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The profitable file-search startup says its MCP connection lets authorized AI tools retrieve selected local data. Its bet is that cross-format search can remain a product category even as large platforms build similar features into their own apps.
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Clipto claims it has reached $15 million ARR and profitability while raising $15 million at a $250 million post-money valuation. The startup is expanding beyond creator workflows with a local index spanning video, audio, images, meetings and documents, and recently added MCP access for tools such as ChatGPT and Claude. Its bet is that users will trust a standalone, on-device layer to retrieve authorized personal data for AI agents—a harder proposition as Apple, Google and Adobe add native search.
Clipto says more than 30 million people have used its products, with just over 20 employees across three regions.
The company claims hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers but has not disclosed an exact count or average revenue per customer.
MCP support was added roughly two weeks before the financing report, enabling scoped, user-authorized retrieval from indexed files.
Clipto has raised $15 million in an all-equity round at a $250 million post-money valuation, funding its effort to make a user’s locally stored video, audio, images, meetings and documents available to AI-assisted search. The immediate product question is not just whether people can find a file faster, but whether they will trust a standalone layer to supply selected personal data to AI agents.
The investors include HSG, formerly Sequoia China, GL Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Palm Drive Capital, Hans Tung, Lu Zhang and 522 Ventures. Clipto says it will spend the capital on AI models, computing infrastructure that runs on consumer hardware, and integrations with more AI agents.
Clipto indexes files on a user’s computer and accepts natural-language descriptions rather than folder-by-folder browsing. It covers videos, audio, images, meeting recordings and documents; users can also ask tools such as ChatGPT or Claude to search the indexed material.
About two weeks before the financing was reported, Clipto added support for the Model Context Protocol, or MCP, a standard that lets AI applications connect to outside information sources. Founder Henry Kang said an application can retrieve indexed data only after an active user request and authorization, and only within the scope the user specifies; he also said processing stays on the device rather than requiring cloud services.
Clipto began by targeting video creators managing footage across computers and external drives. Kang said creators now represent roughly one-quarter to one-third of users, with lawyers, doctors, researchers, marketers, HR professionals, professors and students among the rest.
That positioning places Clipto in a difficult middle ground. Larger companies already control much of the data and software people use to manage files, while Clipto is betting that a single search layer across formats and services offers enough extra utility to stand on its own.
Clipto says it has hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers and is profitable on a net-income basis. Kang declined to provide a precise subscriber count or average revenue per customer, although he said a significant share of customers stay subscribed for more than two years.
The funding gives the company room to improve the models and local computing behind that promise. The unresolved commercial test is whether users adopt a separate tool for finding and authorizing their own data as AI search becomes more deeply embedded in the applications where those files already live.
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