Clouted raises $7 million to automate viral short-video distribution

Clouted raised a $7 million seed round led by Slow Ventures as it tries to turn short-video promotion into software-driven infrastructure for brands and marketing agencies. The startup says it combines a network of more than 100,000 gig creators with AI that decides where clips should run and which audiences should see them.

The company went through a16z’s Speedrun accelerator in 2024, and co-founder and chief executive Justin Banusing said the product grew out of his own work in electronic music and festival production. He used Clouted to help build &Friends, a Manila-based electronic dance music and pop-culture festival that now draws more than 20,000 people.

Clouted says its system is built around a continuous testing loop rather than a one-time clipping workflow. Instead of simply pumping out more edits, the company says it experiments with different formats, channels and targeting strategies, then learns which combinations perform best over time. That approach is aimed at brands that increasingly treat clips from podcasts, songs and movies as a low-cost way to reach new audiences across social platforms.

The company says it competes directly with other automated clipping startups such as Overlap AI. Banusing said the longer-term competition is broader marketing infrastructure players such as CreatorIQ and Hightouch, which points to a larger fight over who controls the mechanics of distribution: creators, platforms or the software vendors building the optimization layer in between.

The round also included Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, Peak XV’s Surge, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, Iterative and AppWorks. Slow Ventures, which says it has deployed more than $800 million since 2011, has been expanding its creator-focused bets through a dedicated creator fund, including a $60 million creators fund and a $2 million investment in Jonathan Katz-Moses. Clouted’s raise shows how quickly creator tooling has moved from a niche service to a contested part of the marketing stack.