Clouted, the AI engine for viral marketing, raises $7M led by Slow Ventures after generating 1B+ views across 250+ campaigns for entertainment, music, and tech.
LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, May 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Led by Slow Ventures and backed by Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, Iterative, AppWorks, Peak XV’s Surge, and a16z Speedrun – Clouted launches its Virality Engine powered by Distribution Intelligence: the first platform that doesn’t just execute campaigns, but builds compounding intelligence that makes every campaign smarter than the last.
Clouted, the AI engine for viral marketing, announced the close of a $7M seed round led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, Iterative, AppWorks, Peak XV’s Surge, and a16z Speedrun. The announcement marks the public launch of Clouted’s Distribution Intelligence platform – the AI infrastructure layer that makes viral marketing repeatable, measurable, and compounding over time.
The numbers tell the story: since October 2025, Clouted has generated over 1 billion views across 250+ campaigns, paid out $1M+ to creators/clippers with a network of 100,000+ clippers and content creators, and delivered distribution campaigns across entertainment, music, gaming, and consumer brands globally.
Redefining What Goes Viral
Clouted’s Virality Engine deploys AI agents that ingest a brand’s identity, content library, audience signals, and campaign objectives – then autonomously executes distribution across clipping, UGC, fan pages, influencer seeding, performance ads, and viral stunts simultaneously. A live intelligence loop surfaces trend data, format insights, and autonomous optimizations in real-time.
What separates Clouted from every other creator marketing tool is Distribution Intelligence: a compounding data layer built from every campaign. Every clip analyzed, every format tested, every audience conversion tracked feeds back into a sharper model for the next campaign. The result is a distribution moat that grows with every post.
Case Study: Illenium x Liquid State
Clouted’s model was proven at scale through a partnership with Liquid State – the pan-Asian label backed by Sony Music Entertainment and Tencent Music Entertainment – generating 30M+ views across approximately 1,000 clips in two weeks for Illenium’s releases “Forever” and “Still Breathing.” The campaigns delivered 3x overdelivery versus target CPM at an effective CPM of $0.32 – by matching each track’s emotional themes to mood-aligned short-form content across TikTok and Instagram. Sound usage for “Forever” doubled from 2,000 to 4,000 during the active clipping campaign window.
Quotes
“Six months ago we started running campaigns quietly. No press, no announcement – just building and proving the model. One billion views and 250 campaigns later, the proof is there. Distribution Intelligence isn’t just what we built. It’s what modern marketing looks like from here.” – Eric Aaberg, Head of Marketing, Clouted
“Most marketing operates linearly – run a campaign, measure it, start over. We built Clouted to operate differently. Every input, every output, every data point feeds back into the system and improves it. Distribution at scale isn’t just about doing more. It’s about building something that gets better on its own.” – David Viray, CGO & Co-Founder, Clouted
“The hardest part of building in music and entertainment isn’t making something great. It’s making sure the right people hear it. We’ve spent years obsessing over that problem – and then finally the past few months building that infrastructure so artists, brands, and creators never have to figure out distribution alone. This raise means we can take that infrastructure to every vertical, every market, and every creator who deserves to be heard.” – Justin Gorriceta-Banusing, CEO & Co-Founder, Clouted
Coining the Category: Distribution Intelligence
Clouted is introducing Distribution Intelligence as the defining category for the next era of marketing infrastructure. Where traditional marketing tools measure what happened, Distribution Intelligence predicts, executes, and refines – building a compound data advantage that grows more precise with every campaign.
The distinction matters. Tools that activate creators or run UGC campaigns are execution layers. Clouted’s Distribution Intelligence platform is the strategy, execution, and optimization layer simultaneously – ingesting brand data to generate campaign goals and success metrics, deploying AI agents to execute autonomously across all distribution channels, and analyzing every piece of content to surface winning formats and optimizations faster than any human team could.
This is what separates Clouted from the growing field of creator marketplaces and UGC tools: clients don’t just get a campaign. They get a distribution infrastructure that gets smarter every single day.
About the Round
The $7M seed round is led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, and Iterative. The round also reflects continued support from existing investors Speedrun (a16z), AppWorks, Peak XV’s Surge, Antler, and Hustle Fund.
Angel investors include Gokul Rajaram, Ben Parr, Matt Schlicht (Moltbook, acquired by Meta Superintelligence), Andrew Yeung, Henry Shi (Super.com), Jeff Wu (k-id), and executives from Twitch, Airbnb, Fourthwall, Zalora, and Cameo.
The capital will be deployed toward expanding Clouted’s Distribution Intelligence infrastructure, growing the creator network, and accelerating vertical expansion into gaming and streaming.
The Market Opportunity
The creator economy is a $234 billion market growing at 22% annually – projected by Goldman Sachs to reach $480 billion by 2027. There are 207 million content creators worldwide. 92% of consumers trust peer-generated content over brand advertising, and UGC drives 10x higher conversion rates than branded content. Yet only 16% of brands have a dedicated UGC strategy. The infrastructure gap between what brands know they need and what they’re actually able to execute is the market Clouted was built to own.
About Clouted
Clouted is the AI engine for viral marketing, powering distribution campaigns across clipping, UGC, fan pages, influencer seeding, performance ads, and viral stunts for entertainment, music, gaming, and consumer brands. Clouted’s Distribution Intelligence platform builds compounding intelligence with every campaign – learning winning formats, refining audience targeting, and executing autonomously at scale. Backed by Slow Ventures, Gold House Ventures, Weekend Fund, LINE-Yahoo’s Z VC, Gondor Capital, Iterative, Speedrun (a16z), AppWorks, Peak XV’s Surge, Antler, and Hustle Fund. Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.
Press Contact
Eric Aaberg, Head of Marketing, Clouted
press@clouted.com
Eric Aaberg
Clouted
press@clouted.com
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
TikTok
X
Legal Disclaimer:
EIN Presswire provides this news content “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability
for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this
article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Media gallery
