Formerly VP of AI and engineering at Disney’s Office of Technology Enablement, Hans Ku has joined Utopai Studios as chief product officer, leading product, engineering, research, and business development.
The AI-led studio is expanding its film and TV slate and driving adoption of its PAI storytelling tools.
“Hans knows what it takes to move emerging technology from experimentation into an organization operating at global scale,” said Cecilia Shen, CEO and co-founder of Utopai Studios. “From developing tools for animators early in his career to helping lead Disney’s collaboration with OpenAI on Sora, Hans has consistently worked at the intersection of creative ambition and emerging technology. He brings that experience to a studio where filmmakers and technology teams develop tools together on active productions. That combination is critical to where Utopai Studios is going next. We are building a global studio for a new era of entertainment, and Hans will be central to scaling the technology and infrastructure that make that possible.”
“Utopai Studios has the opportunity to build something fundamentally different because the studio and the technology are growing together,” said Ku. “We can take what we learn from real productions, turn those lessons directly into better products and workflows, and then bring those capabilities to filmmakers and studios around the world. My focus is on building PAI alongside filmmakers, giving them better tools to explore ideas, refine their work, and bring their creative vision to the screen while keeping creative decisions in their hands.”
Ku is tasked with setting PAI’s direction across AI models, agentic systems, production workflows and collaboration tools. He will also oversee the PAI app for filmmakers, PAI Code for developers and agents, enterprise deployments, sales and studio partnerships.
Ku co-founded Scenely, an AI-native script-to-screen startup, and served as SVP of product at Tubi. He also worked at Instagram and Yahoo Video, among other roles in the tech and video spaces.
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