Clipto has raised $15 million in an all-equity funding round at a $250 million post-money valuation as it develops AI-powered software for searching videos, audio, images, documents, and other files stored on users’ computers. The San Francisco-headquartered startup, which also has teams in Singapore and Hong Kong, says more than 30 million people have used its products since launch.
The investors include HSG, formerly Sequoia China, GL Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Palm Drive Capital, Hans Tung, Lu Zhang, and 522 Ventures. Clipto plans to use the funding to develop AI models and computing infrastructure that can run on consumer hardware, while adding integrations with more AI agents.
Searching Across Files With Natural Language
Clipto indexes videos, audio recordings, images, meetings, documents, and other files stored on a user’s computer. Instead of manually browsing folders, users can describe what they are looking for or ask AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude to retrieve relevant information.
Founder Henry Kang said the concept builds on work he has done for roughly two decades. While studying for his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, Kang worked on robots that recorded their surroundings, identified objects, and remembered where those objects could be found.
Kang later applied a similar idea to his first startup, which used AI to track clothes in users’ closets and suggest outfits. His second company, Zenvideo, focused on simplifying video creation and was acquired by Tencent in 2020, Kang told TechCrunch.
“The real insight is that in this AI era, we don’t have a content shortage,” Kang said. “The opposite is true. We have too much content. We have too much video footage sitting on our computers that isn’t being used.”
Kang founded Clipto in 2023 with several members of his previous startup’s founding team. The company focused on helping users locate and reuse existing files rather than generating new material.
Clipto Expands Beyond Video Creators
Clipto initially targeted video creators managing footage across computers and external drives. Kang said creators now account for about one-quarter to one-third of its users, while the rest include lawyers, doctors, researchers, marketers, human-resources professionals, professors, and students.
The company says it has hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers, although Kang declined to provide a more precise figure or average revenue per customer. He said a significant portion of customers remain subscribed for more than two years.
Clipto reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue at the beginning of 2026 and remains profitable on a net-income basis, according to Kang. The company has just over 20 employees across the San Francisco Bay Area, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
MCP Support Connects Local Files With AI Tools
Clipto added support for Model Context Protocol, or MCP, about two weeks ago. The standard allows AI applications to connect with external information sources while Clipto requires users to actively authorize access to their indexed files.
Kang said AI applications can retrieve only information within the scope specified by the user. The processing runs locally on the user’s device without requiring cloud services.
Clipto is competing with companies that already provide AI-powered file search inside their products. Adobe Premiere can search footage using visual descriptions, spoken words, and metadata, while Apple Photos and Google Photos support natural-language searches for photos and videos.
Kang said Clipto differs by searching across multiple file types, including video, audio, images, and documents. It also allows users to make selected indexed information available to external AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude.
Featured image credits: Magnific.com
For more stories like it, click the +Follow button at the top of this page to follow us.