GoKawiilClipto raises $15M at $250M valuation for AI video search tool
Clipto, a San Francisco-based startup with teams in Singapore and Hong Kong, closed a $15 million all-equity funding round that values the company at $250 million. The startup's software indexes videos, audio, images, and meeting recordings stored on a user's computer, letting people find files by describing them in natural language or through AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. Founder Henry Kang, whose prior startup ZenVideo was acquired by Tencent in 2020, built Clipto around the idea that AI has created a glut of unused content rather than a shortage of it.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
As generative AI tools make it trivial to produce vast amounts of video and audio, the harder problem becomes retrieving and using that content later, a gap that big platforms like Adobe, Apple, and Google are also racing to fill. Clipto's large valuation signals investor bets that AI-powered search for personal and enterprise media could become its own software category rather than just a feature bolted onto existing tools.
- Clipto raised $15M at a $250M valuation from investors including HSG and GL Ventures
- The startup uses AI to make videos, audio, and documents searchable via natural language
- Founder Henry Kang previously built ZenVideo, which Tencent acquired in 2020
Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD — If you're the kind of person hoarding terabytes of video, recordings, and screen grabs that need AI indexing, you need somewhere fast to keep it all. The Samsung T7 Shield is a rugged, pocketable USB-C drive built for shuttling large media libraries between machines. It's a natural companion to tools like Clipto that scan and search your local files.
See Samsung T7 Shield Portable SSD on Amazon → Affiliate link — we may earn a commission on purchases, at no extra cost to you. Product picked by AI based on this article; it is not a tested recommendation.Source: techcrunch.com — Kate Park, 2026-08-31
Published there as: “Clipto uses AI to search terabytes of video and is now valued at $250M”
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