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AI YouTube video summarizer (browser extension and phone apps) · USA

Eightify

Small teamB2CProductivity
Outcome
US$45K a month estimated by Starter Story, May 2024
Launch
17 January 2023
Team
1 founder at launch; 3 people (Starter Story estimate) at the headline figure; 5 employees on LinkedIn in July 2025
Outside funding
None reported
Main channel
Search and AI answers
Reported, not verified

What is not verified

The headline figure of about US$45,000 a month rests on one source: Starter Story's breakdown page dated 8 May 2024, which is marked "Estimated from public sources" and lists eightify.app as its only source. GetLatka's estimate of about US$550,000 a year in July 2025 agrees with it, but GetLatka also says the company has not published its revenue, and an estimate that agrees with an estimate is not a measurement. Neither founder has published a revenue figure in any source read for this page; the Product Hunt and Hacker News comments from January 2023 give prices and costs, not revenue. A reader could look for a TrustMRR or Stripe-verified profile (none existed in October 2026), a founder interview with dated figures, or a press report. One more note: a listing on the Microns marketplace dated 28 July 2025 offered an unnamed "first-to-market AI-powered YouTube summarizer delivered via Chrome extension and mobile apps", founded in 2023, for sale, with US$39,000 in monthly recurring revenue and 8,100 subscribers. The listing names no company, so this page does not attribute it to Eightify. The headline number is grade D: one claim or one estimate, with no second source. Aiolum shows it because the story is useful, and marks it so that it is not mistaken for a verified figure.

Eightify is a browser extension, a small program that runs inside Chrome and changes the pages you visit. On YouTube it adds a button that produces a summary of the video in a few seconds: eight key ideas with timestamps, the full transcript, and the main points of the comments. The founder wrote on Hacker News in January 2023 that it downloads the subtitles, splits the transcript into parts, summarizes each part with OpenAI's GPT model and then summarizes the summaries. The Chrome Web Store listing in October 2026 says the summaries are now powered by Claude and ChatGPT.

Alex Kataev, a software engineer who had been chief technology officer of an education company for seven years, built the prototype in two days and launched the extension on Product Hunt on 17 January 2023, where it finished fourth of the day. Dmytro Tymoshenko is the company's chief executive. The company behind it, Rational Expressions, Inc., is registered in San Francisco. Starter Story, a site that estimates business figures from public data, estimated in May 2024 that Eightify made about US$45,000 a month with an estimated three employees. GetLatka, a revenue database, estimated in July 2025 that it made about US$550,000 a year with five employees.

No founder, payment processor or buyer has published a revenue figure, so this page carries the badge "Reported, not verified" and every money figure is graded D. The user counts come from the Chrome Web Store, which showed 100,000 users from November 2023 to December 2024 and 200,000 users in 2026. The page also shows five earlier companies that sold automatic summaries or digests of other people's content and failed.

Eightify: US$45K a month estimated by Starter Story, May 2024. AI YouTube video summarizer (browser extension and phone apps), USA, team of 2 to 10, evidence grade D.
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01

The numbers, graded

Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.

