Where AI Meets the Attention Economy: "Short-Form Video Tech" Gold
Researching & Identifying Media Tech Winners with Exit Potential
Hey founders, funds, & friends 👋,
A warm welcome to the 63rd edition of the “Mehtta Ventures Dubai” investment digest newsletter, your weekly news digest about GAMES [Gaming, Ad Tech, Media Tech, Entertainment and Sports Tech] + AI startup and scaleup stories across the Middle East & India, digital / business trends shaping our lives and curated venture investment opportunities.
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This picture pretty much defined this past week ▶️ ^
Here is a weekly recap + work update:
- Newsletter Value Add
148 & counting between Mehtta Ventures Dubai and The Streaming Lab every week. Consistency is hard however we will keep adding value to the "attention economy".
- Agora Helping push this powerhouse in the region has added a different dimension to our understanding of engagement, retention and more. Implementing strategies and GTM at the intersection of Conversational AI, Real Time Engagement Engine and Value added features and products for telcos, government, media & more. Watch this space.
- Adsolut Media goes from strength to strength as new markets, opportunities and streaming partners emerge in geographies that we have not worked in the past, however have so much experience and expertise to offer!
- Pressplay Capital Web site is live + We are actively shortlisting startups for our deal warehouse.
Deal Warehouse Momentum, current shortlisted candidates include:
- A sports video platform enabling grassroots live streaming and monetization.
- Podcast Expert Marketplace to produce, grow and monetize podcasts.
- A SaaS platform building the “IMDB for athletes” and brand endorsements.
- A real-time short video creation tool for the creator economy.
- A privacy-first, Web3-ready AdTech startup redefining audience targeting.
We will be on the cap table (or in final negotiation stages) with some of these founders — not just as investors, but as true strategic partners helping them with market expansion, distribution, and monetization playbooks across India, Middle East and the US.
Actively Engaging with LPs- We’ve begun investor conversations and are seeking anchor LPs. If you or someone you know is excited about backing early movers in the attention economy, we’d love to schedule time to walk through the thesis.
- At CABSAT last Week- We had a fantastic run engaging with leading voices and old friends / colleagues in OTT, streaming, and sports tech. Themes like CTV monetization, AI-powered fan engagement / customer retention, short form video and micro-drama streaming were front and center.
It was energizing to see industry veterans validate our thesis and even express interest in backing the fund or supporting our portfolio companies. Hat tip again to Amanda Holt-Redmond & Chris Redmond ©️®️ [the pic above] for everything they are doing for the community!
- And this offer still stands: We’re offering the first 2 select creators [with more than 1 million followers] the chance to launch their own direct-to-consumer streaming platform — fully white-labeled, with apps and monetization tools included / free for the first year. Let's have a chat / DM me - worth a conversation [in case you know of such creators who want to own the user experience, data and more of their “owned and operated” platform in addition to social media, please let us know as well.
Let's go Summer 2025!
Today’s program:
AI Gold Rush in Short-Form Video
Meet the AI Video Editing Mavericks
Why It Matters (And Where It’s Going)
The Bottom Line
And….Action!
AI Gold Rush in Short-Form Video “Creation”
In the age of TikTok and Instagram Reels, short-form video has become marketing gold – and AI is the new gold rush tool helping creators and companies strike rich veins of content. Just as social media transformed distribution, AI is now transforming creation. This month, we turn our spotlight to AI-powered short-form video creation and why it’s one of the fastest-growing tech segments capturing investor interest in the “attention economy”.
The Next Phase of the Creator Economy
Scrolling through your feeds, you’ve probably noticed the explosion of clips: a 10-second insightful podcast nugget here, a hilarious reaction meme there – bite-sized videos are the currency of online attention. But behind the scenes, a quiet revolution is brewing in how those videos get made. AI “editors” are churning out content in minutes that used to take skilled humans hours or days. The result? Creators can produce more videos, and businesses can be everywhere at once on social media – a powerful competitive edge.
Consider this: short-form videos get 2.5× more engagement than longer ones, and 85% of marketers say they’re the most effective social media content. No wonder global ad spend on these videos is forecast to hit $111 billion by next year. Yet making compelling clips consistently is hard and time-consuming… unless you have a little AI help. That’s where a wave of innovative startups comes in, offering to automate the heavy lifting of video editing.
Meet the AI Video Editing Mavericks
Some of the “mavericks” leading this charge have become breakout successes almost overnight:
Opus Clip – This San Francisco startup is often dubbed “the #1 AI video clipper.” Give Opus a 30-minute video, and it will hand you back a dozen catchy shorts, complete with subtitles, zoom cuts, even an AI-generated “virality score” predicting which clip will go viral. OpusClip’s growth has been rocket-like: over 10 million users in 18 months, and eight-figure revenues. Creators love it, but so do media companies – even Telefonica and Billboard use it. SoftBank just led a $20M investment at a $215M valuation, betting that OpusClip could be a foundational tool in the creator economy. When a startup can turn one video into ten and help drive “your next million views without burnout,” as OpusClip touts, you pay attention.
Munch – Hailing from Tel Aviv, Munch calls itself an “AI social media automation” platform. It not only clips videos but also drafts the social post text to accompany them. In other words, it doesn’t just give you a video snippet, it gives you the ready-to-publish package – hashtagged caption and all. In under a year, Munch hit $2M ARR and 3,000+ paying users, including many marketing teams. They raised $7.2M late last year to expand. For brands trying to maximize ROI on webinars or podcasts, Munch’s promise of turning one video into a trove of multi-platform content (in multiple languages) is a game-changer.
