How OpusClip Became the Fastest Growing AI Video Editing Tool: $1M ARR in 14 Days

In January 2022, Young Zhao and his team launched an AI livestreaming tool called Opus Studio. It had all the right buzzwords—AI-generated memes, interactive overlays, real-time engagement tools—but none of the traction.

After 3 months, they had only 200 users. And that was after paying most of them $20 to $30 each just to give feedback.

The product looked cool. But it didn’t save time. It didn’t help users make money. So they churned. Every single one of them.

But buried inside the product was a final feature that turned everything around.

The Feature No One Was Supposed to Notice

Before giving up on Opus Studio entirely, the team added a basic clipping tool. Nothing fancy. Just a button users could click during their livestream to mark moments they wanted to reuse later.

It was meant to be a bonus—something extra to help with distribution after a live event. But suddenly, users started reaching out asking if they could just use that one feature. The rest of the product? “Nonsense,” as one user put it.

The team quietly spun up a new internal squad—just 5 people: 3 engineers, 1 product manager, and a part-time designer. While the rest of the 24-person team stayed focused on Opus Studio, this small group went heads-down and rebuilt the clipper from scratch.

They didn’t even know if it was going to work. Most of the team didn’t know it was happening.

Built in 2 Months. Launched in Public. And Everything Took Off.

By April 2023, the new product—now called OpusClip—was in private beta. One month later, it launched publicly.

It didn’t just do well. It exploded to $1M ARR in 14 days.

In the first four weeks:

• Over 200,000 users signed up

• Annualized revenue hit $1M in 14 days, despite having no payment system on day one

• Users were emailing the team to ask if they could pay to skip the queue or get higher resolution

• The product had no affiliate program or ad budget yet

By the end of 2023, OpusClip had over 5 million signups and nearly $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). And that growth wasn’t a fluke.

Users weren’t just signing up. They were coming back. They were publishing videos, getting results, and feeding the AI system with exactly what it needed: actual performance data.

That was the kicker. Every video created through OpusClip that made it to TikTok or YouTube or Instagram became part of a feedback loop. The team tracked how each clip performed—views, shares, comments, likes—and used that data to fine-tune their models.

This “audience feedback” quickly outpaced traditional user surveys or analytics. It became the company’s secret growth engine.

Weekly Releases, Real Features, Real Velocity

Inside the company, a new cultural rhythm took hold. They started shipping new features every week. Not internal betas or soft rollouts—actual, user-facing updates. And users noticed.

Within a few months, OpusClip had rolled out:

• AI Copilot, which let users prioritize specific moments or keywords from their original content

• ReframeAnything, which adapted videos to different aspect ratios while tracking the speaker automatically

• OpusSearch, a searchable archive that auto-suggested the most compelling clips based on historical performance

• A fully integrated publishing calendar for TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and more

Most of these were based directly on user complaints or requests. But the team didn’t wait for statistically significant feedback to act. If they heard something enough times from power users, it went on the roadmap.

The product became the fastest way for creators and marketing teams to turn long-form content into short-form social posts—without the drag of video editing, subtitling, or platform formatting.

Not a Tool—A Workflow

Behind the scenes, OpusClip wasn’t just betting on AI quality. They were betting on workflows.

They knew AI alone couldn’t do 100% of the job. In many cases, it could hit 80%. But that last 20%? That needed human control. So they built manual refinement features directly into the flow—making it easy for users to adjust, trim, or override clips when the AI got it wrong.

This was the big differentiator. Instead of trying to make the perfect AI, they built for the imperfect reality.

Fast-moving marketing teams could upload a raw video, generate 10–15 clips, polish a few, and post within an hour. The speed was unmatched.

Paid Ads, Influencers, and the Growth Machine

As growth kicked in, the team leaned into paid acquisition. Performance marketing, especially paid social, was a natural fit.

They hired a full-time creative lead focused entirely on ad content. He wasn’t just making storyboards—he was the face of many of the ads.

Native, fast, relatable. They tested variations daily. They also brought on specialized design agencies and freelancers who already understood the brand, skipping the onboarding overhead.

OpusClip’s Head of Growth, Parker Miller, emphasized short-form video performance over everything else. They tracked cost per signup, cost per purchase, churn, LTV—all the standard SaaS metrics—but prioritized volume. Signups mattered more than immediate revenue.

They were playing a land grab.

$1M MRR Came from Demand, Not Supply

What’s striking about OpusClip’s trajectory isn’t just the numbers. It’s the intensity of demand.

Most AI tools struggle with user engagement. Many see drop-offs after the first try. But OpusClip had users begging to pay, writing in when credits ran out, emailing support to ask how they could upgrade faster. That kind of inbound interest is rare.

It doesn’t come from clever marketing or flashy tech. It comes from solving a deeply painful problem at exactly the right time.

Before launching OpusClip, the team had spent nearly a decade working with creators. Young Zhao’s previous agency managed 500+ influencers. He saw firsthand why top talent was leaving managed deals to go solo—they didn’t want middlemen. They wanted tools. Something that could let them publish faster, reach more people, and stay independent.

OpusClip was built for that type of creator: the solo operator, the brand founder, the marketer running a lean team. Not the media conglomerate. Not the agency.

The Business Model Locked In After the Product

OpusClip's pricing:

• $19/month for individual creators

• $29/month for pros

• $14.50/month for annual plans

• Credit-based one-time packs for high-volume users

They’re now building out B2B plans and enterprise pricing, but the foundation is clear: usage-first monetization.

Let the user see value, then convert them with minimal friction.

By early 2025, OpusClip crossed 10 million users. Over 172 million clips had been generated through the platform. Those clips had accumulated more than 57 billion views across social platforms.

Not just media brands like Billboard or Univision. Not just big names like VISA or LinkedIn. But tens of thousands of independent creators, startup founders, B2B marketers, solopreneurs—people with a message but no time to edit it.

OpusClip didn’t break out because of a lucky idea. They broke out because they threw away a bad product, listened hard to what users actually did, and had the conviction to build something useful—even if it meant starting over from zero.

OpusClip rode the AI Wave and built a product that became better with newer AI models and it grew them exponentially.

Credits to Young Zhao,Parker Miller & James Hicks for the insights.

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