AI Tech / news
Melius Raises $25M for AI Ad-Creative Platform After Scrapping Its First Product
The New York startup has pulled in $25 million across a Series A and seed round for an AI platform that generates ad campaigns, images and videos, after abandoning its original performance-marketing tool.
Melius, a New York-based company building AI software for advertising creative, has raised $25 million in total funding, made up of a $20 million Series A led by CRV and a $5 million seed round led by General Catalyst. The company announced the raise on Tuesday.
Co-founder Joowon Kim said Melius has passed $1 million in annualized revenue within two months of emerging from stealth in July, though he acknowledged the business did not take off immediately.
The company was started more than a year ago by Kim and fellow co-founders Young Kim and Arnav Ramu, who met while working as engineers at Ramp, the corporate spending and finance software company.
Their first product was an AI-powered performance marketing tool designed to help marketers manage and optimize ad spend. After more than six months of development, the founders concluded the idea did not hold up and dismantled the codebase entirely, Kim said, describing the decision to burn the work rather than build on it.
The team then shifted to what it viewed as a larger opportunity: software that produces the creative assets and campaigns themselves. Nearly a year after its initial launch, Melius introduced a platform it characterizes as an agents lab for creative work, spanning ad campaigns, images and videos.