About US$45,000 a month sixteen months after launch, according to a Starter Story estimate from May 2024; a second estimate by GetLatka in July 2025 gives a similar yearly figure
FactValueGradeHow we knowSources
Revenue per month, May 2024about US$45,000DStarter Story estimate, page dated 8 May 2024 and marked "Estimated from public sources". The page cites eightify.app as its only source. Not confirmed by the founders or a payment processor.[1]
Run rate from the May 2024 estimateabout US$540,000 a yearcalcCalculated: 45,000 times 12. This is the headline figure of the page.[1]
Revenue per year, July 2025about US$550,000DGetLatka estimate, dated July 2025. GetLatka writes that the company has not published its revenue. 1.9% above the Starter Story run rate, so the two estimates agree, but neither is a measurement.[2]
Employees at the headline figure, May 20243 (estimate)DStarter Story's table, marked "(est.)", with 1 founder.[1]
Employees, July 20255DGetLatka, from LinkedIn. The company's own author page names Dmytro Tymoshenko as chief executive.[2, 9]
Founder at launch1, Alex KataevCHis Product Hunt maker comment on 17 January 2023: "I'm Alex, the founder". He wrote that he built the prototype in two days and launched after one and a half months.[3]
Starting costsabout US$23,000DStarter Story: US$17,491 as the average cost of a Chrome extension, US$5,000 for OpenAI GPT access and US$600 for the YouTube API. The page does not say where these numbers come from.[1]
Launch prices, January 2023US$8.60 for 20 summaries, US$19.80 for 60, US$48.60 for 180CFounder's Hacker News comment on 27 January 2023. He wrote that he was changing prices every two days and would add subscriptions within a week.[4]
Model cost per video, January 2023US$0.10 to US$0.90CFounder on Hacker News: OpenAI's standard price for davinci-003, depending on video length. Transcripts of podcasts averaged 150,000 characters.[4]
Product Hunt launch, 17 January 2023484 points, 4th of the dayCProduct Hunt page, read in October 2026. Starter Story quotes 884 upvotes; Product Hunt recounts votes over time.[3, 1]
Hacker News launch, 27 January 2023147 points, 120 commentsCShow HN thread. The founder answered most questions himself.[4]
Chrome Web Store users100,000 from November 2023 to December 2024; 200,000 in February and October 2026CStore listing, read live and in Wayback copies. The store rounds user counts down to a band. Ratings grew from 257 in November 2023 to 861 in October 2026, average 4.0 of 5.[5, 6]
Users claimed by the companymore than 500,000CHome page in May 2025 and October 2026: "Trusted by 500,000+ users worldwide". The company's own count across Chrome, iOS and Android, not checked.[7, 8]
Monthly website traffic, May 20246.6 million visitsDStarter Story estimate. The site publishes every summary as a web page, which is what brings this traffic.[1]
Price of the paid planUS$4.95 a month in May 2024; US$9.99 a month or US$59.99 a year in October 2026CMay 2024 from Starter Story (grade D); October 2026 from the App Store listing's in-app purchases.[1, 10]
Outside fundingnone reportedDNo source read for this page reports an investment round. GetLatka lists none. This is an absence of a report, not a statement by the company.[2]
Time from launch to the headline estimate16 monthscalcCalculated: January 2023 to May 2024.[1, 3]

How to read this table: a grade D value is a third-party estimate (Starter Story, GetLatka) or a single founder statement, not checked by anyone else. A grade C value is a founder statement in a public thread, or a count read on the company's own pages or store listings. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it. No value is grade A or B.

Eightify prices in October 2026, read from the App Store listing's in-app purchases and the Chrome Web Store FAQ (grade C); the website has no pricing page. The May 2024 row is a historical price from Starter Story (grade D)
PlanPer month, billed yearly (US$)Per month, billed monthly (US$)Limit
Free trial007 days, unlimited summaries, then a paid plan
Pro (App Store in-app purchase)5.009.99unlimited summaries; US$59.99 a year
Pro, May 2024 (historical)3.954.95Starter Story; free plan then had 3 summaries a week

The Chrome Web Store FAQ says the extension offers a 7-day free trial with unlimited summaries, then a paid subscription. The App Store lists two in-app purchases: Eightify Pro at US$9.99 a month or US$59.99 a year, which is US$5.00 a month. Starter Story wrote in May 2024 that the free plan then gave three summaries a week for videos up to 30 minutes, and that the paid plan cost US$4.95 a month or US$3.95 a month billed yearly, so the price has roughly doubled.

