Is Shofo profitable in 2026?

No public revenue has been disclosed. Shofo raised only $500,000 via a convertible note dated January 1, 2026, and its own YC page still solicits computer-vision partners, indicating a pre-revenue, pre-commercial stage as of June 2026.

Has Shofo had layoffs?

Third-party tracker Crustdata reported Shofo's headcount fell from a peak of 6 employees in August 2025 to 4 by June 2026, a 33.3% two-year decline and 20% year-over-year drop, with zero open job listings on YC's jobs page.

Who is Shofo's biggest competitor?

Scale AI is the dominant incumbent in AI training-data labeling; Meta took a roughly 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for over $14-15 billion in June 2025. Encord, Labelbox, Wirestock, and Surge AI also compete in adjacent annotation and licensed-video lanes.

Could AI replace Shofo?

Shofo's own labeling pipeline is already AI-automated, blending YOLO object detection with VLM reasoning annotation as of May 2026. Its customers, frontier AI labs, are the parties best equipped to build equivalent scraping and labeling in-house, per analysis published May 10, 2026.

Shofo is privately held, backed by Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch and angel investor Sahin Boydas, per Crustdata data dated June 25, 2026. No valuation has been publicly disclosed, and total disclosed funding is $500,000 via convertible note as of January 1, 2026.

Does Shofo have any named customers?

No named enterprise or AI-lab customers have been publicly confirmed as of June 2026. Shofo's own YC page still invites computer-vision teams to chat, and it published a free 58,000-video Hugging Face sample dataset that drew 25,000+ downloads as of May 10, 2026.

YC Winter 2026 · United States

Shofo

shofo.ai ↗

Shofo scrapes and labels web video into training datasets for AI labs.

Losing its protection

Assessed 27 July 2026 · Evidence as of 27 July 2026

The structural protection is eroding.

On the recordSince 27 July 2026 · Checkable from Q3 2026 · Every call on the record Checkpoint: Deadline for landing named anchor frontier lab contracts to prove the model works

The call

Shofo has a working demo and a shrinking team, with no named paying lab customer yet disclosed.

Shofo takes videos from the internet, labels them, and sells them to AI companies that need training data. The problem is that bigger companies like Scale AI and Labelbox can copy what Shofo does, and the AI labs themselves (like Google and Meta) are building their own labeling tools instead of buying from outside vendors. On top of that, new EU rules are making it harder to use scraped data without permission, which cuts into Shofo's main product. The company has lost about a third of its employees and almost two-thirds of its web traffic in just three months, which suggests it is struggling to keep customers and grow. If Shofo can slow down its employee losses and announce a big customer contract soon, it might prove the doubters wrong, but right now the signs point downward.

Why

AI pressure: Frontier labs building in-house video scraping and labeling (Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic). The labs Shofo sells to can build their own scraping and labeling pipelines, cutting Shofo out entirely. Could AI do the core job? Yes, likely.

Bigger players: Scale AI, Encord, Labelbox, Surge. Established data labeling firms already sell to the same labs and can add a video crawl lane fast. Could a giant copy it? Yes, easily.

What protects it. A founding team with prior crawl infrastructure experience from Correkt and an early public sample dataset that drew real downloads.

What would change this call

Shofo names 2-3 anchor frontier-lab contracts by Q3 2026. Would show real demand and defensibility against lab in-sourcing.
Shofo headcount and web traffic trend by Q3 2026. Continued decline from current 4 staff and -63% traffic signals stalling execution.
A major lab (Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic) announces in-house video-curation tooling. Would show the customer in-sourcing threat materializing.

Key numbers

Headcount fell 33% over two years, 6 to 4 (2026-06-25)
Raised $500,000 via convertible note (2026-01-01)
Hugging Face sample dataset drew 25,000+ downloads (2026-05-10)

Named risks

Zero named anchor frontier-lab contracts despite pre-commercial outreach as of June 2026. Severity: high
Headcount down 33% and web traffic down 63% QoQ signal stalled execution. Severity: high
Frontier labs may build in-house scraping/labeling, eliminating need for Shofo's core deliverable. Severity: high
Scraped public video content exposed to anti-scraping enforcement and provenance regulation like EU AI Act. Severity: medium
Only $500,000 raised with a 4-person team, likely needs new funding within months. Severity: medium

Rivals, as read in July 2026

Rival	Direction	Evidence
Scale AI	losing to	Scale AI took Meta's ~$14-15B stake June 2025; Shofo has zero named customers as of June 2026
Encord	contesting	Encord repositions as Scale alternative post-Meta deal, targeting same labeling customers, May 2026
Labelbox	contesting	Labelbox listed as multimodal data-curation peer competing for same AI-lab buyers, per 2026 roundup
Wirestock, Luel, Origin Lab	contesting	Licensed video/image data marketplaces active in same niche, per 2026-06-13 market roundup
Surge AI	contesting	Positioned as managed RLHF/alignment data lab competing in adjacent training-data lane, 2026

Questions people ask

Is Shofo profitable in 2026?: No public revenue has been disclosed. Shofo raised only $500,000 via a convertible note dated January 1, 2026, and its own YC page still solicits computer-vision partners, indicating a pre-revenue, pre-commercial stage as of June 2026.
Has Shofo had layoffs?: Third-party tracker Crustdata reported Shofo's headcount fell from a peak of 6 employees in August 2025 to 4 by June 2026, a 33.3% two-year decline and 20% year-over-year drop, with zero open job listings on YC's jobs page.
Who is Shofo's biggest competitor?: Scale AI is the dominant incumbent in AI training-data labeling; Meta took a roughly 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for over $14-15 billion in June 2025. Encord, Labelbox, Wirestock, and Surge AI also compete in adjacent annotation and licensed-video lanes.
Could AI replace Shofo?: Shofo's own labeling pipeline is already AI-automated, blending YOLO object detection with VLM reasoning annotation as of May 2026. Its customers, frontier AI labs, are the parties best equipped to build equivalent scraping and labeling in-house, per analysis published May 10, 2026.
Who owns Shofo?: Shofo is privately held, backed by Y Combinator's Winter 2026 batch and angel investor Sahin Boydas, per Crustdata data dated June 25, 2026. No valuation has been publicly disclosed, and total disclosed funding is $500,000 via convertible note as of January 1, 2026.
Does Shofo have any named customers?: No named enterprise or AI-lab customers have been publicly confirmed as of June 2026. Shofo's own YC page still invites computer-vision teams to chat, and it published a free 58,000-video Hugging Face sample dataset that drew 25,000+ downloads as of May 10, 2026.

Timeline

2026-06-25Crustdata reports headcount down 33.3%, web traffic down 63.1% QoQ, growth score 16/100
2026-05-10Shofo publishes 58,000-video Hugging Face sample dataset, draws 25,000+ downloads
2026-01-26Shofo publicly launches on YC Launch as Common Crawl for Video
2026-01-01Shofo raises $500,000 via convertible note
2025-08Shofo headcount peaks at 6 employees
2025-06-01Meta takes ~49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for $14-15 billion, reshaping data-labeling market
2025Shofo founded, pivoting from prior product Correkt into video-data infrastructure
2024-10Team headcount at roughly 2 employees under predecessor product Correkt

Revision history

27 July 2026

First assessed. Losing its protection. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.

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