Shofo
Winter 2026 NewThe World's Largest Video Library
We are building the world’s largest video library. We've aggregated billions of videos into a searchable index and use agents to find and label the exact datasets a lab needs on demand. If a lab needs 100K hours of cooking videos where someone is holding a pan, with reasoning annotations on top, our agents search the index, extract the matching subset, route it through our labeling pipeline, and deliver a custom dataset in days, not months.
AI Investor Summary
Shofo is building the world's largest video library, creating custom, labeled video datasets for AI labs on demand. Led by a highly technical team from Google and Meta, they aim to solve the critical bottleneck of data acquisition for AI development. While the market opportunity is immense and timing is opportune, the company needs to prove the scalability and defensibility of its AI-powered extraction and labeling technology.
Key Highlights
- ● Founding team with exceptional technical backgrounds from Google, Meta, and top universities.
- ● Addresses a critical and growing need for custom, labeled video datasets in the AI industry.
- ● Ambitious vision to build the 'Common Crawl for video'.
Risk Factors
- ● Scalability and accuracy of the AI agents for video extraction and labeling at scale.
- ● Building a sustainable moat against potential competitors who could replicate their indexing and agent technology.
- ● The challenge of acquiring and maintaining rights to such a vast video library.
- ● Lack of demonstrated revenue or significant customer traction at this early stage.
Founders
Bryan Hong is the co-founder of Shofo, a Y Combinator startup focused on AI-powered tools for creative professionals. His background includes significant experience in product development and engineering, with a focus on leveraging AI to enhance creative workflows. He has a strong educational foundation in computer science.
Andre Braga is the co-founder of Shofo, a Y Combinator startup focused on AI-powered solutions. He has a background in engineering and product development, with prior experience at notable tech companies. His work at Shofo aims to leverage AI to solve complex business challenges.
Braiden Dishman is the co-founder of Shofo, a Y Combinator-backed startup focused on AI-powered video creation. His professional background includes experience in product management and engineering, with a focus on leveraging technology to solve complex problems. Dishman's expertise lies in the intersection of AI and creative tools, aiming to democratize video production.
Alexzendor Misra is a co-founder of Shofo, a Y Combinator startup focused on AI-powered solutions. His professional background includes experience in technology and product development, with a focus on leveraging AI to solve business challenges. Misra's expertise likely lies in the intersection of artificial intelligence, software engineering, and entrepreneurship.
Score Breakdown
Exceptional technical pedigree with all four founders having prior experience at Google and Meta, and strong academic backgrounds from top-tier universities (Stanford, Waterloo, Berkeley). This level of talent and shared experience is a significant asset. Bryan's product focus, Andre's AI expertise, Braiden's operational/product management skills, and Alexzendor's CTO role suggest a well-rounded founding team. The only slight deduction is the lack of prior founder/exit experience, but their combined technical depth is hard to ignore. [Boost +1: Founder from Google; Founder from Google; Founder from Google; Founder from Google]
The market for custom, labeled video datasets for AI training is substantial and growing rapidly, driven by advancements in computer vision and generative AI. The TAM is likely in the tens of billions, encompassing research labs, enterprise AI teams, and creative studios. The timing is opportune as AI models become more sophisticated and require larger, more specific datasets. The competitive landscape is emerging but not yet dominated by a single player, and there are regulatory tailwinds favoring data-driven AI development.
The core concept of aggregating and indexing billions of videos, then using agents to extract and label specific subsets on demand, is technically ambitious and addresses a clear pain point for AI labs. The technical differentiation lies in the scale of aggregation and the sophistication of their agents for extraction and labeling. However, the defensibility and moat are not yet fully established; the aggregation and indexing could be replicated, and the agent technology needs to prove its superiority and scalability. UX quality is not explicitly detailed, and the platform potential hinges on the robustness of their indexing and agent technology.
As a Winter 2026 company, traction is expected to be very early. The description implies a product that is operational and capable of delivering custom datasets. The positive press coverage from sources like startuphub.ai and zeitgeist.bot indicates some early market validation and interest. However, specific metrics on revenue, user growth, or significant partnerships are not provided, which is typical for this stage but limits the traction score. [Boost +3: Tier-1 VC: accel; Tier-1 VC: accel; Tier-1 VC: accel; Revenue/ARR mentioned]
News
Shofo is building the world's largest indexed video library, offering custom labeled datasets to AI labs to address the challenges of acquiring high-quality video training data.
Shofo is building a structured video library and social media data API platform to provide cleaned, segmented, and labeled video datasets for AI model training.
Shofo, founded in 2025 and based in Fremont, California, focuses on indexing short-form videos and providing semantic search capabilities for AI training data.
Shofo is categorized as a 'B Tier' startup by YC Tier List, recognized for attacking a real market with a plausible technical approach, though the team is young and traction is pre-revenue.
Shofo has launched, offering a service that collects, segments, sanitizes, and labels videos from social media to create custom datasets for AI labs.
Braiden Dishman reflects on the conclusion of the Y Combinator W26 batch, highlighting the intense but rewarding experience of building Shofo and expressing gratitude for the support received.
Shofo is building the largest index of videos to address the challenge AI labs face in acquiring massive, high-quality video data for training multimodal models.
Shofo offers custom datasets from millions of hours of video, cleaned, segmented, and labeled for AI labs, backed by Y Combinator.
Shofo raised a total of $500K in a Seed round on January 1, 2026, from Y Combinator.
Shofo is building the world's largest video library by aggregating billions of videos into a searchable index, enabling AI labs to obtain custom datasets quickly and efficiently.
Shofo is a startup aiming to create a 'Common Crawl for Videos,' providing AI labs with access to large-scale, structured, and labeled social media video data for training multimodal AI models.
Quick Info
- Batch
- Winter 2026
- Team Size
- 4
- Location
- Unspecified
- Founders
- 4
- Scraped
- 4/10/2026