Clouted wants to take the guesswork out of creating short videos that go viral

It feels like short video clips of podcasts, songs, and movies are suddenly everywhere on social media right now, and that’s no coincidence. Brands have realized that this format provides a very cost-effective way to market products.

Brands and marketing agencies often outsource the process of finding a 30- to 90-second video, known as a “clip,” to independent content creators. But managing those gig workers and deciding where to distribute those videos is a huge operational challenge.

abandoneda startup that went through a16z’s Speedrun in 2024, is building the infrastructure to automatically handle both the distribution strategy and logistics of the cutting process. The platform leverages a network of over 100,000 party creators to edit clips, then uses artificial intelligence to determine the best social media platform and target audience to promote.

Justin Banusing, co-founder and CEO of Clouted, first applied the company’s technology to his personal passion: electronic music and festival production. As a long-time DJ, he used Clouted to promote and grow &Friends Festival, a Manila-based electronic dance music and pop culture festival that now attracts over 20,000 people.

Clouted’s approach has attracted investor interest. The startup just announced a $7 million seed round led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, Peak XV’s Surge, and others.

Unlike marketing tools that rely purely on volume, Clouted doesn’t just strive for high numbers of clips. Instead, its AI runs a continuous testing loop, experimenting with different formats and channel strategies to see what actually performs best. The practical effect is that each campaign makes the next more targeted and efficient, as the system collects data about what works.

Clouted works somewhat like a penetration test for social media algorithms — a concept borrowed from cybersecurity, where researchers explore a system’s defenses by trying to penetrate them. Instead of looking for security flaws, Clouted’s AI and its network of creators test thousands of different clipping and distribution methods to determine what causes a piece of content to go viral.

“The result is that every campaign powered by Clouted makes the next one faster, smarter, and more effective,” Panosinghe told TechCrunch. “The platform learns which formats are winning, which audiences are converting, and which distribution channels are accreting over time.”

While Clouted competes directly with similar startups like Overlap AI in the robotic cutting space, Banusing said it looks to larger players in the marketing infrastructure space, specifically CreatorIQ and Hightouch, as the ultimate competition. Recently crossed Hightouch $100 million in ARRWhich indicates that the enterprise marketing infrastructure space is large and still expanding. This is the market Clouted is eventually headed to.