Ex-Ramp Engineers Burn Their Code, Land $20M For AI Ad Startup

New York-based Melius says it passed $1 million in annualized revenue two months after launching a rebuilt product, following a scrapped first attempt.

Melius, a New York startup whose software uses AI to produce ad campaigns, images and video, said on October 6, 2026 that it has raised $25 million across two rounds: a Series A of $20 million with CRV in the lead, and an earlier $5 million seed backed by General Catalyst, according to TechCrunch.

The company says it crossed $1 million in annualized revenue roughly two months after emerging from stealth in July 2026.

Getting there took a full reset. Co-founders Joowon Kim, Young Kim and Arnav Ramu, who met as engineers at the corporate card and finance software firm Ramp, first launched more than a year ago with a tool aimed at helping marketers manage ad spending. After more than six months of development, they concluded the concept wouldn't work and threw it out. "We scrapped the entire codebase; we burned all of it," Joowon Kim told TechCrunch. The team shifted to generating the creative work itself, and now markets the product as an agents lab for creative tasks.

Melius enters a crowded field. Rival Higgsfield was valued at $5.4 billion in August 2026 and has surpassed $700 million in annualized revenue, TechCrunch reported; smaller competitors include Krea and Flora AI. Kim said the market is big enough for several winners.

This story was first reported by TechCrunch.