Ability AI secures $1.1M to automate marketing intelligence

Ability AI, a martech startup specialising in full-cycle paid marketing automation with the help of autonomous AI agents, announced that it has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from SMRK VC as a lead investor, with the participation of other funds and angels.

Among them are such tech entrepreneurs as Anthony Venus, Catherine Dahl, Nick Bilogorskiy, Andrey Akselrod, Dominic Schiavone, Vital Laptenok, Deborah McGargle, Joseph Lemay, and Kendall Hope Tucker, who are listed as Ability AI`s investors as well. The company’s valuation is already estimated to reach $10 million.

The investment will help the company to expand the team, update product development, and release the system for public clients in the US and Europe.

Today MarTech is a booming niche with global spending estimated to reach $215 billion annually by 2027 according to a Forrester report. The rapid development of AI technologies created thousands of solutions to improve marketers' workflow, making it more effective.

Managing paid marketing campaigns often feels like dealing with a black box, from defining the right campaign strategy to continuous engagement and ongoing improvements required to get it right. This complexity limits access to successful campaigns.

Dozens of in-depth interviews with marketing pros and business owners have clearly defined the actual problems they face, including a lack of strategy and testing, unpredictable outcomes of ad campaigns, unproductive hypotheses, and a fear of mistakes. Because of the experience with poor-quality tech solutions, and a lack of understanding of AI tools` management and control, businesses are often hesitant to trust full automation.

The Ability AI startup aims to change the way people do paid marketing, to offload the most mundane actions to AI agents, and to let people focus on creative approaches and the quality of their products. The team sees the solution as a human-friendly AI assistant, while people remain the only decision-makers leading the process.

“I envision a world where people can run multiple businesses from a single device, with AI handling daily marketing decisions. This allows you to focus on strategy, product, and unique creatives. For this, new systems are needed where AI sees the full picture about your products, campaigns, and competitors, and can act within defined boundaries. The technology is here, and it's now about execution. We created Ability AI as a reliable tech tool with a clear vision, a product development roadmap, and effectively proven technology. Our agents use top tactics in paid marketing to achieve the best ROAS, revolutionising digital commerce for marketers and business owners,“ commented Eugene Vyborov, the CEO and Co-Founder of Ability AI.

The product is being launched by a seasoned tech team led by serial entrepreneur Eugene Vyborov. He is experienced in several business launches and scaling in the US market. Moreover, Eugene has extensive expertise in creating AI systems.

Ability AI SaaS platform consists of a swarm of specialised agents, responsible for strategy, content, landing pages, media buying, analytics, and overall marketing management. Each of the agents is responsible for its own area; by working together they can achieve complex goals, set up hundreds of experiments, and keep users at the forefront with the best marketing tactics.

How does it work

Campaign Strategy

You collaborate with a Strategy Agent to develop a comprehensive campaign strategy, including target audience hypotheses, value propositions, and optimal channels. The Agent researches the client's website and conducts a Q&A to finalise the strategy, then suggests experiments to validate and discover new audiences.

Experiments

You upload assets and creatives, while the AI Agent creates landing pages and product pages. The system then executes experiments by publishing ads across various channels such as Google, Meta, and others, within a defined budget.

Optimisation

Ability AI analyses preliminary results (CPA, CAC, etc.) and suggests adjustments to improve outcomes by tweaking landing pages, messaging, and creatives.

Insights

The platform reviews experiment results, learns from them, updates the strategy, and proposes new experiments with different channels, messaging, or creatives. It also provides detailed analytics for users to understand the process.

This cycle can repeat endlessly and autonomously, maintaining high ROAS. You provide only feedback and share creative ideas throughout the process.

The solution’s UX core is a Rich Agent Interface with a user-friendly interaction via chat or voice and real-time updated widgets displaying essential information.

The company has just released a Strategy Agent for beta testing, and once this testing is finished, Ability AI will introduce paid packages to access more sophisticated features. The rest of the platform is in active development, but users can already sign up to receive a priority on the waitlist. The initial system’s release is targeted at small batches of companies. 

The company is registered in Delaware, USA, and has an R&D team with strongly experienced Ukrainian specialists. Now, Ability AI is actively hiring new specialists in development and prompt engineering.

“I believe Ability AI will empower businesses by accelerating marketing effectiveness. Exciting to see what AI agents can do in such a fast-paced environment,” said Vlad Tislenko, partner at SMRK VC.

That proves the market's belief in the Ability AI potential and the martech niche, which is already being boosted by such tech solutions.