Clouted, a startup that automates the creation and distribution of short-form video clips for brands, announced a $7 million seed round in May 2026, led by Slow Ventures. Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, and Peak XV’s Surge also participated in the round.
The company builds infrastructure that connects brands and marketing agencies with a network of over 100,000 gig creators who edit raw video — sourced from podcasts, songs, and movies — into clips typically running 30 to 90 seconds. An AI layer then determines the best social media platform and target audience for each clip, running continuous tests across formats and distribution channels to improve campaign performance over time.
Co-founder and CEO Justin Banusing developed the platform after applying it to his own work in electronic music. He used Clouted to promote &Friends, a Manila-based electronic dance music and pop-culture festival that now draws over 20,000 attendees.
Clouted went through a16z’s Speedrun accelerator in 2024. Banusing describes the platform’s approach as similar to penetration testing in cybersecurity — rather than probing for security flaws, Clouted’s AI and creator network test thousands of clipping and distribution combinations to identify what causes content to gain traction. “The platform learns which formats win, which audiences convert, and which distribution channels compound over time,” Banusing told TechCrunch.
The startup operates in a market that includes automated clipping competitors such as Overlap AI, though Banusing has indicated he views larger enterprise marketing infrastructure companies — specifically CreatorIQ and Hightouch — as the longer-term competitive benchmark. Hightouch recently crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, suggesting the broader enterprise marketing infrastructure market remains sizable and expanding.
For brands currently managing fragmented networks of gig clippers and making distribution decisions manually, Clouted’s platform could reduce that operational overhead while building a data advantage across campaigns.
Source: TechCrunch