Two years ago, OpusClip co-founders Grace Wang, Jay W., and Young Z. told us they were inspired to create their flagship product–a video editor that uses artificial intelligence to take creators’ long-form content and cut it down into short-form videos–thanks to the rise of ChatGPT.
“AI had reached a crucial turning point–signaling the dawn of a new era of video content creation,” they said.
That statement ended up being pretty prophetic. While there is a solid contingent of creators who still refuse to use AI tools in their production process, and the usage of gen AI in creative pursuits is still controversial, many creator services companies have invested in building artificial intelligence tools for everything from ideating new videos to answering fan comments.
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So while there are loads more AI capabilities for creators to use these days (even some introduced by platforms themselves), OpusClip says it remains unique among fellows. It’s a company that’s grown from just supporting “the little guy” with a suite of AI editing tools, to offering “a product that is scalable for every kind of creator,” co-founder Young tells us.
OpusClip’s core product remains its auto-editor ClipAnything, which it says is “the fastest way to turn anything into viral shorts.” The tool scrubs through creators’ long-form videos and clips out bits it thinks stand a good chance of gaining traction on quick-swipe platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts.
Over the last two years, OpusClip has added features to ClipAnything like a B-roll generator, a thumbnail generator, animated captions, and AI Reframe, which lets users automatically resize a video for optimal upload to any major social platform.
It also recently introduced another headliner product, OpusSearch, which can process a creator’s entire catalog and help them “build a media network” by quickly searching through all their past content for specific mentions, topics, etc. Imagine a thrifting resale YouTuber who knows they praised a big shoe brand’s craftmanship in a past video, and now wants to forward that video to the brand in hopes of getting a sponcon deal. OpusSearch would be able to find that few seconds of footage among their thousands of hours of content.
All of this development is intended to meet the goal Young laid out for us: having OpusClip offer a product that’s useful to creators of every size.
“When we launched, we were definitely a company that was very much dedicated to the beginner,” Young says. “We were focusing on how we could lower the various barriers to content creation and make it easier for people to distribute their content. But as we marketed OpusClip, we started getting interest from bigger and bigger names, and some big brands.”
Those big names included creators like Dhar Mann and Mark Rober, he says. In response to the interest, OpusClip launched a B2B division for brands, and for creators, it began thinking, well, bigger.
“One of the challenges going forward that we’re constantly talking about is how do we build a product that’s scalable for every kind of creator, right?” Young says. “Where a Billboard or a Fox News or CNN can go in there and go nuts with it and get a lot of value, but so can a soccer mom who’s just getting started and posting her first video online. Those are two very different versions of content creation, but they share a lot of similarities for what you’re actually trying to accomplish. You’re trying to expand your scale, expand your scope, be able to do more with the resources you have, and whether you’re a small creator or a big business, you have the same problem.”
Now, thanks to this strategy, OpusClip has over 12 million users–and they’ve been crucial in helping OpusClip develop and hone new tools.
Conor Eliot, OpusClip’s Head of Creator, Event, and Co-Marketing Partnerships, tells us the company sees 5,000+ customer requests each week. It also meets with up to 20 creators per week to get direct feedback. Eliot describes OpusClip’s attitude as an “obsession” with fulfilling creator needs, and says these requests and meetings are “how we’ve made significant improvements.”
In one case, he said, OpusClip worked with a podcast team to develop “Speaker Colors,” a feature where subtitles will change color depending on who’s speaking.
“We built that feature specifically for them,” Eliot says. (It’s now available to other creators, too, and is “a very popular feature,” he adds.)
With all this consumer participation in mind, OpusClip decided to mark its second anniversary with a contest aimed at recognizing and rewarding its users.
Called Clip the Future, the contest invites creators to find a favorite clip they made using OpusClip, and post that on social media with the hashtag #OpusClipandGrow, along with a sentence or two addressing “what you love about OpusClip, or what you envision it to be in 5 years in your post.”
Every entrant will get 5 hours of free OpusClip use time, while three “Rising Visionaries” will also get $200 cash, bags from Nomatic, and OpusClip swag. And the grand prize winner will be crowned a “Visionary Creator” and rewarded with a 14-inch MacBook Pro, $5,000, and a creator masterclass with YouTube expert Nick Nimmin.
Any interested OpusClip user can check out the giveaway here.
As for what’s next at OpusClip, we’ll be chatting with their team again soon–so stay tuned!
