Ramp Veterans Launch Melius After Ditching First Idea, Raise $25M for AI Creative Platform

Melius, which uses artificial intelligence to produce advertising campaigns, images, and videos, announced Tuesday that it has secured $25 million across two funding rounds: a $20 million Series A led by CRV and a $5 million seed round backed by General Catalyst.

The New York startup has already achieved more than $1 million in annualized revenue just two months after exiting stealth mode in July, according to co-founder Joowon Kim. However, he acknowledges that the company's path to success was not straightforward from the beginning.

From Performance Marketing to Creative Generation

When Melius first launched over a year ago, Kim and his co-founders Young Kim and Arnav Ramu—all former engineers at Ramp, the corporate spending and finance software platform—set out to develop an AI-driven performance marketing solution. After more than six months of development, however, the team concluded their original concept lacked viability.

Rather than continuing with a tool designed to help marketers manage and optimize advertising budgets, the founders pivoted to what they believed represented a substantially larger market opportunity: creating the actual creative assets and campaigns themselves.

We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it

Joowon Kim

The team rebuilt from scratch, and nearly a year after its initial launch, Melius unveiled a new platform it describes as an "agents lab for creative work."

Navigating a Crowded Market

Melius operates in an increasingly competitive space. Higgsfield, a three-year-old competitor, was valued at $5.4 billion in August and has generated over $700 million in annualized revenue. Other rivals include Krea and Flora AI.

Kim remains unfazed by the competitive landscape. While he acknowledges that Higgsfield "is growing like mad," he contends that the overall market is expansive enough to support multiple successful players.

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

Joowon Kim

A Founder's Personal Mission

Kim, who identifies as a social media influencer, traces his motivation for building Melius back to childhood. He has harbored a passion for creating short-form video content since elementary school and once aspired to become a successful YouTuber.

"I tried my best to make vlogs," he explained. "My dad was great at using FinalCut Pro, but I wasn't." Those early attempts at vlogging never gained traction, yet his interest in digital media production persisted.

Through Melius, Kim is now developing the solution he always needed: a platform that allows anyone—from novice creators to experienced creative directors—to transform their concepts into finished work using natural language instructions.