AI creative startup Melius has raised $25 million in total funding after abandoning its original product and rebuilding the company around tools to generate advertising campaigns, images, and videos.
The New York-based startup announced a $20 million Series A led by CRV alongside a previously raised $5 million seed round led by General Catalyst. Melius says it surpassed $1 million in annualised revenue within two months of emerging from stealth in July.
Melius rebuilt its product from scratch
Co-founders Joowon Kim, Young Kim and Arnav Ramu previously worked together as engineers at corporate finance software company Ramp. Their first idea was an AI-powered performance marketing product designed to help marketers manage and optimise advertising spend.
After more than six months of development, the founders concluded that the product did not have enough potential to justify continuing. Joowon Kim said the team discarded the entire codebase and shifted its focus from managing ad spending to creating the campaigns and assets themselves.
The resulting platform, introduced nearly a year after the company’s initial launch, is described by Melius as an “agents lab for creative work.” Users can generate advertising concepts, images and videos using natural-language instructions.
AI creative tools are becoming a crowded market
Melius is entering a market that already includes AI creative platforms such as Higgsfield, Krea and Flora AI. Higgsfield was valued at $5.4 billion in August and, according to Kim, has reached more than $700 million in annualised revenue.
Kim said the number of competitors reinforces his view that demand for AI-generated creative tools is large enough to support multiple companies. Melius is targeting both professional creative teams and people who want to produce digital media without mastering traditional editing software.
Kim’s interest in the space predates his work at Ramp. He said he began making short-form videos when he was young and once hoped to become a YouTube creator, an experience that shaped the kind of creative software he wanted Melius to build.
The startup’s pivot now puts that idea at the centre of its business: letting users turn concepts into finished creative material through plain-language instructions rather than conventional production workflows.
