Shade Secures $14 Million to Transform Video Search for Creative Teams

For creative and marketing departments, standard cloud storage has become a bottleneck. Teams are drowning in media files, a problem intensified by AI-driven content generation. Finding a specific clip often means sifting through digital haystacks. New York startup Shade is addressing this with a platform built specifically for storing and searching video libraries using plain English.

The company, founded in 2024 by CEO Brandon Fan and CTO Emerson Dove, just closed a $14 million funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, and Bling Capital. Total funding now stands at $20 million. The idea emerged from the founders' own frustrations with tools like Dropbox while managing creative projects.

Shade's core innovation is a natural language search engine that auto-tags and transcribes video content. Instead of just finding a file, it pinpoints the exact moment a requested scene occurs—search for "a person holding a laptop in snow," and it returns relevant clips with timestamps. The system also uses facial recognition for labeled individuals.

A second technical differentiator is its "streamable" file system. Users can mount cloud storage locally and begin working on a file almost immediately, without waiting for a full download—a significant advantage over services like Google Drive when handling large video files.

The platform integrates collaboration features, allowing feedback on specific timestamps and permission-controlled sharing. For client deliveries, teams can create branded, password-protected collections.

Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures noted that while many companies add search to existing storage, Shade rebuilt the entire stack. "That architectural approach is harder, but it is why the product actually works," he said.

Shade plans to expand search across images and documents and is developing a no-code platform for automating file-based workflows. Pricing starts at $20 per seat monthly, including unlimited AI indexing and 500GB of active storage.

Source: TechCrunch