Creative and marketing teams often find simple cloud storage solutions lacking, as they need to navigate large volumes of files to locate what they need. The problem is exacerbating, with AI speeding up content generation and producing more media files than ever before, complicating the task even further.
A startup called Shade, based in New York, is crafting a cloud storage platform tailored for agencies, sports media teams, consumer brands, real estate companies, and podcasters to store and search media files easily.
On Wednesday, the company announced it secured $14 million in a funding round, led by Khosla Ventures, Construct Capital, and Bling Capital, in March. In nearly four years, the startup has amassed $20 million in funding, with General Catalyst, SignalFire, and Contrary also investing.
Shade, founded by CEO Brandon Fan and CTO Emerson Dove in 2024, arose from the duo’s high school friendship. They embarked on creating Shade after being discontented with existing tools like Dropbox for file searching.
“As creatives, we were frustrated with numerous hard drives and the inefficiencies of using Dropbox drive frame and other tools. It was time to establish a single source of truth,” said Fan.
Shade is designed to serve as a creative file storage system around which companies can organize workflows.
“With increasing content, it’s essential to conceptualize the workflows surrounding it. It’s akin to how CRMs were developed 20 years ago to organize all the data related to our contacts and companies,” he elaborated.
Shade highlights two standout features. First, it provides natural language search supported by auto-tagging. According to the startup, the search doesn’t just identify a specific video but pinpoints the precise moment in the video matching the search criteria. For instance, users can look for “a person holding a laptop in snow,” and the system retrieves all aligned clips with timestamps.
Additionally, the tool automatically transcribes videos for enhanced search functionality. Users can search based on semantics, transcripts, and facial recognition for tagged individuals.
Second, Shade’s “streamable” file system allows users to integrate their cloud storage with their local filesystem, enabling almost instant work on a file without waiting for a full download. Users can also pin files, ensuring access in low-bandwidth scenarios. Usually, traditional systems like Google Drive or Dropbox necessitate waiting for a large file download before editing, but Shade’s streamable system permits immediate engagement.
Beyond storage and search, Shade facilitates team collaboration — allowing feedback to be left on a video at a specific timestamp and files to be attached in comments for guidance. Teams can generate multiple asset links with distinct permissions and establish role-based access.
For client deliveries, teams can craft branded file collections with password protection and expiration dates.
For smaller teams, Shade offers a $20 per user, per month plan with unlimited drives, unlimited AI indexing, and 500GB of active storage per user. It supports up to 15 users per workspace and up to 150 guests for collaboration.
Shade is not the only player in this space. Startups like Poly and Memories.ai are also venturing into AI-driven file storage and searching for vast file volumes.
Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures, stated that although AI has enhanced content creation, managing those creations remains challenging.
“Most companies layer search atop existing storage. Shade reconstructed the stack from scratch, integrating streaming, indexing, and collaboration into one system. That architectural choice, while challenging, ensures that the product genuinely functions, rather than just being an add-on feature,” Rabois noted via email.
He also mentioned that although search is the initial focus, Shade could evolve into a crucial tool for automating sharing and versioning.
Shade intends to refine its search functionality across various file types, such as images, videos, and documents, in the upcoming months. The startup is also developing a no-code platform — which requires no programming knowledge — to empower creative teams to craft automated workflows based on the system’s files.
“We’re essentially constructing the building blocks that enable any type of business to incorporate Shade into their workflows, whether today for creative teams, or in the future, for research and investment teams,” Fan expressed.