TwelveLabs raised $100M to make video searchable data
TwelveLabs' $100M Series B turns raw video into queryable, structured data. For operators, that means your cameras and product clips become usable.
Most businesses sit on hours of video they can't do anything with — security footage, product demos, recorded calls, in-store cameras. It's storage, not data. On July 1, TwelveLabs announced a $100M Series B to change that — to make video something you can query like a database.
What actually happened
TwelveLabs raised $100 million, co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with Amazon, Radical Ventures, Index Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, Quadrille Capital, and Red Bull Ventures participating. The round pushes total funding past $200 million; Bloomberg notes both Amazon and Nvidia (a 2023 backer) are now on the cap table.
The tech is two models: Marengo 3.0, a video embedding model that turns footage into a semantic layer machines can search, and Pegasus 1.5, which converts video into structured data — scene boundaries, temporal segments. CEO Jae Lee framed the raise as the jump "from foundation models to a full-stack video cognition system." AWS is the preferred cloud, with optimization on Trainium chips. The money funds R&D in San Francisco and Seoul and new offices in New York and London.
Why it matters for your business
Strip away the "superintelligence" language and the useful part is concrete: video is becoming as queryable as a spreadsheet. "Show me every clip where a customer picked up the product but put it back." "Find the 12 seconds in this 40-minute call where pricing came up." "Flag footage where the loading dock was blocked." Those used to be jobs for a person scrubbing a timeline. They're becoming API calls.
You don't need to train a model to benefit — the same way you don't run your own payment processor. The play is knowing which of your video already carries answers, and wiring a small automation to pull them. Retailers have merchandising and shrink questions buried in camera feeds. Services businesses have coaching and compliance gold in recorded calls. The infrastructure to read it is now well-funded and API-accessible; the moat is being the operator who actually connects it to a decision.
Key takeaways
- TwelveLabs raised a $100M Series B (co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures; Amazon and Nvidia among backers), pushing total funding past $200M
- Its models — Marengo 3.0 and Pegasus 1.5 — turn raw video into a searchable semantic layer and structured data
- The practical shift: video (security footage, product clips, recorded calls) becomes queryable like a database, via API
- You don't need to build the model — the value is knowing which of your footage holds answers and wiring an automation to pull them
Sitting on video you never look at? We build automations that turn footage and recordings into answers your team can act on — no data-science hire required. See what we've shipped or tell us what's in your archive.
Sources: TwelveLabs / GlobeNewswire, Bloomberg.
- #video-ai
- #twelvelabs
- #commerce
- #automation
- #funding
Tommy Rush — Founder, Rush Commerce
Operator turned builder. 15+ years running operations — now shipping the systems businesses run on. More
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