“The higher the algorithm’s accuracy, the more autonomous the process.” The team of Ukrainian startup Zeely on investment and the new phase of Zeely 2.0

On May 26, the Ukrainian AI startup Zeely became the winner of an international startup competition held by Deel and J.P. Morgan in Paris. As a result of the contest, Deel is investing $1 million in the company.

The competition attracted over 50,000 startups from around the world. 84 companies reached the final, and Zeely took first place. 

AIN spoke with the startup team and learned about the details of this deal, the next generation of the core product Zeely 2.0 and how the product competes on the market.

Deel invests $1M as a result of the competition. Under what terms is the money coming in?

We are currently in the process of legally finalizing the deal, so we are not disclosing the terms yet. 

We can say the main thing: for us this is not just money, but a strategic partnership. Winning a competition where more than 50,000 startups competed for 84 final spots, and the jury included partners from funds like Andreessen Horowitz and Tencent, — is first and foremost a validation of our vision of an AI Marketing Intelligence Platform on a global level.

You mentioned this $1M is part of a larger round for Zeely 2.0. What is the total target of that round, who else is joining, and what stage are you at now?

After the competition we received a lot of useful contacts and interest from investors and partners. Unfortunately, we can’t disclose details at this stage — but we’ll be happy to provide an update and share news after some time.

What we can share now is the vision for how these funds will be used. The prize from Deel will become part of a global investment in developing Zeely 2.0. We are building a product that covers the full cycle — create, launch and scale performance marketing with AI — and we are adding an agentic layer inside the product to coordinate this cycle. 

We are also expanding content types: now Zeely can generate not only performance creatives but also viral and organic UGC-style video formats. Our goal is for Zeely to be the platform from which businesses launch and track paid and organic campaigns, receive insights and automate their marketing process.

Tell us more about Zeely 2.0. Is it a spin-off of your main product or a separate project?

Zeely 2.0 is the next generation of our core product. 

Zeely started as an app that helps an entrepreneur create creatives and launch ads without an agency or technical skills. Zeely 2.0 is an evolution into a full-fledged AI Marketing Intelligence platform (web + mobile + agentic layer) that does more than automate creatives and launches: it works as the marketing brain of a business — it analyzes what works, generates hypotheses, tests them and scales the winners. 

All users will receive this within the same product, and simultaneously we are developing the platform toward B2B — for companies with established marketing teams and processes — adding more control and advanced features to the core functionality.

You also said Zeely 2.0 will be able to “make marketing decisions instead of the team.” How does that work technically? Does the AI get direct access to client budgets in ad accounts and decide how much to spend on a given hypothesis?

At the current stage Zeely is a platform that allows users to create marketing creatives, launch them in paid and organic campaigns and analyze their results. 

The next stage is our vision for Zeely 2.0. We are moving evolutionarily: the higher the accuracy of our algorithm, the more autonomous the process becomes. The agent will coordinate the full cycle — it will analyze what works, propose which hypotheses to test and what to scale, and execute those decisions after confirmation. 

Regarding budgets — control always remains with the client: the user defines the boundaries of autonomy — what the agent can do independently and what only with their confirmation.

And we ourselves are the first client of this technology: our team already works with an internal AI agent, and it will soon become available to our users.

Zeely began as a mobile app for microbusiness. How do you plan to compete with other developers who are on this market?

Two things set us apart. First — we cover the full cycle in one product: AI generates UGC-style videos and creatives and immediately launches and optimizes them in both paid and organic campaigns — and the list of platforms the product supports is constantly expanding. Most competitors cover only part of this chain.

Second — a high concentration of digital performance marketing experience within the team. This is the result of a team with many years of experience in performance marketing and super-talented specialists in paid acquisition, creative marketing and AI generation. This team is our main treasure.

Which countries will you primarily focus on?

The key market remains the US — that’s where our largest audience is. The next step with Zeely 2.0 is a full launch to the global market with support for multiple languages and audiences.

An AI Marketing Intelligence platform needs large datasets to make decisions. What datasets is your AI trained on and how do you address data privacy?

Zeely works with two types of customer data: brand assets and creatives uploaded by the client, and performance data from connected ad accounts. We access them only through the official authorization flows of the platforms and operate fully within their policies. 

The key principle is the separation between data levels: an aggregated anonymized layer (general patterns that work in the market) makes the platform smarter for everyone, while a specific client’s data — their Brand DNA, funnel, accumulated creative and performance insights — operates on a personal level.

You already have over 170 people on the team and plan active hiring. Why did you choose to expand your own engineering and marketing team instead of automating internal processes? A related question: which specialists are you prioritizing in hiring now?

Zeely is one of the most AI-native teams in the ecosystem. Our engineers write over 60% of code with AI, product and design teams prototype with AI, and our own marketing runs through the same agentic workflows we sell to users. But our ambition is to become the #1 product in our category, and such products are built by people. 

The main treasure of Zeely is over 200 talented specialists in performance marketing, AI & Creativity and engineering, and growth of more than six times year-on-year requires the strongest people on board.

We are growing more than 6x year-on-year, and now we are forming the team that will define the company’s next stage of development. Primarily we are strengthening Growth, because we are building a product at the intersection of Product, AI and Performance Marketing that rethinks the process of creating, testing and scaling paid ads.

So right now our priorities are specialists in Product Management, Performance Marketing, Creative and Analytics. We invest heavily in developing a data-driven culture, so we are also actively looking for strong Product Analysts and Marketing Analysts who will help make product decisions based on data and scale the business even faster.

In 2023 you raised $1M from Vesna.Capital, ZAS Ventures and others. How did they react to the new valuation and Deel’s entry into the cap table? Are they participating in the new round?

Our early investors have been with us since the time when Zeely was a team with an idea. They are genuinely happy about this progress: winning a competition of this level confirms the bet they made three years ago. 

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