A Brazilian startup called Fly Media has raised roughly R$20 million (about $4 million) in just over two months, on a thesis its founder Victor Trindade summarizes without flinching: build the next Disney, but for the generation that grew up on TikTok and YouTube. Co-founded with Mario Sa, Henrique Campos, and a small group of creators and engineers, Fly Media is trying to do something traditional studios have not figured out yet. The plan is to produce intellectual property fast, cheaply, and at internet scale, using AI as a creative manufacturing line.
The pitch sounds outlandish until you understand the bet. Trindade and his co-founders started Fly Media (originally called Eagle Media) after a long night of whiskey, sketching what they describe as a structure for creators who otherwise hit walls. Their argument is that the constraint on digital creators is not talent. It is the unglamorous stuff that drains them: tools, money, business plumbing, and time. Their plan is to centralize all of that in one company, then point it at AI tools that can produce short-form video at speeds that would otherwise be financially impossible.
The fundraise itself looks more like a Silicon Valley playbook than a Brazilian one. Before formal investor meetings even began, roughly R$5 million was committed off the strength of the pitch deck and a presentation video alone. The team then ran what venture capital insiders call a roadshow, moving between Sao Paulo, San Francisco, and Stanford. Even with most of the round filled, the deal could not officially close without a 'lead investor,' the firm that anchors a venture round and sets the terms. Trindade documents the slow-motion anxiety of that hunt: investors who looked locked in suddenly walking away, weeks of meetings between time zones, and the exhaustion of pitching as outsiders in a market that defaults to skepticism toward foreign founders.
What Trindade is selling investors is less about any individual product and more about a system. The idea is that each 'IP,' short for intellectual property (the term media companies use for owned characters and brands like Mickey Mouse or SpongeBob), is led by one creative obsessed with that universe, while the rest of Fly Media's team handles AI tooling, production, and distribution. In the longer pitch, Trindade describes a future where children interact directly with AI-powered characters: learning from them, entering virtual worlds tied to those brands, forming relationships closer to a friend than a TV show. That is the wager. The first proof point arrived faster than anyone expected.
The proof point is a talking football named Zuka. Internally the project was nearly killed several times. Many on the team called the early character designs ridiculous, and a few openly said a CGI football could never carry a channel. Then an editor produced a single format that broke through: a short showing Zuka being kicked one meter higher for every new subscriber, working toward a 'trip to the World Cup.' Subscribers went from a few thousand to 50,000 in a matter of days, sometimes climbing 10,000 between meetings. Internally, Trindade describes that growth as proof of Fly Media's larger thesis. If you study internet behavior closely enough (the hooks, the retention, the psychology of short-form pacing), you can engineer viral content with AI assistance, not just hope for it.
The harder lesson came when Zuka's growth flattened. The same team that engineered the breakout then had to engineer something subtler: a sustained community, with long-form videos, internal lore, in-game collaborations, even a villain named Zica. Fans started drawing their own Zuka art. They modded him into Fortnite. That, according to Trindade, was the data point that mattered more than the subscriber spike, because it suggested an internet-native IP can do what Disney did at scale, build emotional connection, not just attention. Forbes has now covered the company. More IPs, films, and physical merchandise are reportedly in development. The thing to watch over the next year is whether the AI-and-creator-led production model can keep producing characters that people care about months after the algorithm has moved on. Fly Media has bought itself the runway to find out.