Luma's Origins and Competitive Position

Amit Jain, CEO and founder of Luma AI, joins Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, and Rony Abovitz to unpack the future of AI-native video and the transformation of Hollywood’s creative economy. Once an Apple engineer, Jain launched Luma during the early NeRF boom and built what is now the industry’s best-performing AI video generation system—Luma Ray 3, the world’s first HDR model capable of 16-bit cinematic compositing. In this episode, Jain argues that AI video isn’t just a tool—it is quickly becoming the new substrate of the internet, a reality where professional-grade video replaces web pages as the primary interface for information, learning, and entertainment.

Before Luma, Jain led core Apple Vision teams, where he learned how AI perception systems interpret the world. That experience now powers Luma’s radical thesis: every phone user will soon generate an hour of personalized video per day, making video “the new language of the internet.”

The hosts challenge Jain on whether startups like Luma can compete with OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo, and Jain answers with confidence: “Big companies marketing harder doesn’t matter—the best models always win because creators demand control, quality, and speed.” Luma, he explains, is already embedded in four of the six major Hollywood studios and hundreds of professional production houses, providing real-time previsualization, set extension, and multi-character scene generation on consumer hardware.

Guest Highlights: Amit Jain on AI-First Cinema

• Hollywood adopters: Four of six major studios already using Luma Ray 3 for previsualization, compositing, and AI-assisted performance capture.
• Death of performance capture: Luma’s video-to-video model translates acting from an iPhone recording directly into 3D characters—replacing mo-cap workflows with laptop AI pipelines.
• AI for directors, not automation: Jain insists AI empowers storytellers. Directors can now reshoot, re-time lighting, or replace actors at negligible cost—transforming iteration speed, not intent.
• The “professional-first” strategy: While OpenAI and Google chase consumers, Jain is targeting the $1.2 trillion professional video production market, where 90% of spending occurs.
• Hollywood’s broken math: “Studios die because of $400-million movies,” he says. “Make 10 films for $40 million each and you’ll have a creative renaissance.”

News Segment Highlights

• Snap’s Lens Fest reveals next-gen Spectacles with binocular see-through XR display
• Anduril’s new IVAS “Eagle Eye” headset
• Apple announces Vision Pro Gen 2 .
• Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset
• Flint AI raises new round from a16z and Sheryl Sandberg

This Episode’s Sponsors

Zappar's Mattercraft – AI-integrated 3D web design suite for building immersive XR content.

Viture Luma XR Glasses – 52° FOV and 152-inch virtual screen experience for gaming and streaming.

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