At NAB 2026, we stopped by the Shade sales space to speak with Brandon Fan, CEO and co-founder of the New York-based startup, a couple of platform that goals to switch the patchwork of cloud storage, evaluate instruments, and digital asset managers most filmmakers juggle at the moment. Shade combines streamable cloud storage, AI-powered search, automated metadata tagging, and evaluate workflows into what the corporate calls a “system of file for creatives.”

Shade arrives at this NAB with momentum. The corporate introduced a $14 million funding spherical on April 22, led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Assemble Capital and Bling Capital, bringing complete funding to roughly $20 million. Current backers embody Common Catalyst, SignalFire, and Opposite. In keeping with Shade, the platform has ingested greater than 60 million property over the previous 9 months whereas serving clients that embody Salesforce, Webflow, HelloFresh, Harry’s, and Lennar. The Las Vegas present ground was the primary public stage for what the corporate is looking its Shade 3.0 imaginative and prescient.

A single supply of fact from ingest to supply

The pitch from Brandon was simple: most editorial groups sew collectively six or seven instruments to maneuver a file from digital camera to consumer, and the result’s fragmentation. Shade’s reply is to fold ingestion, search, evaluate, NLE entry, supply, and archive into one platform. “We’ve appeared on the instruments on this world and mentioned, look, is there a chance to really construct the [platform] the place you ingest immediately out of your SD card to the place the place you share recordsdata and ship to your consumer, to the place the place you’re looking out, to even the place the place you’re archiving,” Brandon informed us on the sales space.

In observe, meaning recordsdata reside in Shade’s cloud storage and floor inside a well-known files-and-folders interface, with a spreadsheet-style “views” mode that exposes each guide metadata (approval standing, file kind, decision) and automatic AI attributes (scene descriptions, recognized objects, transcripts). Brandon’s instance use instances ranged from a meals company tagging menu gadgets to a sports activities group figuring out jersey numbers mechanically.

AI search that factors to the precise second in a clip

Probably the most demonstrable function on the sales space was Shade’s natural-language search. Somewhat than retrieving a whole file, the system finds the exact sub-clip inside a video that matches the question. Brandon’s demo looked for “an individual snowboarding whereas holding a laptop computer” inside Shade’s inventive drive, and the platform jumped on to the timestamped second inside an extended video the place that scene seems. Customers can depart timestamped feedback on the end result, much like a Body.io-style evaluate, or ship the clip straight into an modifying timeline.

Underneath the hood, Shade says it has constructed its facial recognition mannequin and its sub-clip search engine in-house, drawing on transcripts, visible evaluation, and user-added metadata. In keeping with Brandon, the system may also be tuned with {custom} prompts for industry-specific wants. He pointed to development corporations which have educated the platform to determine particular paver sorts and crane fashions, and to a sports activities league that constructed a immediate in a position to distinguish groups by colours, uniforms, and particular person gamers. New custom-object capabilities, a part of the Shade 3.0 rollout, prolong this additional to product recognition for issues like shampoo bottles, gummy packaging, or car fleets.

NLE integration and the streamable mount

For editors, the extra related query is how Shade plugs into the reducing room. Right this moment, Shade ships a devoted panel for Adobe Premiere Professional that lets customers drop searched sub-clips immediately onto the timeline with the right out and in factors, whereas the file streams from the cloud via Shade’s mount. In keeping with Brandon, devoted panels for DaVinci Resolve and Avid Media Composer are slated however not but obtainable; for now, these NLEs join via the Shade mount, which exposes cloud storage as an area drive on macOS, Home windows, and Linux.

That mount is the second piece of the puzzle. Constructed on FUSE know-how, Shade’s “streamable” file system lets editors open and begin reducing a multi-gigabyte file with out ready for a full obtain. Recordsdata may also be pinned for offline entry on flaky connections. For a video group importing proxies (and even digital camera originals) from a lodge room, that may be a significant workflow change in comparison with syncing via a conventional cloud drive.

Shade additionally helps a bring-your-own-S3 mannequin, integrating with Wasabi, Backblaze, AWS S3, and Cloudflare R2 for groups that need to maintain storage prices and areas beneath their very own management.

Automations and the Shade 3.0 imaginative and prescient

Brandon described automations that deal with multi-step evaluate chains, route property to particular reviewers in sequence, or auto-generate edit-ready proxies the second a file lands in storage, so editors touring with out their most important rigs can nonetheless lower. The corporate has framed automations and {custom} objects as the 2 headline options of the Shade 3.0 roadmap introduced alongside the funding spherical.

In keeping with Brandon, Shade is positioned as a alternative for the mixed performance of Body.io, LucidLink, and Iconik, with a single billing relationship and a single permission mannequin. Shade has additionally accomplished SOC 2 Kind II, ISO 27001, and HIPAA certifications, which matter for the enterprise and broadcast clients the corporate is courting.

Pricing, availability, and group

Shade is accessible now. In keeping with Shade’s pricing web page, the Development plan begins at $20 per seat per 30 days when billed yearly (or $25 per seat month-to-month), and contains 500GB of lively storage per seat, limitless drives, and limitless AI indexing. Workspaces on this tier are capped at 15 paid seats and as much as 150 visitors. The Enterprise tier strikes to 1TB of lively storage per seat and provides SSO/SAML, SCIM provisioning, audit logging, a devoted account supervisor, workflow consulting, and free information migration from current instruments. Brandon emphasised the migration service specifically, saying Shade’s group typically helps clients transfer information and configure automations immediately somewhat than leaving them to determine issues out alone.

Have you ever been pissed off by the patchwork of instruments in your post-production workflow? Would an AI-driven file system like Shade truly change your present setup? Don’t hesitate to tell us within the feedback beneath!