02

The timeline

From a waiting-list page in December 2022 to an estimated US$45,000 a month in May 2024, then two store listings with 200,000 Chrome users in 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

  1. 30 December 2022CThe site eightify.app is a waiting list: "Boost 8x YouTube productivity, AI-powered video summaries, Get early access", signed Rational Expressions, Inc. [8]
  2. 17 January 2023CLaunch on Product Hunt. Kataev writes that he built the prototype in two days, worked one and a half months more, and that OpenAI GPT-3 is under the hood. Fourth of the day with 484 points. [3]
  3. 27 January 2023CShow HN: 147 points, 120 comments. Prices are packages of summaries; subscriptions are a week away. He pays OpenAI US$0.10 to US$0.90 per video and limits use with a Google login so that he does not, in his words, wake up bankrupt. [4]
  4. 16 March 2023CHe posts a page of Y Combinator videos summarized by GPT on Hacker News: the first public summary pages, which later became the search traffic source. [4]
  5. 5 July 2023CHe posts explore.eightify.app on Hacker News, an encyclopedia of summaries with AI-generated illustrations. [4]
  6. November 2023CThe Chrome Web Store shows 100,000 users and 257 ratings. [6]
  7. 8 May 2024DStarter Story publishes its breakdown: an estimated US$45,000 a month, 3 employees (estimate), 6.6 million monthly visits, US$4.95 a month for the paid plan. [1]
  8. June 2024CThe home page offers the extension for Chrome, with an iOS app and Safari as other options. [8]
  9. December 2024CThe Chrome Web Store still shows 100,000 users, now with 630 ratings. [6]
  10. May 2025CThe home page says "Trusted by 500,000+ users worldwide" and links to iOS and Android apps. [8]
  11. July 2025DGetLatka estimates US$550,000 a year and counts 5 employees on LinkedIn, with Dmytro Tymoshenko as chief executive. [2]
  12. 13 November 2025CExtension version 1.643 is published. The listing says summaries are powered by Claude and ChatGPT and offers a 7-day free trial. [5]
  13. October 2026CThe Chrome Web Store shows 200,000 users and 861 ratings; the App Store sells Pro at US$9.99 a month. [5, 10]
03

Why it worked

Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.

01

Speed

ChatGPT appeared on 30 November 2022. The waiting list was up by 30 December, the extension was on Product Hunt on 17 January and on Hacker News ten days later. The founder wrote on Hacker News that a free competitor's public release made him nervous and hurried him to finish. In his first comments he was already changing prices every two days.

02

The hard part is before the model

The founder wrote on Hacker News that 80% of his time went into preprocessing the transcript before sending it to GPT, because a raw transcript pasted into a model gives a bad summary. The pipeline splits the transcript, summarizes each part, summarizes the summaries for chapter names and summarizes again for a title. That work is what a copy of the idea cannot skip.

03

Every summary becomes a web page

From March 2023 the site published summaries as public pages, first for Y Combinator videos, then as an encyclopedia. Starter Story wrote in May 2024 that the site drew 6 million visitors a month by turning summaries into search-optimized articles, and that the business had grown from launch posts to organic Chrome Web Store traffic and press. Starter Story is an estimate, but the summary pages are visible in the site's own footer today.

04

Pay per use, then subscriptions, then a doubled price

At launch the founder sold packages of 20, 60 or 180 summaries, as he wrote on Hacker News in January 2023. Starter Story reported a US$4.95 monthly subscription in May 2024. The App Store listing in October 2026 shows US$9.99 a month or US$59.99 a year, with a 7-day trial instead of a permanent free plan. The company sells the same account on Chrome, iPhone and Android.

How it was built

These details come from the founder's Hacker News comments in January 2023 (grade C), the Starter Story breakdown of May 2024 (grade D) and the current store listings (grade C). [4, 1, 5, 10]

