Clipto uses AI to search terabytes of video and is now valued at $250M — SkimNews
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- Clipto raised $15 million in an all-equity round at a $250 million post-money valuation, with backers including HSG (formerly Sequoia China), GL Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Palm Drive Capital, and individual investors Hans Tung, Lu Zhang, and 522 Ventures.
- Clipto's indexing tool searches videos, audio, images, meetings, and documents stored on a user's computer, with all AI processing running locally on-device and no cloud services required.
- Henry Kang, Clipto's founder, previously sold his video startup Zenvideo to Tencent in 2020 after studying object-remembering robots as a Carnegie Mellon PhD student in 2006.
- Clipto reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue at the start of 2026 and remains net-income profitable with just over 20 employees split across San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
- Model Context Protocol support was added about two weeks before publication, letting AI applications tap Clipto's indexed files only within scopes the user explicitly authorizes.
- Adobe, Apple, and Google already offer AI-powered search in Premiere, Apple Photos, and Google Photos — but mostly within their own walled services — while Clipto's user base of 30 million-plus spans lawyers, doctors, researchers, marketers, HR professionals, professors, and students.
Why it matters: Clipto's pitch — cross-platform, on-device AI search spanning every file type with MCP integration — directly challenges Adobe, Apple, and Google, whose AI search features stay locked inside their own apps. With $15 million ARR and profitability on just over 20 employees, Kang is betting that 'too much content' is the real AI problem, not generation.
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