MAI, a Marketing AI Agent, Raises $25 Million to Push AI as the New Operating System for Business Decisions

Global AI platform MAI recently announced the official launch of its flagship product, the "Marketing AI Agent," and has completed a $25 million seed round led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Gaorong Ventures, UpHonest Capital, and other institutions.

MAI's AI Agent autonomously manages and optimizes performance marketing, enabling small and medium-sized businesses to access the same sophisticated advertising technology as large enterprises. The MAI Agent has already helped some clients increase sales by over 40% and currently manages millions of dollars in monthly Google ad spend. This funding round will be used to expand the product and engineering teams and accelerate development of the AI Agent platform.

Building an AI Agent Army for Clients

Comprehensive Digital Advertising Optimization

"Digital advertising is one of the most important growth engines for businesses, but also one of the hardest to master," said Yuchen Wu, MAI's co-founder and CEO. "Our team previously built advertising platforms and e-commerce engines at companies like Google and Instacart, and we've seen firsthand how advanced technology can accelerate large enterprises. But these technologies have long been out of reach for SMBs — MAI was created to change that. Our Agents are now taking on much of the complex work, autonomously driving business growth so companies can focus on building their businesses."

E-commerce continues to maintain roughly 8% annualized growth, even surpassing pandemic-era peaks. At the same time, distribution channels are increasingly fragmented, and DTC brands and consumer apps face unprecedented competition. Digital advertising, particularly Google Ads, has become the primary customer acquisition channel for businesses, yet ad management is both time-consuming and opaque. Companies either pour hours each week into managing campaigns themselves or pay steep fees to outsource to agencies.

MAI addresses this pain point by fully automating Google Ads management and enabling profitable scaling. The company's AI Agent deeply integrates with all dimensions of a business's data, automatically adjusting spend, identifying opportunities, and optimizing in real-time around the clock when performance fluctuates.

"MAI has built an AI Agent army for our clients, and our most important goal is to improve their profitability through digital advertising optimization," said Jian Wang, MAI's co-founder and CTO. "Clients can achieve results comparable to a full-time expert team without adding headcount, freeing them to focus on building their business instead of constantly monitoring ads."

MAI helps businesses achieve:

• Automated Google Ads management: Fully autonomous campaign creation, monitoring, and optimization
• Real-time dynamic tuning: 24/7 intelligent control of budgets, bids, and creative assets
• Personalized business adaptation: Self-learning based on each company's unique products, customers, and goals
• Instant issue detection: Timely alerts for budget waste risks, from expired discount codes to low stock
• Efficient scale expansion: Simultaneously processing thousands of products and creative variants, enabling lean teams to handle enterprise-level complexity

Client Base Doubled in Months

"Immediate, Visible Business Impact"

Since launching early customer testing in late 2024, MAI has rapidly gained traction among DTC brands and consumer apps, doubling its client base within months. Notable brands including Dreo, DrWoof, Fanka, Flamingo, Nutrition Faktory, PatPat, Velotric, and Vivaia now rely on MAI AI Agents to manage their ad spend and revenue growth.

"Working with agencies was always expensive with murky results," said Mike Bires, CEO of Nutrition Faktory. "MAI makes advertising performance transparent and delivers immediate, visible business impact."

A Benchmark for "AI Agent + Vertical Scenario"

Leading Marketing Intelligence

" we're very bullish on the potential of AI Agents in vertical scenarios, and MAI is a standout example of this trend," said Xiaoyu Ma, Managing Director at Gaorong Ventures. "MAI's real breakthrough isn't just improving ad efficiency — it's making AI a new operating system for business decisions, integrating data, algorithms, and budget flows into a self-iterating Agent so that growth no longer depends on experience, but on a continuously optimizing intelligence loop."

Ma noted, "The MAI team possesses deep insight into the nature of AI and the path to industrial implementation — they clearly understand how intelligent systems couple with business mechanisms. This depth of understanding and execution capability gives us confidence that MAI will play a key role in the evolution of marketing intelligence."

About MAI

MAI builds AI Agents that help clients drive business growth through automated performance marketing. Global brands now manage millions of dollars in monthly digital ad spend through MAI Agents. The company was founded by AI/ML experts who previously built Google's advertising systems and led Instacart's growth marketing engineering team, and is backed by Kleiner Perkins, Gaorong Ventures, UpHonest Capital, and other investors. Learn more at mai.co.