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From Beatboxing to Building: Moonlite Labs Brings Canadian AI to the World Stage

Jun 23

Adam Fainman used to hype up a crowd with nothing but a loop pedal and a microphone. These days, he’s capturing attention in a different arena — as founder of Moonlite Labs, one of Canada’s most exciting new generative AI startups.

Moonlite Labs, or just Moonlite, as Fainman casually calls it, is a creative content platform designed to make multimedia storytelling radically more accessible. With a few prompts, users can generate animations, voiceovers, talking avatars, music-reactive visuals, and more.

Adam Fainman in front of his booth at Viva Tech 2025, showing Moonlitelabs
Adam Fainman, founder of Moonlite Labs, showcases his generative AI storytelling platform at VivaTech 2025 in Paris. Moonlite has also been recognized internationally by TechCrunch as one of the Top 30 Startups of the Year.

“It’s a content generation platform that allows users to create videos, images, animations, talking avatars, sound effects and voice-overs... your whole multimedia creation tool,” Fainman explained. “It’s really about accessibility, making it very easy to access generative AI tools.”


The platform made its public debut at the Manitoba AI Innovation Showcase earlier this year, where Moonlite not only revealed what it had been building behind the scenes, it took home an award.


“That was a massive confidence boost. It was our first time sharing with the public what we've been up to for the last year,” Fainman said. “To win the award... that was very, very rewarding. It was a pat on the back, and a boost of confidence.”

Since then, things have snowballed. Moonlite attracted a wave of new users and beta testers, and last week, the company stepped onto the international stage at VivaTech 2025 in Paris — Europe’s largest startup and tech conference, with over 180,000 visitors.

Moonlite was also selected as one of TechCrunch’s Top 30 Startups of the Year, a shortlist that included only two Canadian companies.


“Getting the AI Showcase award, getting into VivaTech, being selected as one of the top 30 startups of the Year by TechCrunch... that was pretty crazy,” Fainman said.

Backed by ScaleAI, Moonlite joined Canada’s official delegation at VivaTech, which had special visibility this year with Canada named Country of the Year at the conference.

“We had a massive space. The French president came through our whole area. It was the craziest thing,” Fainman recalled. “Everyone had their phones. It was like a mob... then we're like, oh my God, it's the French president. People were freaking out.”

Fainman was given two days to showcase Moonlite, with a booth each for the platform’s business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) offerings. But the most personal moment came on stage, where he delivered a presentation showcasing his journey from beatboxing artist to tech founder. 


It was an experience he found humanizing and different from the pitch deck presentations tech founders get in the rhythm of doing, but it wasn’t without nerves.

“On the speaking side, I still get nervous,” he said. “It's not music. I can beatbox, do my vocals and perform music pretty easily. This is a bit more intense.”

Instead of party crowds, he found himself in front of “venture capital investors that are watching you,” a shift that made the spotlight feel unfamiliar. “You're like, ‘Well, people aren’t dancing and drinking here, this is a totally different dynamic'... but in other ways it's still the same.”


At its core, it was still storytelling, something he’s always gravitated toward. “It's luckily something I'm incredibly passionate about,” he said, “so it's easy for me to get into a flow and be 'OK, I'm literally making the tool that I wish I always had.' I'm not standing here selling something I don't believe in.”


Fainman’s path to Moonlite wasn’t linear. With a background spanning a computer science degree from the University of Winnipeg, a diploma in Digital Media Design from Red River College, and a master’s in music and multimedia technology from the University of Toronto, he was constantly exploring the space between tech and creativity.

“I'm always tinkering and trying to figure out ways tech can help with things like music production,” he said. “It fascinates me.”


It was that tinkering that led him to generative visuals — and eventually, to North Forge.

“That's when I joined North Forge,” Fainman said, after receiving green light from IRAP [The National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program] funding last year. He entered directly into Ascent, the third of four stages in the North Forge Founders Program, a nonprofit that supports Manitoba entrepreneurs based on their unique startup journey at no cost.


Fainman didn’t need to start at the beginning, because the North Forge Founders Program is developed in a way to meet applicants where they are in their startup journey. With validation and market research already in place, he was able to plug into programming that matched Moonlite’s momentum.

That momentum is now focused on two things: following up on connections from VivaTech, and evolving the platform.


“We’re gonna be rolling out this music reactive animation tool because that was sort of the original plan, to make it really focused on other musical artists,” he said.

Moonlite is currently open to anyone — “Kind of like Canva,” Fainman explained — but ultimately a creator tool, made by a creative for creatives” 


To learn more about North Forge’s no-cost Founders program, visit northforge.ca. To begin creating your own visual stories with Moonlite, visit moonlitelabs.com


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