The New York-based startup emerged from stealth in July and says it has already hit more than $1 million in annualized revenue within two months. But co-founder Joowon Kim acknowledged that Melius did not start strong.
When the company first launched over a year ago, Kim and co-founders Young Kim and Arnav Ramu set out to build an AI-powered performance marketing tool. More than six months into development, they concluded their original idea did not "have legs," Kim told TechCrunch.
Instead of helping marketers manage and optimize ad spend, the team turned to what it saw as a larger opportunity: tools that generate the creative assets and campaigns themselves. "We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it," Kim said.
Nearly a year after its initial launch, Melius revealed a platform it describes as an "agents lab for creative work," where users can describe ideas in plain language to produce ad campaigns, images or videos.
Melius enters a crowded field. Competitors include Higgsfield, which was valued at $5.4 billion in August and has surpassed $700 million in annualized revenue, as well as smaller startups such as Krea and Flora AI. Kim acknowledged that Higgsfield "is growing like mad" but said the size of the market allows for multiple winners. "There are a lot of players, which is pretty exciting," he said. "That means there are customers to be won and there is demand in this space."
Kim, who describes himself as a social media influencer and says he dreamed of becoming a YouTuber as a child, said the product builds on a long personal fascination with making digital media.