AI startups have become so ubiquitous that it’s actually possible to unintentionally found one.
That’s how Mega was born, an AI solution helping small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) develop ads and improve their website and SEO content.
Mega was founded in 2025 as a gaming business. When ChatGPT launched, the team built its own agent on the model to improve Mega’s SEO and ad content, said Co-Founder Lucas Pellan. Its traffic skyrocketed.
Other founders Pellan spoke to wanted to get their hands on the agent, too. Hearing a few people express interest was nice, said Pellan, “but then you hear it 30 to 40 times, and you go, hey, maybe we’re really on to something here.”
Smaller companies were excited by the prospect of lead-generation tools (like optimizing SEO, web design and ad creative) at a lower cost than a traditional agency model.
The video game business soon met its end, as Mega fully pivoted to providing AI-driven marketing software.
On Monday, Mega announced $11.5 million in Series A funding, led by Goodwater Capital.
Unlike the initial version, which was built solely on ChatGPT, Mega’s current agents use a variety of model providers, depending on use case.
Each agent falls into one of three categories: SEO (like writing blog posts and performing keyword research), ads (writing creative briefs and designing ad creative) and website (developing the most user-friendly design in terms of appearance and navigation).
Most AI products are tools that people have to “wrestle with,” said Pellan. Mega’s tools aim to take some of the work out of the user’s hands by fully automating the strategy development, execution and reporting. But, by definition, the process also removes a bit of user autonomy.
When a user logs into the product, said Pellan, they can see the work being done on their behalf as well as performance metrics, but they aren’t able to click in and alter any of the outcomes. For instance, instead of putting out perhaps one blog post a week, Pellan said, Mega can generate and post 10 per day – but humans aren’t reviewing the copy before it goes out onto the site.
Over half of Mega’s work is fully automated, with another 35% or so mainly automated with a human in the loop. The remaining 10% is end-to-end human production.
Most of the funding will go toward hiring on the product and software development teams to work on the next stage of the product: a sales ops agent to assist with qualifying leads and scheduling appointments. Right now, said Pellan, Mega only helps with lead generation, but it plans to build out the product so it can help throughout the process all the way through closing the deal.
The funding will also contribute to marketing and sales, said Lucas, both in terms of hiring and investing more into marketing channels.
SMBs are a big market with small budgets. But prior to AI, said Pellan, it was “really difficult” for tech companies and startups to profitably serve small businesses. Now, AI has made the market more affordable, he said, so “both parties can win.”
