Poly is stepping back into the spotlight with a new identity. The YC-backed startup has relaunched as a cloud-hosted file storage platform that brings fast AI search right into your daily workflow. Instead of connecting a dozen services and digging through scattered folders, Poly wants you to drop everything in one place and simply ask for what you need.
The new version of Poly starts with a generous offer. Every user gets 100GB of free storage at signup. The idea is to remove the usual limits that come with free storage tiers so people can start using the tool as a real working space instead of a small temporary drive.
This relaunch marks Poly’s second life. The company started in 2022 when founders Abhay Agarwal and Sam Young built a tool that let people create 3D assets from text prompts. That product got early attention after going through Y Combinator, but the market shifted much faster than the team expected. Startups in the AI asset space raised enormous amounts of money, and Poly realized it needed to rethink its future.
Agarwal said the turning point came when the team spoke directly with users. Many creators shared the same frustration. They had files everywhere, and they struggled to find anything at the moment they needed it. Their file systems were cluttered, confusing, and impossible to keep organized. That gap inspired the team to shut down the original version of Poly in 2023 and rebuild the product from scratch.
The new Poly has been in stealth for months and is now open to the public after a private beta. You can use it on the web or on a Mac, and a Windows app is already on the way. People who joined the waitlist will start getting access today as the team begins onboarding.
Poly also raised fresh capital to support the relaunch. The startup secured an eight-million-dollar seed round led by Felicis. Other investors include Bloomberg Beta, NextView, Figma Ventures, AI Grant, Wing Ventures, and MVP Ventures. This total also includes the three-point-nine million dollars Poly raised back in 2022.
Investors say Poly is bringing file systems back into focus. The platform treats your files as the center of your thinking instead of a messy afterthought. It lets you upload content, ask questions, scan for context, tag things, summarize information, and even translate documents. Because Poly understands the content inside each file, you no longer have to remember exact names or folder paths. You just ask for what you want.
Right now, Poly supports text files, PDFs, office documents, images, audio, video, and web files. You can even paste a link to a page or a YouTube video and get a quick summary. The tool can also rename files, create new folders, and maintain structure automatically. This gives people the feeling of having a smart assistant inside their file system.
Agarwal sees Poly as a more powerful version of Google’s NotebookLM. NotebookLM helps people organize files inside a project and generate insights. Poly does that too, but the focus is on deeper organization and stronger search. It does not yet offer the ability to generate audio or video insights, and it does not have access to the latest information on the web, but those features are on the roadmap.
The next wave of updates is already in development. The team is adding web search, styled reports, a markdown and text editor, and custom metadata. Poly also plans to let users paste Google Docs links without downloading anything. Another upcoming feature will let people use AI agents to run calculations and analyze spreadsheets.
People who work in teams will also find new collaboration tools. You can create shared drives, upload documents, and invite others to explore the files or ask questions. Soon, Poly will also support direct sharing of individual files or folders.
The competition is strong. Dropbox and Google Drive both offer search features inside their storage systems. But early users say Poly’s search feels faster and more accurate. During testing, Poly also handled YouTube links better and returned summaries more reliably than other tools.
One of the biggest selling points is still the storage. One hundred gigabytes of free space is far more than what the major cloud drive services offer. Paid plans start at ten dollars a month for two terabytes, which gives heavy users enough room to store full projects. While Poly does not yet offer direct photo syncing, the team is open to building photo-focused features in the future. If that happens, Poly could become a real alternative to Google Photos for people who want smarter search.
Despite the generous storage, the company says early beta testers did not treat Poly as an archive. Instead, many used it as a working drive for active projects. Content creators, researchers, consultants, and support teams all used Poly to gather large amounts of data and ask fast questions about it. One common example was a support executive uploading customer calls and scanning for insights.
Poly also offers a Model Context Protocol server. This lets people connect the platform to AI tools such as ChatGPT or Cursor. The integration makes it easier to use your files as part of a conversation with an AI model. Even though Poly does not directly sync with external drives for now, the team plans to support virtual references, which would allow the platform to import files from other services without manually uploading everything.
Poly is positioning itself as a home for people who use AI in daily work and need a smarter way to organize their digital lives. With fast search, generous storage, and a growing set of tools, the platform wants to make file systems feel simple again.
