Vertiq Holdings, Inc.

Vertiq Holdings, Inc. is the company formed to build and operate Vertiq, a mobile-first platform for vertical drama — serialized stories shot for a phone screen and told in episodes of a few minutes each.

The category has grown quickly outside the traditional studio system, and most of the attention so far has gone to a small number of vertically integrated apps that commission their own libraries. Our view is that the durable position in this category is not another content producer but the platform where independently produced vertical drama is discovered, watched, and paid for.

Vertiq is designed around that: a discovery and streaming surface that carries titles from many creators rather than one in-house slate, with a path for emerging filmmakers and performers to publish work that reaches a real audience.

Tap. Watch. Repeat.^℠

Vertiq is built for the behaviour that already exists on a phone: short sessions, one thumb, sound on, no commitment at the start and no natural stopping point once a story lands. Episodes run a few minutes. Series run dozens of episodes. Discovery is the product, not a menu bolted onto a catalogue.

Vertical drama went from a niche export of the Chinese app market to a category the major streamers are now building against — in about three years.

Deloitte estimates global in-app revenue for micro-series will roughly double from $3.8 billion in 2025 to $7.8 billion in 2026, and expects the United States to be the largest market outside China.

What changed

Three things happened at once. Audiences proved they will pay for short vertical fiction — Sensor Tower recorded $2.98 billion in short-drama in-app purchases across 2.3 billion downloads in 2025. Production became genuinely cheap: a 50-to-100-episode vertical series is typically shot in seven to ten days for $150,000 to $300,000, an order of magnitude below traditional episodic television. And the category acquired formal industry standing when SAG-AFTRA introduced a dedicated Verticals Agreement in October 2025 for productions under $300,000.

The incumbents validated the format. They also revealed the weakness.

TikTok launched a standalone microdrama app, PineDrama, in January 2026. Netflix shipped Clips, a vertical discovery feed, in April 2026, and Amazon Prime Video followed in May. Media Partners Asia puts ReelShort's revenue at $785 million in 2025, on track for roughly $1 billion in 2026 — with meaningful profit expected only now, at that scale.

That last detail is the interesting one. The dominant apps commission their own libraries and then buy the audience for each title. An executive at COL Group International told a London industry audience that microdrama platforms put as much as 90% of their budgets into marketing. It is a model that carries both the production cost and the acquisition cost of every title, and it only turns over at very large scale.

Where we think the opening is

Independent creators are making vertical drama already, and the number doing so goes up as the production cost goes down. What they do not have is a destination — a place where a title can be found by an audience that came looking for this kind of story rather than a place where it competes with everything else on a general-purpose feed.

Vertiq is being built as that destination: discovery and distribution for independently produced vertical drama, with selective investment in titles that show traction rather than a commissioned slate carried up front. We think the economics of a catalogue you do not have to fully finance are structurally better than the economics of one you do.

Market figures above are third-party estimates from the sources named and linked. The company has not independently verified them, and estimates for this category vary materially between research firms.

Vertiq Holdings, Inc. is a separately incorporated company with its own charter, its own board, and its own books.

The Vertiq platform is presented publicly within the MusicSquared Group family of brands, alongside its other ventures. The company is not a division of another business, and it keeps its books, accounts, and obligations separate from every affiliated organisation.

Company information

Legal name	Vertiq Holdings, Inc.
Entity type	Privately held corporation
Capital structure	Dual-class common stock (Class A and Class B)
Fiscal year end	December 31
Stage	Closed beta — Round 01 running

Governance

Vertiq Holdings, Inc. was founded by John Stepanian. Board composition and officer appointments are being finalised, and the company expects to add independent directors and advisors as it grows. Formation documents, governance records, and registry details are provided to counterparties on request under an appropriate confidentiality agreement.

Leadership

We publish this page so that investors, partners, and prospective collaborators can understand what the company is and get in touch through a proper channel. Company materials are not posted publicly. Requests are reviewed individually, and substantive information is shared under a confidentiality agreement.

What we can share on request

• Company overview and product roadmap
• Beta programme structure and what we are measuring
• Corporate formation documents and capitalisation summary
• Founder background and references

What we are not publishing

• Financial projections or valuation
• Terms of any prospective financing
• Beta performance data prior to the close of Round 02