Shade secures $14M to help creative teams search video content using plain English

For creative and marketing teams, traditional cloud storage tools are often not enough. These teams regularly work with large volumes of media files, making it increasingly difficult to organise, search for, and retrieve specific content. The challenge is becoming even more complex as AI accelerates content production, leading to a rapid increase in the number of media assets generated.

A New York-based startup called Shade is building a cloud storage and search platform designed specifically for agencies, sports media teams, consumer brands, real estate businesses, and podcast creators to store, manage, and search their media libraries more efficiently.

The company announced on Wednesday that it raised $14 million in a March funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, and Bling Capital. Shade has now raised $20 million in total funding, with General Catalyst, SignalFire, and Contrary also among its investors.

Shade was founded by CEO Brandon Fan and CTO Emerson Dove, who had been friends since high school. The pair decided to build the product after becoming frustrated with existing storage tools like Dropbox, especially when it came to searching and retrieving files.

“We built it out of our frustration as creatives — [where we were contending with] stacks and stacks of hard drives and issues where we were using Dropbox drive frame and all of the tools under the sun … it was time to build one single source of truth,” Fan said.

Fan described Shadehadehade as a specialised system for creative file storage that also enables companies to build workflows around their content.

“As you make more content, you need to be thinking more about the workflows around the content. I like to say it’s similar to CRMs 20 years ago, when we were thinking about how to organise all the information that we had around our contacts and in all of our companies,” he said.

Shade highlights two core differentiators. The first is a natural language search powered by automatic tagging. This system does not just locate entire video files — it can identify specific moments within videos that match a user’s query. For example, a user can search “a person holding a laptop in snow,” and the platform will return relevant clips with precise timestamps.

The system also automatically transcribes video content, making it searchable based on meaning, spoken dialogue, and even facial recognition for tagged individuals.

The second feature is a “streamable” file system, which allows users to mount cloud storage directly to their local device and begin working on files immediately, without waiting for full downloads. Users can also pin files for offline or low-bandwidth access. Unlike traditional tools such as Google Drive or Dropbox, which often require full file downloads before editing, Shadehade enables near-instant access to media assets.

In addition to storage and search, Shadehade includes collaboration tools designed for creative teams. Users can leave feedback directly on video timelines at specific timestamps and attach files within comments for clearer communication. The platform also allows teams to generate multiple shareable links for the same asset, each with different permission levels and access controls.

For client delivery, Shadehade enables the creation of branded file collections with password protection and expiration settings.

The company’s pricing for smaller teams starts at $20 per seat per month, which includes unlimited drives, unlimited AI-based indexing, and 500GB of active storage per user. The plan supports up to 15 seats per workspace and allows up to 150 external collaborators.

Shade is entering a competitive market that includes other AI-driven storage and search startups such as Poly and Memories.ai, which are also focused on improving file discovery and management.

Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures, said that while AI has significantly increased content creation, managing that content remains a major challenge.

“Most companies are layering search on top of existing storage. Shade rebuilt the stack from first principles, spanning streaming, indexing, and collaboration within a single system. That architectural approach is harder, but it is why the product actually works, not just as a bolt-on feature,” Rabois said in an email.

He added that while search is currently the primary use case, caShadehade could eventually expand into broader automation for sharing, version control, and content workflows.

Looking ahead, Shadehade plans to enhance its search capabilities across multiple file types, including images, videos, and documents. The company is also developing a no-code platform that will allow creative teams to build automated workflows without requiring programming skills.

“We’re essentially building the Lego blocks that allow you to [operate] any business. You have that ability to shade to your workflow, whether that is, today, just creative teams, [or] in the future, research and investment teams,” Fan said.