Former Ramp Engineers Pivot to AI Ad Creation Platform Melius, Securing $25M Funding

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Melius, founded by ex-Ramp engineers, pivoted from ad spend optimization to AI-driven creative asset generation, raising $25 million and surpassing $1 million annualized revenue shortly after launch.

Melius, an AI-powered platform for generating advertising campaigns, images, and videos, recently announced a $25 million funding round, including a $20 million Series A led by CRV and a $5 million seed from General Catalyst. The New York-based startup's founding team consists of former engineers from Ramp, the corporate spending and finance software company.

Initially launched over a year ago, Melius first aimed to develop an AI tool to help marketers manage and optimize ad spend. However, after more than six months of development, the founders—Joowon Kim, Young Kim, and Arnav Ramu—concluded that the original product lacked strong market potential. As a result, the team made the decisive move to discard their initial codebase entirely and pivoted towards building tools focused on generating creative advertising assets and campaigns directly.

This strategic shift led to the unveiling of Melius’ new platform nearly a year after the original launch. The company describes it as an “agents lab for creative work,” enabling users, including experienced creative directors, to transform ideas into visual campaigns using natural language inputs.

Melius operates in a competitive landscape that includes well-established startups like Higgsfield, valued at $5.4 billion with over $700 million in annualized revenue, as well as smaller players such as Krea and Flora AI. Despite fierce competition, Melius’ co-founder Joowon Kim expresses confidence in the vast market opportunity, emphasizing the strong customer demand for AI-driven creative generation solutions.

The founders’ backgrounds as former Ramp engineers and Kim’s personal interest in digital media and video creation underpin their vision for Melius. Kim, who has long been passionate about short video production and digital content, aims to empower a broad range of users to efficiently create high-quality marketing content through AI-assisted tools.

Within two months of coming out of stealth mode in July, Melius reportedly exceeded $1 million in annualized revenue, a promising early sign of market traction. The company’s successful pivot and recent funding underscore the growing investor and market interest in AI platforms that streamline creative production in advertising and marketing sectors.