Melius bets on ad creative after a full reset

Three engineers who once worked on corporate spending software at Ramp decided the performance-marketing tool they had spent more than six months building wasn't worth keeping. They deleted it. What replaced it — a platform the New York company now calls an "agents lab for creative work" — has just drawn $25 million in total funding, according to Melius.

The raise includes a $20 million Series A led by CRV and a $5 million seed round led by General Catalyst. Melius announced the funding on Tuesday.

From ad spend to ad assets

The original premise, per co-founder Joowon Kim, was an AI-powered performance marketing tool — software aimed at helping marketers manage and optimize where their money went. The team spent more than six months building it, then concluded the idea didn't "have legs," Kim told TechCrunch.

Rather than iterate, the founders chose what they describe as a much larger opportunity: generating the creative assets and campaigns themselves. That decision meant abandoning the code they had already written.

"We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it."

— Joowon Kim, co-founder of Melius

Nearly a year after that initial launch, the company revealed a platform it describes as an agents lab for creative work. Melius positions the product around ad campaigns, images, and videos — the raw material of marketing rather than the budget layer underneath it.

A crowded field of generators

Melius is not alone in chasing agencies, marketers, and brands that want AI help producing creative work. Kim pointed to Higgsfield, valued at $5.4 billion in August, as one of the more visible competitors. He also named smaller startups including Krea and Flora AI.

Higgsfield, a three-year-old company, has crossed $700 million in annualized revenue, and Kim readily grants that it "is growing like mad." His answer to that is market size: he argues the category is wide enough to hold multiple players.

"There are a lot of players, which is pretty exciting," he told TechCrunch. "That means there are customers to be won and there is demand in this space."

Melius itself claims to have reached more than $1 million in annualized revenue within two months of coming out of stealth in July. Kim acknowledges the company did not hit it out of the park when it first launched over a year ago.

• $20 million Series A led by CRV
• $5 million seed round led by General Catalyst
• $25 million in total funding announced
• More than $1 million in annualized revenue claimed within two months of emerging from stealth in July
• Higgsfield valued at $5.4 billion in August
• Higgsfield has hit over $700 million in annualized revenue

Three engineers, one shared employer

The founding team — Joowon Kim, Young Kim, and Arnav Ramu — met while working as engineers at Ramp, the corporate spending and finance software company. The New York base and the enterprise-software pedigree are the only through-lines from the scrapped product to the current one.

The pivot was not a refactor. According to Kim, the old codebase is simply gone, and the company moved quickly onto an entirely new build.

Why a former vlogger builds ad tools

Kim describes himself as a social media influencer, and he traces the interest back further than the startup. He says he has been passionate about making short videos since elementary school and once hoped to become a famous YouTuber.

"I tried my best to make vlogs," he said. "My dad was great at using FinalCut Pro, but I wasn't."

The vlogs never took off, but the fascination with digital media stayed. Melius, in his telling, is the tool he wanted then: a platform where anyone — including experienced creative directors — can turn an idea into a finished asset using plain language.

What the funding is for

The source account does not detail how Melius will spend the new capital, what headcount it plans to add, or which specific product milestones it intends to hit next. What is disclosed is the round structure, the investors, and the revenue claim.

The Series A was led by CRV; General Catalyst led the seed. Both rounds are counted in the $25 million total the company announced.

The timing of the reveal

Melius emerged from stealth in July, per the company, and the funding announcement came Tuesday — roughly two months later by its own revenue framing. The platform reveal came nearly a year after the company's initial launch, which is when the original performance-marketing product was still the plan.

That gap is the story's spine: a year of building, six-plus months on a product the founders discarded, and a second act built from scratch.

What this suggests for buyers of ad tech

For marketers and agencies weighing AI creative tools, the Melius raise is one more data point in a category that already has a heavily funded leader in Higgsfield and a cluster of smaller entrants like Krea and Flora AI. Kim's own read is that demand is broad enough to absorb them all, though that is a founder's assessment rather than an independently verified market measurement.

The practical implication is a buyer's market forming around generative creative work, with vendors competing on output quality, workflow, and price rather than on whether the capability exists at all. Teams evaluating these platforms may find more options than they can reasonably trial.

For founders, the more instructive detail may be the reset itself: a funded company with a shipped product chose to discard its codebase rather than defend it. That is a costly decision to make once, and it puts pressure on the replacement product to justify the write-off. Whether Melius's revenue claim holds up over a longer window than two months is the number to watch.