A reset after six months
Juwon Kim, Yeon Kim and Arnav Ramu met while working as engineers at Ramp, which makes software for corporate spending and finance. When they launched Melius more than a year ago, they wanted to build an AI marketing tool with performance-based pricing.
After more than six months, the founders concluded that the original idea had little promise, Juwon Kim told TechCrunch. They deleted the entire codebase and moved quickly to a new product. Nearly a year after the first launch, Melius introduced what it describes as an “AI agent creative lab.”
The product now focuses on creating advertising materials and campaigns, rather than managing and optimizing ad spend.
A crowded market
Melius is entering a field that already includes fast-growing Higgsfield, valued at $5.4 billion in August, and smaller startups Krea and Flora AI.
Kim says competition does not worry him. He acknowledges that three-year-old Higgsfield is growing quickly and has surpassed $700 million in annualized revenue. He argues there is room for several companies, and sees the number of players as evidence that customers and demand exist.
That is a plausible reading, but it does not show where Melius can win. The announcement, as described, gives no comparable measure of customer adoption or revenue for Melius.
The creator behind the pivot
Kim’s interest in making digital content began in elementary school, when he wanted to become a well-known YouTube creator. He tried making video blogs; his father was good at Final Cut Pro, while Kim was less skilled.
The early videos did not become popular, but the urge to create stayed with him. Kim says he is now building the tool he would have wanted: a platform where anyone, including an experienced creative director, can turn an idea into something real by describing it in ordinary language.
I think the pivot makes Melius’s ambition clearer, but the harder test is whether natural-language control can produce work that professionals would actually use. A creative tool can be easy to describe and still leave the most demanding decisions to the person at the screen.
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