Kartel.ai, a Beverly Hills-based startup, is officially out of stealth with $2 million in early funding and a plan to rewire the way creative media is produced and sold. Its founders believe they’ve built something new: a human centric, AI-enhanced production pipeline that brings structure to an increasingly chaotic content economy. It’s early, but Kartel says their business model is working.
Kartel offers a full-stack platform for creative production. Brands, studios, SMBs and agencies can call a dedicated phone number, 1-838-NEW-IDEA, and talk through a project, or work directly with Kartel’s team of producers. An AI-enhanced intake system generates a creative brief on the fly, then matches the job with one of Kartel’s vetted artists. From there, the project moves through a managed workflow, supported by both software and a heavily curated team of ai-savvy directors. The result is a finished video or campaign delivered in days.
This is a business built around workflow orchestration, creative matchmaking, and the belief that speed and quality do not have to be mutually exclusive. The founders describe it as an operating system for modern storytelling, though they stop short of suggesting automation replaces creativity. The entire premise is to support human creators, not eliminate them, they say.
Co-founders Luke Perterson, CEO, and Ben Kusin (CSO).
During my visit to Kartel’s Beverly Hills office, I was struck by the informality and energy of the space. It’s an open-plan bullpen with no pretense. The CEO sits next to his assistant, who sits next to a programmer, who sits next to a strategist. Everyone is close enough to hear everyone else work. At one point, co-founder Luke Peterson pulled up a slide in their pitch deck and asked me to call the number on the screen.
I had just gotten off a call with a client in the XR glasses space and gave Kartel’s AI a brief about them. It asked me a few questions. I sent in product shots. The next day, I received a fully produced spot that looked like it had come from an agency. Clean concept, solid art direction, and a tone that felt considered. I later found out it had been executed by one of Kartel’s artists, Mike Burns, using generative tools, working off the brief the AI had captured from my phone call. The client approved it immediately.
Their system reduces the layers that typically bloat production timelines. It removes the back-and-forth of creative development without removing the creative itself. Artists still direct, design, and edit.
For each of Kartel’s customer segments, they’re eliminating a point of friction. For agencies, the benefit is production speed and creative diversity. For artists, it’s inbound work they wouldn’t otherwise see. For clients, it’s cost-effective direct access to premium talent, without the overhead or delay of traditional firms. Peterson agreed and clarified that what they’ve built isn’t a directory, but a full production stack with AI tooling layered into every stage of the workflow, and careful attention to the roster of artists who in effect represent Kartel as much as Kartel represents them.
The founding team includes Peterson, a startup veteran and former managing director at Wells Fargo, and Kartel’s Chief Strategy Officer Ben Kusin, who previously ran the AI-first consultancy Visionairy, and held executive roles in gaming and media. Their VP of Marketing, Estefania Guarderas, produced reality television at Bravo before discovering generative AI. She taught herself the tools, built spec work, and was hired after Kartel saw what she could do with them.
Kartel also operates a studio in Santa Monica, run by Ryan Tomlinson, a former brand strategist for Earth One and advisor to the U.S. Space Force, where it prototypes original IP and tests new tools, including volumetric capture and real-time motion systems. According to the founders, this studio work is not an afterthought. It is a proving ground for both technology and storytelling. They’re using it to develop speculative pilots, music videos, and conceptual work for studios and buyers. In one example, the team built a short concept film for a fashion brand, with only photos of clothing samples to work with, within five days. Kusin said it nearly brought the founder to tears. “This is my vision,” the client reportedly told them. “And now it’s real.”
To gauge how this plays in practice, I asked for feedback from both a client and an artist.
“I had no idea this kind of turnaround was possible without compromising the creative,” said Kevin Miller, CEO of NoLogo.com, who recently worked with Kartel on a product launch video. “I gave them very little direction, explained our market position, and two days later I had a full TV advertisement. We ran a media buy against it the next week.”
From the other side of the pipeline, Matt Zien, a film and television producer and founder of KNGMKR Labs, a pioneer in generative AI content, described Kartel as a rare platform that respects both artistry and execution. “Kartel knows that these tools are nothing without the humans behind them. And the whole system reflects that.”
According to Peterson, Kartel has more than 100 opportunities in the pipeline and is currently executing multiple agency deals. The next stage of growth, he says, will require additional capital, and they are already preparing for a larger raise later this year.