and its creative collaborators span directing, music and visual effects.
Among the collaborators is TEDRA, also known as TT The Artist — a director, AI creator and musician whose credits include work with Diplo and Alicia Keys, plus placements on Netflix, HBO's Insecure, P-Valley and Lena Waithe's Twenties. Music producer and sound designer Joachim M. Weber, formerly a composer and audio designer at the German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, rounds out the audio side. Creative technologist, director and VFX artist David Sulpizio is also on the team.
Matriarch's development slate has four projects across different formats. Colors in the Dark is a hybrid drama series. All the Leading Men is an adult animated comedy series. G-Pigs is a horror feature film. Chomper Romp, an animated short-form series, is currently in financing discussions — meaning the company is still securing the budget to move it into production.
The company is also developing a proprietary system it calls "Affective Content Intelligence." The approach combines biometric signals, self-reported emotional intent from viewers and information about the content being watched to measure how audiences respond to media. In industry terms, it sits somewhere between audience research and creative tooling — a way to read viewer reaction that goes beyond standard ratings data.
Puhm's path to Matriarch runs through both traditional film and the emerging AI production world. She served as lead AI artist on Free Leonard Peltier, a documentary that screened at Sundance in 2025. She co-directed and co-produced the 2023 documentary Disaster at Devil's Jaw. Earlier in her career she wrote at Leonine Studio's Wiedemann & Berg TV and at Red Bull Media's Terra Mater Studios. She was also an early AI filmmaking instructor for Sundance Collab, the Sundance Institute's online education platform.
Luma AI launched its LA-based Dream Lab studio in July 2025 and named Puhm as its head, alongside hiring Jon Finger as a creative workflow executive. Her departure from that role to start Matriarch marks a shift from working inside an AI infrastructure company to running an independent production outfit built around those same tools.
For audiences, the practical outcome is a slate of projects that may land at streamers or traditional buyers in the coming seasons. Whether AI-native production becomes a routine part of how shows get made is a question the wider industry is still working through. Matriarch's slate and its Affective Content Intelligence system will be early test cases.
