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VideoDraft
Techstars '25Fremont, US · Founded 2025 · 1 employees on LinkedIn · 1 known investors
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VideoDraft is an AI-powered platform that automates video pre-production by converting ideas into scripts, storyboards, and first drafts with visuals and voiceovers. It targets individual creators, small businesses, and production teams who need to create videos for marketing, social media, and personal projects.
Also known as VideoDraft ADE · VideoDraft Studio
Founders & leadership
VideoDraft was founded in 2025 by Charan Kilari.
Investors · 1
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026VideoDraft develops an agent-based workspace for video projects. Its Mac application, VideoDraft ADE, hosts two modes in a single app: Vibe Film, which covers scripts, shots, media generation and editing, and Vibe Code, which supports software development with agents, project files, terminals and Git tools. The app requires an Apple silicon Mac running macOS 15 or later and is a free download on every plan, including the Starter tier.
The product organizes work around tasks that hold the brief, references and generated files, allowing several independent agent tasks to run in parallel and be merged into the project later. VideoDraft Editor provides a timeline with cuts, speed ramps, transitions, color grading against scopes, word-timed captions and audio mixing, with export to H.264, H.265 and ProRes or handoff via XML and FCPXML to Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro. Other capabilities include scheduled agent runs against a standing brief and remote control of a running session from a phone or browser.
VideoDraft Studio is the browser counterpart, used for generating images, video, voice, music and sound from user references, managing assets in projects and folders, reusing characters, styles, objects and locations for visual consistency, and developing scripts, storyboards and animatics. A workflow called Idea to Video expands a plain-language prompt into scenes, shots, pacing and visual and audio suggestions. The company also runs a research effort focused on multi-model orchestration, tool-using agents, character consistency, hybrid pipelines that blend filmed footage with generated elements, and brief-driven pacing and visual storytelling.
Founding story
Founder and CEO Charan Kilari states that after seven years at Apple building creative tools he observed that video creation remained complex and intimidating, with full editing suites overwhelming most people while simple tools lacked the features needed for quality output; VideoDraft was positioned to close that gap by using AI to handle technical execution.
Business model
Subscription plans with a credit balance that covers generation of images, video, voice, music, sound and 3D across the Mac app, browser Studio, MCP connector and CLI. A free tier is available without a credit card; the Starter plan includes 100 credits a month and paid plans start at 2,500 credits. Commercial use rights are included on the Visionary, Studio and Crew plans but not on Starter and Pro. The company also offers research collaborations and pilot projects with partner teams.
Tiered subscriptions (Starter, Pro, Visionary, Studio, Crew) with monthly credit allowances consumed by media generation, plus included VD Code agent usage subject to a weekly limit; users may alternatively connect their own Claude or Codex accounts, whose usage bills to those accounts.
Traction
Directory listings report 1-10 employees, a single founder-level contact, and no recorded funding rounds. The company is hiring engineers, designers and filmmakers.
Latest developments
Current product positioning centers on the ADE Mac workspace running Vibe Film and Vibe Code side by side, the browser Studio with an Idea to Video workflow, an MCP connector for Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor, scheduled agent runs, remote control of sessions from phone or browser, and an ongoing research track on multi-model orchestration and character consistency.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Positions itself as a collaborative agent workspace rather than a fully automated generator, with the user directing story, style, tone and pacing while agents perform execution work; it also differentiates by combining filmmaking and software development in one Mac application.
Combines multi-model generation, project context retention and a native, professional-grade video editor in a single desktop workspace, with parallel agent tasks, scheduled runs, remote session control, model choice across vendors, bring-your-own agent subscriptions, and a shared credit balance across app, browser, MCP and CLI surfaces.
Technology
An agent workspace that orchestrates multiple third-party generation models across image, video and audio, including offerings identified on the site as MiniMax H3, Kling 3.0, Seedance 2.5, Seedream 5, Topaz Upscale, ElevenLabs, Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image 2.5, Grok Imagine, FLUX 3 and Google Omni Flash, alongside a VideoDraft model. Coding and agent execution run on VD Code or connected agents such as Claude, Codex, OpenCode and Grok. The stack includes a native macOS timeline editor with scopes-based color, transcription-driven captions and professional export formats, an MCP connector, a CLI, and research work on tool-using agents, shared project context across modalities, character and visual continuity, and hybrid live-action plus generated pipelines.
Go-to-market
Self-serve distribution through a free Mac download and a browser app with a no-credit-card free plan, supplemented by a demo request path, documentation, workflow landing pages, an MCP connector that places the tools inside existing assistant products, and outreach for research partnerships via contact@videodraft.ai.
Solo creators, video teams and agencies running one project per client, plus content creators, marketing teams, educators, startups, small businesses, media agencies, AI filmmakers, and developers building product features and launch videos.
Geography
United States; listings cite San Francisco, California and Fremont, California. Products are distributed online as a macOS download and a browser application.
History
Founded in 2025. Company listings place it in San Francisco and Fremont, California, with 1-10 employees, and it appears on the Techstars job board. The product line has grown to include the ADE Mac app (Vibe Film and Vibe Code), the browser-based Studio, an MCP connector, a CLI and a research program.
Risks & controversies
Core generation capability depends on third-party image, video and audio models and on external coding agents such as Claude and Codex, and the native editor is limited to Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later. Commercial usage rights are restricted on the Starter and Pro plans, so output from those tiers cannot be used for paid work without an upgrade.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 4
launches, deals, and filingsVideoDraft appears on the Techstars job board and is described as backed by Techstars in a company directory listing.
VideoDraft can be connected over MCP so users generate video, images, voice, music and 3D from inside Claude, ChatGPT, Codex or Cursor with a single browser sign-in and no API keys.
VideoDraft offers ADE, a Mac workspace (Apple silicon, macOS 15 or later) combining Vibe Film for agent-driven video planning, generation and native timeline editing with Vibe Code for software development using agents, terminals and Git tools.
Browser-based web app for media generation and hosted video projects, including AI Studio asset generation, asset management, reusable visual assets and prompt optimization, plus workflows such as Idea to Video.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- VideoDraftvideodraft.ai · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does VideoDraft do?
- VideoDraft builds an AI agent workspace for video production and software development, spanning a Mac app and a browser studio.
- Who founded VideoDraft?
- VideoDraft was founded by Charan Kilari in 2025.
- Who are VideoDraft's investors?
- VideoDraft's investors include Techstars.
- Where is VideoDraft headquartered?
- VideoDraft is headquartered in Fremont, US.