  • The extension downloads YouTube subtitles with the youtube-transcript-api Python library, splits the transcript into parts, summarizes each part with OpenAI's davinci-003 model and then summarizes the summaries, the method OpenAI described for summarizing books. About 15% of videos had no subtitles; OpenAI Whisper took minutes per video, so it was put off.
  • Starter Story lists the stack as a Chrome extension in TypeScript, a React front end, a Python and Flask back end, Postgres, Docker, GitLab, Metabase for analytics, AWS for hosting and Stripe for payments.
  • A Google login was added in a hurry at launch so that free use could be limited; the founder wrote that without a limit he could wake up bankrupt from model costs.
  • The Chrome Web Store listing in October 2026 says the summaries are powered by Claude and ChatGPT, and the extension ships in 52 languages. Apps for iPhone and Android share the account; the App Store lists Rational Expressions, Inc. as the seller.
  • Every summary is also published as a web page on eightify.app, which is the search channel. Starter Story estimated 6.6 million monthly visits in May 2024.
  • The founder wrote on Hacker News that Twitter banned his ads account when he tried to run an ad with a video of Elon Musk; the launch channels were Product Hunt, Hacker News and Reddit.

Tools named in the sources

Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.

04

The dead that came before

Five companies in the Loot Drop database sold automatic summaries or digests of other people's content before language models could write one. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

Died 2009 to 2013Burned US$2M

Wavii

The promise

A personal news feed with summaries written by natural language processing.

Why it died

No path to revenue; Google bought the team in 2013 and shut the product.

Died 2012 to 2017Burned US$15M

Prismatic

The promise

A personalized news feed built by algorithms from your interests and social accounts.

Why it died

User growth stopped, advertising did not pay, and Google and Facebook built the same feed into their own products.

Died 2011 to 2015Burned US$5.5M

Circa

The promise

News broken into short facts you can follow on a phone.

Why it died

Larger outlets copied the format; the company could not build an advertising business and the backers stopped funding it.

Ran Out of CashLoot Drop entry ↗
Died 2014 to 2018Burned US$2.5M

Snowball

The promise

A real-time personalized news feed from many sources.

Why it died

Nothing beyond aggregation, no way to charge, and readers moved to social media for news.

Died 2012 to 2019Burned US$5.5M

Nuzzel

The promise

The news your friends share, pulled from Twitter and Facebook.

Why it died

It depended on two platforms' APIs and died when those platforms offered the same thing for free.

What changed

Each of the five promised to save the reader time on other people's content. Each needed a large funded team to build the summarizing or ranking technology, and none could charge the reader, so they lived on advertising or on hope of a sale. Wavii's natural language processing could not write a summary a person would pay for; Circa paid journalists to write its short facts by hand.

Two things changed. First, a general language model made a readable summary a function call that costs cents, as the founder wrote on Hacker News in January 2023 when he quoted US$0.10 to US$0.90 per video. The hard part moved to splitting the transcript and asking the right questions, which one engineer can do. Second, the extension sits on the page where the need appears, the YouTube video itself, and asks for money at that moment, so readers who never paid Prismatic or Nuzzel pay Eightify, if Starter Story's estimate of US$45,000 a month in May 2024 is right. The same dependence remains: YouTube owns the page, and Google could add a summary button of its own.

05

Can one person copy it now?

The timing, no. The pattern, yes.

A YouTube summarizer in January 2023 was a short opening; there are dozens now, and the Chrome Web Store shows them next to Eightify. The pattern is still open: put a model's output exactly where the user already is, charge from the first day, and publish every output as a public page that search engines index. Starter Story estimated the result at US$45,000 a month in May 2024; no founder figure confirms it.

Where it is still open: Any long content people skim: lectures, earnings calls, meeting recordings, podcasts on platforms other than YouTube, and long documents inside the tools where people read them.

  1. 1Pick one place where people lose time on long content and build the button there, not a separate site.
  2. 2Spend the engineering time on preprocessing and prompt structure, not on the model; the founder said 80% of his time went there.
  3. 3Charge per use at launch, then move to a subscription once you know the cost per use.
  4. 4Publish each generated result as a page with a stable address, so the product markets itself through search.

What to watch

The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.

