AI-powered search is rapidly reshaping how people organize and reuse digital files, and Clipto is positioning itself at the center of that shift. The San Francisco-based startup has secured $15 million in an all-equity round, bringing its post-money valuation to $250 million.
Founded in 2023 by Henry Kang and members of his earlier startup team, Clipto indexes videos, audio, images, meetings and documents stored on a user's device. Instead of manually browsing folders, users can search with natural language or connect the product to AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude to retrieve specific content.
The company says its platform is designed to help people work with the content they already have, rather than generate more of it. That idea has resonated beyond creators: Clipto now counts lawyers, doctors, researchers, marketers, professors and students among its users, alongside video professionals.
Clipto says more than 30 million people have used its tools since launch, with hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers. The company also reports reaching $15 million in annual recurring revenue at the start of 2026 and remaining profitable on a net-income basis.
Recently, Clipto added support for Model Context Protocol, enabling controlled connections between its indexed files and external AI applications. The system runs locally on the user's device, and access stays limited to what the user explicitly authorizes.
As major tech companies expand AI search inside their own ecosystems, Clipto is betting that a unified, cross-format approach will stand out. Its next phase of funding will support model development, device-level computing infrastructure and broader AI integrations. The evolution of tools like this could help define a future where digital memory becomes more searchable, usable and intelligent.
