Angel Studios (ANGX) | Let the Audience Decide
The Angel Guild is growing rapidly and making waves
Angel Studios has built its entire business around a simple idea: let the audience decide what gets distributed. The mechanism for that is the Angel Guild, a paid membership community of >2.7M members strong, and it has become the engine that drives the entire business.
Let the audience decide
At other streaming platforms (think Netflix, etc.), a handful of executives greenlight projects and decide what to distribute. Said another way, a select few decide what you want to watch.
At Angel, the audience decides. Fans join the Guild for a monthly or annual fee and as a result gain access to watch “Torches,” concept clips or completed films, and vote on whether Angel should distribute them. Only titles that clear the Guild’s voting threshold move into due diligence and distribution.
Please note, Angel is a distribution/streaming platform. It is not a production studio. It amazes me that still no one seems to understand this.
Anyways, the bar is high on gaining distribution from the Guild. In one documented stretch, filmmakers submitted over 900 projects and only 13 made it through.
“I cannot greenlight a film unless it is first approved by our Guild members. There are no exceptions.”
Jeffrey Harmon, Chief Content Officer
This not only empowers the audience, but gives the company a very valuable insight on what might work on the platform or in theaters. It is no surprise that you keep seeing headlines following an Angel theatrical release that shows the market is caught off guard by its success. They know what will work because the Guild members tell them ahead of time.
For this to really work though, you need scale, and Angel is getting there. With 2M+ members, the model is working. The Guild predicts winners.
Hollywood has again and again been surprised by Angel’s success, especially as it relates to theatrical releases. Here are a few examples:
Sound of Freedom ($251M)
King of Kings ($84M)
David ($88M)
Solo Mio ($26M)
and most recently, Young Washington’s $20M+ opening weekend.
This model doesn’t guarantee success, but it sure gives the company an edge, de-risking their downside. That said, one example of a total flop, despite the Guild’s greenlight, was Animal Farm. It was a $35M budget film that grossed $6.2M worldwide in the box office. But fear not, this wasn’t Angels’ budget, they simply distributed the film.
Nonetheless, this model feeds itself. The larger the Guild gets, the smarter it becomes. And this begins feeding a powerful flywheel.
The flywheel
Angel’s executives describe the Guild’s effect on the business as a flywheel, and the mechanics back that up:
The Guild grows and as it grows it becomes smarter, greenlighting the distribution of more films that work on the platform and in theaters.
This further drives more people to the platform and grows the royalty pool to pay creators.
The larger the royalty pool, the more quality content that wants to be distributed via Angel.
The more quality content, the more the Guild grows…
And on and on.
This is why the Guild isn't just a marketing gimmick, it's the mechanism the whole business runs on.
One note: Angel shares profits generously with creators (roughly 50% of streaming profits on exclusive titles and a majority of distribution profits). Cumulative filmmaker revenue-share reached $228M at year-end 2025 and $255M as of March 31, 2026. A growing royalty pool attracts filmmakers.
The Guild by the numbers
As you can see the Guild drives the entire business model. As it relates to revenue, the Guild is the recurring-revenue backbone. It represented 65% of full-year 2025 revenue and 72% of Q1 2026 revenue. This continues to accelerate.
Membership has scaled from about 550,000 at the end of 2024 to 2.7M+ in July 2026.
The company recently began publishing this North Star metric to its website updated regularly (about every 30 minutes or so based on observation). Below is a screenshot of some of the data and how I am tracking it, but click this link for the full sheet.
Currently, the Guild is growing paid users >14% M/M.
Notably, in addition to the sheer growth, is that average revenue per member (ARPM) has stayed remarkably stable through this expansion, hovering between $13.67-$13.70 over the past year. Based on current membership count, the Guild alone is posting $448M of recurring annualized revenue.
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