Former Luma AI Exec Verena Puhm Launches AI-Native Production Company Matriarch

Verena Puhm, formerly Head of Dream Lab LA at Luma AI, has launched Matriarch, a self-funded, Los Angeles-based production company focused on AI-native and hybrid storytelling. The company's development slate spans multiple genres, including Colors in the Dark (hybrid drama), All the Leading Men (adult animated comedy), G-Pigs (horror feature), and Chomper Romp (animated short-form series currently in financing). Creative collaborators include director and musician TEDRA (TT The Artist), music producer Joachim M. Weber, and VFX artist David Sulpizio, with producer Morenike Dosu — a veteran of MPC, Framestore, and DreamWorks Animation — joining Puhm at the company.

At the center of Matriarch's technology ambitions is a proprietary system the company calls "Affective Content Intelligence," which aims to measure audience emotional and physiological response to media — combining biometric signals and self-reported data — and feed those insights directly into creative development and greenlighting decisions. Puhm frames the approach as a departure from conventional engagement metrics like clicks and completion rates, with the goal of understanding not just what audiences watch, but how content makes them feel.