A San Francisco-based startup called Shade has raised $14 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital. The funding will help the company expand its platform that lets creative teams search video libraries using plain English queries. Shade’s filesystem allows users to stream files directly to their local drives without downloading entire archives.
The company was founded in 2023 by former engineers from Adobe and Netflix, who saw a gap in how teams manage large video collections. Traditional search tools rely on metadata tags, which are often incomplete or inconsistent. Shade replaces this with an AI-driven system that interprets natural language requests like "find clips with a red car" or "show me all outdoor scenes from last summer."
Investors include True Ventures and SV Angel, with participation from angel investors in the entertainment and tech sectors. Shade’s CEO said the funds will go toward hiring engineers and expanding sales teams to target film studios, marketing agencies, and social media creators.
The platform is already used by several mid-sized production houses, including Wondros and Tool of North America. Early users report cutting search times by up to 70%, according to internal data shared by Shade. The company plans to launch a public beta later this year.
Source: techcrunch.com