Ex-Ramp engineers raise $20M for platform Melius after scrapping their first product

Melius has closed on $25 million in total funding, led by a $20 million Series A from CRV and a $5 million seed round from General Catalyst. The startup says it passed $1 million in annualized revenue within two months of coming out of stealth in July. That’s a fast start. But the path there was messy.

When Melius first launched more than a year ago, co-founders Joowon Kim, Young Kim, and Arnav Ramu were building an AI tool for performance marketing. The three had met as engineers at Ramp. After more than six months on that first product, they decided it didn’t have legs. So they did something most founders only threaten to do: they scrapped the entire codebase.

The pivot shifted the company away from helping marketers manage ad spend and toward building the creative itself. Melius now pitches its product as an “agents lab for creative work,” aimed at generating ad campaigns, images, and videos. The company revealed that new platform nearly a year after its original launch.

It’s also entering a crowded field. Kim pointed to Higgsfield, along with smaller players such as Krea and Flora AI, as competition. He isn’t spooked. In his view, the market is big enough for several winners, especially if customer demand keeps growing the way he thinks it will. That’s the bet behind a lot of AI startups right now: not that they’ll be alone, but that there’s room to fight.

Kim’s personal angle is a little more unusual. He says he’s long been obsessed with short videos and once wanted to be a famous YouTuber. The old vlogs didn’t take off, but the impulse clearly stuck. With Melius, he’s building a tool for turning plain-language ideas into finished creative work, even for people who already know what they’re doing.