Three-year-old AI media search startup Clipto hits $250M valuation

[Odd Voyager]

Clipto, a startup that uses AI to make terabytes of video, audio, images and documents searchable directly on a user's own device, has raised 15 million dollars at a 250 million dollar post money valuation. The San Francisco headquartered company, founded in 2023 by Henry Kang, who previously founded ZenVideo before it was acquired by Tencent in 2020, says it reached 15 million dollars in annual recurring revenue and profitability before closing this latest round. Investors included HSG, formerly known as Sequoia China, along with GL Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Palm Drive Capital and several individual backers

Clipto started out serving video creators trying to manage footage scattered across multiple computers and external drives, and creators still make up roughly a quarter to a third of its user base today. The rest of its more than 10 million users across over 100 countries span lawyers, doctors, researchers, marketers, HR professionals, professors and students, all using it to locate specific material buried inside their own personal archives using natural language rather than manually searching through folders. The company processes everything locally on device rather than in the cloud, which it markets as a genuine privacy advantage over cloud based alternatives

The company plans to use its new funding to develop its own AI models, build computing infrastructure optimized for consumer hardware, and expand integrations with more AI agents. Curious what people think about the actual bet here, whether a standalone cross file search product like this can genuinely defend its niche against Adobe, Apple, Google and the search tools already built into most operating systems

Clipto uses AI to search terabytes of video and is now valued at $250M | TechCrunchtechcrunch.com