Ex-Ramp Engineers Raise $20M for AI Ad Platform Melius
Original: Ex-Ramp engineers raise $20M for platform Melius after scrapping their first product
Why This Matters
AI creative-generation tools are attracting serious capital as ad budgets shift toward automated content production.
Melius, an AI platform for generating ad campaigns and video, raised $25M total—a $20M Series A led by CRV and $5M seed from General Catalyst—after scrapping its original product and pivoting six months in.
Founded by three former Ramp engineers—Joowon Kim, Young Kim, and Arnav Ramu—New York-based Melius initially set out to build an AI-powered performance marketing tool to help marketers manage and optimize ad spend. After more than six months of development, the team concluded the idea didn't have legs. "We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it," co-founder Joowon Kim told TechCrunch. The pivot led to a fundamentally different product: what Melius now calls an "agents lab for creative work," generating ad campaigns, images, and videos from plain language prompts. The startup came out of stealth in July 2026 and claims to have surpassed $1 million in annualized revenue within two months. The $20M Series A was led by CRV, with a prior $5M seed from General Catalyst. The space is crowded—rivals include Higgsfield, valued at $5.4 billion in August with over $700M in annualized revenue, plus smaller players like Krea and Flora AI. Kim says the market is large enough to support multiple winners. Joowon Kim, who describes himself as a social media influencer, cites a lifelong passion for short-form video dating back to elementary school as motivation for the product's direction.