In years past, when a great athlete retired, they typically told their story through a ghost-written memoir or perhaps even a biopic. But Hall of Fame basketball player Carmelo Anthony opted instead for the storytelling medium of the moment, striking a partnership with Utopai Studios, the Silicon Valley-based startup specializing in AI movies and TV shows. The 41-year-old NBA legend will produce AI-generated video content about his life and other sports stories through his Creative 7 Productions label. Anthony’s investment into Utopai—which both sides declined to share the size of, but Forbes estimates around $5 million—was at a staggering $1 billion valuation.

It’s an astronomical amount for a company with revenue that Forbes estimates was less than $50 million in 2025, and has yet to put out a full-length movie or TV show. Still, with projects in the pipeline and strong 2026 projections, the premium price tag announces Utopai as a true competitor in the ongoing Hollywood AI arms race.

“What stood out to me wasn’t just how advanced the technology is, but the vision and intention behind it,” Anthony tells Forbes in a prepared statement. “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. [Utopai] changes that. It gives us a more accessible way to create and build something with long-term value.”

In the notoriously insular Hollywood community, Utopai’s 25-year-old cofounder Cecilia Shen certainly does not fit the traditional mold of a movie mogul. Born in China and raised in Toronto, Shen dropped out of the University of Waterloo during the pandemic and took an AI job at the Royal Bank of Canada and then landed at Google’s moonshot factory X, where she met cofounder Jie Yang, a research lead and software engineer. In 2022 they founded what was then known as Cybever, initially developing AI tools to generate 3D environments for use in videogame development, before seeing its potential in film and television.

Shen and Yang were far from the only ones with the idea. According to one industry report, more than 65 new AI studios have launched since 2022. Most exist somewhere in........

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