Shade Raises $14 Million Led By Khosla Ventures To Power AI Video Search

Shade, a New York-based startup building a cloud storage platform for creative and marketing teams, closed a $14 million funding round led by Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, and Bling Capital in March, TechCrunch reported.

“Creative teams struggle to find and reuse media across growing libraries, forcing long searches and manual tagging that slow productions”

mezha.net

The company said it is “nearly four-year-old” and that it has raised $20 million in total, with General Catalyst, SignalFire, and Contrary also on its cap table, according to TechCrunch.

mezha.net

NewsBytes similarly said Shade raised $14 million in fresh funding led by Khosla Ventures and others, bringing its total to $20 million.

The startup was founded in 2024 by CEO Brandon Fan and CTO Emerson Dove, and TechCrunch described the pair as friends since high school who built the product after being frustrated with tools like Dropbox when it came to searching for files.

TechCrunch quoted Fan saying, “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,” tying the funding to a specific workflow pain point.

Mezha.net echoed the same origin story and quoted Fan: “We built this from our frustration as creative people – with dense piles of hard drives and the hassles of using Dropbox Drive Frame and all the tools out there… it was time to create one source of truth,” while also describing Shade as developing a cloud platform for agencies, sports media teams, brands, real estate companies, and podcasters.

Across the coverage, the pitch is consistent: Shade aims to let teams search and manage large media libraries without the usual manual tagging and slow download waits, with NewsBytes saying it “instantly interact[s] with files: no waiting for big downloads.

Shade’s product focus is natural-language search that goes beyond finding a file name and instead locates a specific moment inside a video, TechCrunch said.

The startup said its search is “powered by auto-tagging,” and that it “identifies the exact moment in the video where a scene matching the search query occurs,” according to TechCrunch.

streamlinefeed.co.ke

TechCrunch gave a concrete example: users can search for “a person holding a laptop in snow,” and the system “will surface all matching clips with timestamps.”

The same core capability was described in NewsBytes, which said Shade “lets users search for specific video moments using plain language and instantly interact with files: no waiting for big downloads.”

Mezha.net similarly described the moment-level behavior and gave an example query: “a person with a laptop against a snowy backdrop” can return “all relevant clips with timestamps.”

TechCrunch also said Shade automatically transcribes videos for easier search and that users can search based on meaning, transcripts, and facial recognition for labeled individuals.

NewsBytes added that Shade “auto-generates transcripts and makes team feedback easy with timestamped comments,” tying the search layer to collaboration.

Shade’s second distinguishing feature is a “streamable” file system designed to let users mount cloud storage to a local filesystem and start working without waiting for full downloads, TechCrunch reported.

“Streamline delivers efficient, clear, and reliable news content”

streamlinefeed.co.ke

TechCrunch said the streamable system lets teams “mount your cloud storage to your local filesystem and start working with a file almost immediately, without waiting for it to fully download first.”

It also said users can “pin” files to access them even in low-bandwidth conditions, and that “Typically, with a storage system like Google Drive or Dropbox, you have to wait for a large file to download before editing it.”

NewsBytes echoed the same workflow benefit by saying Shade lets users “instantly interact with files: no waiting for big downloads.”

Beyond storage and search, TechCrunch described collaboration features that connect comments and feedback to exact timestamps in video, including “the ability to leave feedback tied to a video at a specific timestamp.”

TechCrunch added that teams can “attach files in comments to give direction,” and it described access controls through “multiple links for the same assets with varying permissions” and “access-based roles.”

For client delivery, TechCrunch said teams can create “branded file collections with password protection and expiry dates.”

The funding round is framed by investors as a harder but more complete rebuild of the underlying system, not just a search add-on.

TechCrunch quoted Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures, saying, “Most companies are layering search on top of existing storage. Shade rebuilt the stack from first principles, spanning streaming, indexing, and collaboration in one system.”

mezha.net

Rabois added, “That architectural approach is harder, but it is why the product actually works, not just as a bolt-on feature,” and he said that while search is the starting point, Shade could become “a key tool for automating sharing and versioning.”

NewsBytes said Shade “Up next” plans to support more media types and launch no-code tools so creatives can automate workflows without needing tech skills.

Mezha.net similarly said that “In the coming months, Shade plans to expand search capabilities across different file types – images, videos, and documents – and develop a no-code platform that will allow creative teams to build automated workflows.”

On pricing and capacity, TechCrunch said Shade offers a $20 per seat, per month plan that includes “unlimited drives, unlimited AI indexing, and 500GB of active storage per seat,” and it supports “up to 15 seats per workspace and up to 150 guests for collaboration.”

The Streamlinefeed.co.ke article stated that Shade’s $14 million round was “approximately KES 1.82 billion” and said the Series A was led by General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures, creating a different account of the lead investors than TechCrunch’s list.

While the core story of Shade raising $14 million and building AI-powered video search is consistent, the coverage diverges in how it describes the round’s leadership and the technical framing.

“Creative teams struggle to find and reuse media across growing libraries, forcing long searches and manual tagging that slow productions”

mezha.net

TechCrunch said the $14 million round was led by Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, and Bling Capital in March, and it listed General Catalyst, SignalFire, and Contrary on the cap table.

streamlinefeed.co.ke

NewsBytes said the $14 million round was “led by Khosla Ventures and others,” and it reiterated that total funding is $20 million.

Streamlinefeed.co.ke, however, described the Series A as “led by General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures,” and it also translated the $14 million figure as “approximately KES 1.82 billion,” which TechCrunch did not include.

On the product side, TechCrunch emphasized natural language search powered by auto-tagging and said it identifies the exact moment in a video, while Streamlinefeed.co.ke described Shade’s “neural engine” as “watches every frame of video, indexing objects, actions, and even emotions,” and it claimed the system can “instantly surface the exact three seconds from 50 terabytes of data.”

Mezha.net described Shade’s search as “natural-language search with automatic tagging” and said the team says the search “not only finds a specific video but identifies the exact moment in the video when the needed scene appears,” aligning with TechCrunch’s moment-level focus.

The shared throughline is that Shade is positioning itself as a system for searching and collaborating on media libraries, with TechCrunch saying teams can “create multiple links for the same assets with varying permissions” and Streamlinefeed.co.ke describing the bottleneck as “finding the right clip in a mountain of raw footage.”