What is not verified

The headline figure of about US$45,000 a month rests on one source: Starter Story's breakdown page dated 8 May 2024, which is marked "Estimated from public sources" and lists eightify.app as its only source. GetLatka's estimate of about US$550,000 a year in July 2025 agrees with it, but GetLatka also says the company has not published its revenue, and an estimate that agrees with an estimate is not a measurement. Neither founder has published a revenue figure in any source read for this page; the Product Hunt and Hacker News comments from January 2023 give prices and costs, not revenue. A reader could look for a TrustMRR or Stripe-verified profile (none existed in October 2026), a founder interview with dated figures, or a press report. One more note: a listing on the Microns marketplace dated 28 July 2025 offered an unnamed "first-to-market AI-powered YouTube summarizer delivered via Chrome extension and mobile apps", founded in 2023, for sale, with US$39,000 in monthly recurring revenue and 8,100 subscribers. The listing names no company, so this page does not attribute it to Eightify.

The headcount is an estimate too

Starter Story's 3 employees in May 2024 is marked as an estimate, and GetLatka's 5 employees in July 2025 is a LinkedIn count. The company's own pages name two people, Kataev as co-founder and Tymoshenko as chief executive.

The platform can add the button

Every predecessor on this page died when a platform offered the same thing for free. YouTube already shows AI summaries on some videos, and Google could show them on all. Eightify's answers are the transcript, the comment summary, the phone apps and the languages.

Store user counts are bands

The Chrome Web Store shows 100,000 users for thirteen months and then 200,000; it rounds down to a band and says nothing about paying users. The company's 500,000+ figure is its own and covers three platforms.

Subscription complaints

App Store reviews include a one-star complaint about a yearly subscription that kept renewing after cancellation attempts. One review is not a pattern, but a yearly plan sold through a 7-day trial is where such complaints start.

Sources

The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.

  1. D Starter Story: Eightify breakdown, dated 8 May 2024, marked "Estimated from public sources"
    Read in full. A third-party estimate of revenue, employees, traffic and starting costs; also quotes the May 2024 prices and the launch channels. Its only listed source is eightify.app.
  2. D GetLatka company page: Eightify revenue 2025, estimate
    Read in full. A third-party estimate of yearly revenue (July 2025), with a LinkedIn headcount and the chief executive's name.
  3. C Product Hunt: Eightify, AI YouTube Summary, launch of 17 January 2023 with the founder's maker comments
    Read in full, including the maker's introduction and his replies. Source for the launch date, the rank, the points and the two-day prototype.
  4. C Hacker News: Show HN: YouTube Summaries Using GPT, 27 January 2023, and the founder's later submissions (user ax8080)
    Read in full through the Hacker News Algolia API, which serves the same thread as JSON. Source for the launch prices, model costs, pipeline, login limit and the March and July 2023 summary pages.
  5. C Chrome Web Store: Eightify, AI YouTube Summarizer, read 23 October 2026
    Read in full. Source for the user count, ratings, version, update date, developer address, free trial and the models named.
  6. C Wayback Machine copies of the Chrome Web Store listing: 14 November 2023, 31 May 2024, 17 December 2024 and 8 February 2026
    Read the user count, ratings and update date in each copy.
  7. C Eightify home page, read 23 October 2026
    Read in full. Source for the 500,000+ users claim, the feature list, the phone apps and the company name in the footer. Purpose gate: nothing about detector evasion, spam or income promises.
  8. C Wayback Machine copies of eightify.app: 30 December 2022, 3 June 2023, 1 June 2024 and 20 May 2025
    Read in full. Source for the waiting-list page before launch, the 2024 platform list and the May 2025 users claim.
  9. C Eightify author pages: Alex Kataev and Dmytro Tymoshenko
    Read both pages in full (the second is at /media/author/dmytro-tymoshenko). Company-written biographies: Kataev as co-founder and former chief technology officer of an education company, Tymoshenko as chief executive.
  10. C App Store: Eightify, AI YouTube Summarizer, read 23 October 2026
    Read in full. Source for the in-app purchase prices, the seller name, the version date and the subscription complaint.
  11. D Microns marketplace listing, 28 July 2025, archived 31 August 2025: an unnamed AI YouTube summarizer for sale
    Read in full. The listing names no company, so its figures are mentioned only in the "What is not verified" box and are not attributed to Eightify.
  12. C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startups
    Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

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