Utopai Studios Lands Investment From Carmelo Anthony's Creative 7 Productions

What's the deal? NBA Hall of Famer Carmelo AnthonyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s production company, Creative 7 Productions, has invested in Utopai StudiosDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, an AI-native entertainment company. The deal pairs Creative 7's sports and entertainment ambitions with Utopai's proprietary cinematic AI platform, PAI, to develop original IP across film, television, streaming, and digital platforms.

The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

One of the first projects will be an anime-inspired property based on Anthony's career and the culture surrounding basketball. The initial rollout is expected to include a short-form series and behind-the-scenes content.

"Sports has always been grounded in real human stories that can translate to powerful entertainment IP, but bringing those stories to life hasn't always been easy," Anthony said. "PAI changes that."

Why now? Utopai Studios has been building momentum with athlete-driven content, including an AI-animated short with NBA star James HardenDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The company is positioning itself as a new kind of studio for the AI era — one that embeds generative AI into every stage of production, from development and visualisation to editing and delivery.

Utopai already has an international footprint, with subsidiaries in Korea and Germany.

What could go wrong? AI-generated entertainment remains polarising. Audiences and industry professionals have pushed back against AI tools that threaten creative jobs or produce content that feels hollow. Utopai and Creative 7 emphasise that their approach preserves "authorship, ownership, and creative control" — but whether the output wins over sceptical viewers is another matter.

The anime-inspired format is also a crowded space, and standing out will require more than novel production tools.

The signal: Utopai Studios sits at "breakout" stage on Dealroom, and backing from a high-profile athlete-entrepreneur like Anthony gives the AI-native studio a credibility boost that pure-tech pitches rarely achieve. The deal underscores a wider pattern: as generative-AI production tools mature, celebrity IP holders are partnering directly with lean, tech-first studios rather than licensing stories to traditional Hollywood pipelines — a shift that could redraw how sports-entertainment IP is developed and monetised.

Read more: AWN