Captions – On the consumer side, this mobile app has become a creator’s best friend. Captions made it super easy to film a talking video and automatically get those flashy subtitles and edits that you see on every viral meme. With big-name VCs backing it ($60M raised, $500M valuation), Captions signals how important mobile-first creation is. It’s like having a personal editor in your pocket – shoot a video on your phone, and AI tidies it up, removes the “ums,” adds translations, you name it. As short video creation shifts to smartphones, Captions is riding that wave.
Frammer AI – A name less known to creators, but making waves in media circles. Frammer is targeted at enterprises: think TV networks, news outlets, sports leagues. Founded by former TV executives, it uses AI to clip and reformat premium content into snackable videos at scale. Imagine a news channel automatically generating social media clips of every interview segment with perfect subtitles – that’s Frammer’s wheelhouse. With a seed round in hand, Frammer illustrates the B2B side of the AI video coin.
QuickReel – One of the up-and-comers we’re watching closely, QuickReel’s angle is unique: they pivoted from a creator tool to also an API platform. Essentially, they want to be the engine under the hood for anyone who needs AI video editing in their app. Their APIs let developers plug in features like “give me highlights from this video” or “auto-edit this footage”. With a couple of pilot enterprise customers already and a successful beta with indie creators, QuickReel is marrying the needs of developers and creators. We see potential here: as more companies (from social networks to SaaS platforms) look to offer smart video features, they might prefer to buy rather than build. QuickReel could become the Twilio of video editing – a behind-the-scenes provider powering many front-end experiences.
These are just a few names – others like Vidyo.ai (300k MAUs, focusing on YouTubers), Dumme (Y Combinator alum turning long YouTubes into Shorts automatically), and GlossAI (for businesses repurposing webinars) are also in the race.
Why It Matters (And Where It’s Going)
From an investment perspective, AI + video is a high-growth intersection. The market forces are clear: demand for short-form content is ever-expanding, yet human-powered supply can’t keep up without help. AI offers a leverage multiplier – early data shows small teams using these tools can outperform larger teams that don’t. It’s akin to the early days of social media management tools or marketing automation, but now applied to video, the most engaging content format.
The market is already rewarding leaders (witness OpusClip’s $215M valuation and Captions’ $500M). We’re also seeing major exits and investments: Microsoft acquired Clipchamp to incorporate easy video editing into Office; Canva snapped up an AI background removal startup to bolster its video editor; and just this year SoftBank and other top funds are pouring money into the space.
For founders and investors, some strategic insights emerge:
Crossover Potential: Companies that can straddle both creator and enterprise markets will have broader defensibility. OpusClip started with creators and is now onboarding enterprise clients (like media companies). Conversely, enterprise-focused startups like Frammer might eventually roll out prosumer versions. A flexible architecture (and pricing) to serve both ends could unlock TAM expansion.
Data Moats: One underrated asset here is data. These AI need training data on what makes a good clip. The platforms with more users (millions of videos processed) are building a data advantage – they can potentially train AI models that newcomers can’t match easily. This could lead to a winner-takes-most dynamic, unless new players find specialized data or unique algorithms (e.g., focusing on a specific vertical like education or sports to differentiate).
Ecosystem Integration: There’s room for partnerships. A short-form AI tool can integrate with distribution platforms (e.g. directly publishing to TikTok via API) or with content libraries (cloud storage, CMS). Startups that play well with others (through APIs, plugins, etc.) will embed themselves into workflows and become harder to rip out.
Future of Content Work: Big picture – if AI can automate editing, what do creators do? The answer: focus on creativity and strategy. The human touch shifts to deciding which stories to tell, and refining the AI output to ensure authenticity and quality. In fact, a new kind of creator is emerging: one who is essentially a content curator/director working with an AI assistant. This might expand the creator pool (you don’t need hardcore editing skills to be a video influencer anymore) – and more creators means more customers for these tools, a virtuous cycle.
Acquisition Targets: Finally, we expect to see larger entities gobbling up some of these startups. The obvious candidates are the social media giants (who want to empower their creators) and enterprise software players (who want to add video capabilities). For example, it wouldn’t shock us if Adobe, which has been adding AI into Premiere, looks at an OpusClip or a Munch to leapfrog on AI curation features. Similarly, a company like HubSpot or Canva could acquire a tool to offer their users instant video content creation as part of a broader suite. The M&A pipeline will likely heat up in the next 12-18 months, and valuations could climb further as a result.
The Bottom Line
AI-powered short-form video creation is reshaping digital content production. It’s enabling one-person teams to do the work of many, and helping large organizations scale content like never before. For investors, it’s a space that checks the boxes: large and growing end market, clear value proposition, and early signs of scalable revenue with SaaS economics. For founders, it’s an exciting domain where technology can have a creative impact – those who build the best “creative co-pilots” for video will define how stories are told in the coming years.
We’re excited by this intersection of AI and media. We’ll be keeping a close eye on startups in this arena (and if you’re building one, we’d love to chat!). The content gold rush is on – and AI is handing out the picks and shovels.
Until next time, keep innovating and creating.
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