Melius Secures $20M Series A After Pivoting Away From Initial Ad Tool
Ex-Ramp engineers raise a total of $25 million for Melius, an AI creative asset platform, after scrapping their original performance marketing codebase.
Melius, an artificial intelligence platform designed to generate advertising campaigns, images, and videos, has announced a total of $25 million in funding. This capital includes a $20 million Series A round led by CRV, alongside a prior $5苗 million seed round led by General Catalyst.
The Pivot From Performance Marketing
The New York-based startup was founded by Joowon Kim, Young Kim, and Arnav Ramu, who previously worked as engineers at corporate finance software firm Ramp. More than a year ago, the founders initially launched the company as an AI-powered performance marketing tool intended to help marketers manage and optimize ad spending.
However, after more than six months of development, the team realized the concept lacked long-term viability. Rather than persisting with the original direction, the co-founders made the decision to completely discard their existing codebase and shift their focus toward generating the actual creative assets and campaigns.
Following this pivot, Melius emerged from stealth in July with a newly positioned platform described as an "agents lab for creative work." According to the startup, this revised approach enabled the business to surpass $1 million in annualized revenue within two months of its public launch.
Market Landscape and Competitive Space
Melius operates in a crowded sector alongside other startups offering AI-driven media generation for brands, agencies, and marketers. Notable market participants include Krea, Flora AI, and Higgsfield, a larger competitor that reportedly reached over $700 million in annualized revenue and achieved a $5.4 billion valuation in August.
Despite the intense competition, co-founder Joowon Kim expressed confidence in the market's capacity to support multiple players. He noted that the expansive size of the advertising sector indicates substantial underlying demand and clear opportunities to acquire customers.
What it means for developers
For developers building multimedia applications or experimenting with generative workflows, the rapid growth of platforms like Melius highlights the strong market appetite for generative video and image tools. Developers looking to prototype or scale applications that integrate top AI models can try top AI models cheaply through one API at https://apixoai.online, providing flexible access to leading foundational architectures.
Joowon Kim’s personal background also informed the product's evolution. Describing himself as a former social media influencer with a lifelong interest in short-form video creation, Kim built Melius to serve as the tool he wished he had access to when attempting to produce digital media in his youth—allowing users to translate plain language into creative assets.
Source: Ex-Ramp engineers raise $20M for platform Melius after scrapping their first product — TechCrunch AI. Written by the Apixo team from that report.
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