Melius, an artificial intelligence platform designed to help users generate advertising campaigns, images, and video content, announced it has secured $25 million in total funding. The round includes a $20 million Series A led by CRV and a $5 million seed investment from General Catalyst.
Although the New York-based startup reports achieving over $1 million in annualized revenue within two months of leaving stealth mode in July, co-founder Joowon Kim acknowledged that the company did not find immediate success with its initial concept.
Kim, along with co-founders Young Kim and Arnav Ramu, originally launched the company more than a year ago with a focus on building an AI-driven tool for performance marketing. The trio met while working as engineers at Ramp, a corporate finance and spending management software provider. However, after spending more than six months developing the product, they concluded that the idea lacked sufficient long-term potential.
“We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it,” Kim told TechCrunch. Rather than continuing to build tools for managing and optimizing ad spend, the team shifted their focus to a larger market opportunity: creating the creative assets and campaigns themselves. Within nearly a year of the original launch, Melius revealed its reimagined platform, which the company describes as an “agents lab for creative work.”
The ad technology space is crowded, with well-funded competitors such as Higgsfield, which reached a $5.4 billion valuation in August after raising $400 million in Series B. Other notable players include Krea and Flora AI. Kim noted that Higgsfield, which reportedly generates over $700 million in annualized revenue, is “growing like mad,” but expressed confidence that the market is large enough to support multiple entrants.
“There are a lot of players, which is pretty exciting,” Kim said. “That means there are customers to be won and there is demand in this space.”
Kim, who identifies as a social media influencer, has been interested in video production since elementary school and once aspired to become a prominent YouTuber. He cited his difficulty in using editing software like FinalCut Pro, despite his father’s proficiency, as a key motivation for building Melius.
“I tried my best to make vlogs,” he recalled. “My dad was great at using FinalCut Pro, but I wasn’t.”
Today, Kim aims to build the tool he wished he had earlier—a platform that allows anyone, from seasoned creative directors to beginners, to transform their ideas into reality using natural language.
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