Microsoft Acquires Web-based Video Editing Startup Clipchamp

Microsoft Corp on Tuesday announced that it has acquired Clipchamp, a browser-based video editing tool, and is hinting that it will be a great fit for Windows though terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Founded in 2013, Clipchamp lets people create and edit videos in a browser and utilize the full power of a GPU to render the final result. Clipchamp is used by companies like Google, Dell, and Deloitte.

The technology lines up with Microsoft’s years-long effort to widen its productivity software offerings for both individuals and corporate users. When Microsoft announced upcoming price increases for its Office 365 subscriptions in August, it pointed to additions to the bundle, including the Teams communication app.

Chris Pratley, Corporate Vice President for the Office Media Group at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post: “Clipchamp’s technical approach is to combine the simplicity of a web app with the ability to process video using the full computing power of a PC with graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration, something that was formerly limited to traditional video applications.”

Clipchamp was founded in 2013, is based in Brisbane, Australia, and has 92 employees, according to LinkedIn data. Investors include Ten13 and Tola Capital. In July Clipchamp said it had 17 million registered users, with adoption at over 390,000 companies, up 54% year over year. The Clipchamp website says Deloitte, Google, Microsoft, and Zendesk are among the companies that use its software.

The start-up reported 140% growth in exports in the 9:16 aspect ratio, which works with Facebook’s Instagram Stories and TikTok. People also used Clipchamp for screen recording and webcam recording. As the pandemic continued in the second quarter, Facebook said it had 3.51 billion monthly users of its family of apps, up 12% year over year.

The announcement comes three weeks after Adobe said it was acquiring Frame.io, whose software allows people to comment on videos during the editing process, for $1.275 billion. Microsoft itself has demonstrated an interest in video before, having participated in talks last year to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations. TikTok wound up deciding not to go forward with that deal. And in 2018 Microsoft acquired education-oriented video start-up Flipgrid.