The State of the Global Content Supply Chain:
2025 Lessons and the Road Ahead for 2026

Welby Chen, CEO, Whip Media

As we close out 2025, one word keeps coming up across our teams, customers, and partners: momentum.

This year was not about incremental change. It was about recalibrating how the global media ecosystem works and redefining what intelligence means in a world where data alone no longer powers decisions. What matters today is actionable insight.

At Whip Media, our mission has always been clear. We turn the most complex data challenges in entertainment into operational advantage. That includes helping customers unlock hidden audience demand, predict global viewership trends, and optimize every dollar of licensing revenue.

Here are the themes that defined 2025 for us:

Customer Led Innovation

We engaged more deeply with customers than ever before. We did not just listen. We co built solutions with them. Their real world needs pushed us to accelerate functionality, streamline workflows, and embed intelligence directly into the media supply chain. This collaboration reinforced a central truth: technology only matters when it drives outcomes people feel every day.

Advancing AI with Purpose

In 2025 we moved beyond AI exploration and focused on where value actually happens. The Helix platform made significant progress in agentic and predictive workflows that help customers automate repeatable tasks and unlock foresight across content performance and rights planning. In an industry where time, rights windows, and audience behavior shift quickly, rapid insight becomes a competitive advantage.

We also embedded AI into our internal operations, improving the way we work, support customers, and execute. AI is now part of how we run the company, not just how we power Helix.

Scaling Impact Across the Ecosystem

From studios to streamers and distributors to rights holders, we saw teams adopt Whip Media solutions as strategic partners rather than optional tools. Growth across the platform reflected more than new logos. It showed deeper integration into how the industry plans, licenses, and monetizes content globally. This is meaningful traction built on clarity, trust, and measurable business impact. 

The momentum was also recognized outside our walls, including Helix being named one of the Top 20 Game-Changing Uses of AI in Entertainment by Media Play News.

The Road Ahead for 2026

The next year will be defined by execution and amplification.

As the entertainment industry moves from AI exploration to AI transformation, our priority is to help organizations operationalize intelligence and convert data into decision ready outputs that create real business outcomes.

Here is where we are placing our focus:

Enterprise Grade Intelligence at Scale
Helping customers shift from descriptive dashboards to predictive and prescriptive insights that inform strategic content and licensing decisions.

Connected Media Supply Chains
Continuing to break down data silos across rights, performance, and monetization so teams can work from a single source of truth with full visibility.

Contextual AI Driven Decision Support
Embedding agentic workflows that proactively surface risks, opportunities, and strategic options instead of simply surfacing raw information.

Gratitude and Partnership

Progress at this level does not happen in isolation. To our customers, thank you for your trust, your feedback, and your continued drive to innovate. To our partners, thank you for collaborating with us to solve some of the hardest problems in this industry. And to the Whip Media team, your commitment to excellence is what turns vision into durable results.

2025 was about building momentum.
2026 is about turning that momentum into measurable value for every stakeholder we serve.

Here is to a transformative year ahead, together.

Welby Chen, CEO
Whip Media