Cannes Spotlight: Goldfinch and Digital Genesis Launch $20M AI-Driven Web3 Initiative

At the heart of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, a transformative entertainment venture was unveiled that could redefine how stories are produced, funded, and experienced. 

UK-based production powerhouse Goldfinch Holdings and Luxembourg’s Digital Genesis Fund launched a $20 million initiative aimed at building a Web3-native, AI-powered entertainment ecosystem — a headline announcement made at the TechCannes Industry event within the Cannes Film Market.

This joint venture signals a multi-year financing collaboration, backed by capital from the Digital Genesis SICAV RAIF Fund and matched by Goldfinch International. Together, they aim to acquire, incubate, and accelerate projects across the Web3 entertainment space, with a strong focus on strategic growth and infrastructure development.

Cannes Sets the Stage for Tokenized Media Innovation

At the heart of this alliance is Lumiere, a tokenized crowdfunding platform supported by Animoca Brands, Brinc, Rolling Stone, and RS Productions. The platform, founded by strategic advisor Patrice Poujol, becomes the first formal acquisition under the new venture and a foundational layer for the partners’ expanding digital entertainment ecosystem.

Lumiere will be joined by a portfolio of next-gen projects, including The Squad — a Web3-native studio modeled on the Film3 framework — and MILC (Media Industry Licensing Content), a blockchain-powered metaverse environment designed to support end-to-end content creation, licensing, branded integration, and monetization for both B2B and B2C markets.

Global Rollout Begins in Indonesia

With eyes on rapid deployment, the venture has scheduled its next major activation for the Indonesia Creative Investment Forum later this year. Co-hosted by Goldfinch Indonesia and supported by partners Synco, Goshen Prime, and the Indonesian Creative Ministry, the event will introduce Lumiere’s first products and The Squad’s media toolkit to a global investor audience and regional public institutions.

The fund’s pipeline includes strategic tech collaborations with ARCWARE (Germany) to build high-performance pixel streaming for real-time media delivery and AI-powered engines to automate production and rights management. These tools are intended to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of visual content creation, especially in multi-format and metaverse environments.

Hendrik Hey, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Digital Genesis Fund and founder of MILC, likened this moment to the dawn of the Hollywood studio era, saying, “But this time, the canvas is infinite. Content isn’t confined to screens anymore — it lives around us, and within us. We are building interactive universes where stories are lived, not just watched.”

Hey’s MILC platform already operates a functioning metaverse with real-world industrial and media use cases, and serves as a consulting hub for traditional companies exploring blockchain and Web3 transformation.

A Global Web3 Co-Production Engine

The partners are also assembling a global pipeline of tokenized intellectual properties, ready for co-production and co-financing. The fund seeks to empower both institutional and independent media players to participate in a decentralized, borderless entertainment economy driven by smart contracts, real-time collaboration, and community-backed development.

As the worlds of finance, technology, and entertainment continue to converge, this $20 million initiative stands as a landmark commitment to the decentralization of media production — not just in theory, but in practice.