The Spark

By 2025, the AI video landscape was dominated by “cinematic spectacle”. Models like Sora and Veo could generate a dog dancing on the moon, but they couldn’t correctly spell a single word or explain a 10-step onboarding workflow.

Enter Shraman (19) and Shreyas Kar (20), brothers and computer science students at Stanford. While their peers were focused on high-fidelity diffusion, the Kars realized that for AI video to be useful for business, it didn’t need to be flashy—it needed to be accurate. They dropped out of Stanford to join Y Combinator and build Golpo (Bengali for “stories”), a platform designed to turn dense documents into technically precise, whiteboard-style animations.

The Climb

The brothers didn’t follow the typical “scale compute” playbook. Instead of expensive diffusion models that drift from instructional intent, they trained a reinforcement learning agent to “draw” whiteboard strokes step-by-step. This approach was 45x cheaper than existing models and allowed for videos up to 30 minutes long—an impossibility for the 10-second clips of their competitors.

The traction was immediate. Within 4 weeks of launch, Golpo hit $30K MRR, serving 14,000 users ranging from school districts to offices within EY. By October 2025, they closed a $4.1M oversubscribed seed round, famously turning away millions in additional capital to maintain focus on their core mission: making AI video practical.

The Model

Golpo operates as a high-margin SaaS platform focused on the “System of Knowledge”.

  • The Workflow Wedge: Users upload PDFs, Jira boards, or GitHub repos. Golpo doesn’t just summarize; it extracts structural hierarchies and formulas to build a logical visual sequence.
  • Frame-by-Frame Control: Unlike “black box” generators, Golpo introduced the world’s first frame-by-frame AI video editing, allowing users to adjust individual moments without regenerating the entire file.
  • Enterprise Tiering: While solo creators pay $40/month, the real moat is the API access and custom enterprise solutions for L&D teams who need to convert thousands of pages of documentation into searchable video assets.

The Future

Golpo is moving beyond simple “whiteboard” aesthetics. Their roadmap includes deeper integrations into enterprise workflows and expanding their technical “draw” engine to handle increasingly complex data visualizations. By focusing on clarity over wow-factor, the Kar brothers aren’t just building a video tool; they are building the infrastructure for how knowledge is transferred in the AI era.