Cuttable, the rising startup from A Cloud Guru co-founder Sam Kroonenburg, has raised $20 million in Series A funding on the promise of automated ad production — without the AI slop.
Airtree Ventures led the raise, with Square Peg, the driving force of Cuttable’s seed round, returning for the Series A. Existing investors Rampersand and Glitch Capital also contributed.
Speaking to SmartCompany from San Francisco, Kroonenburg said the raise has given Melbourne-founded Cuttable a valuation north of $142 million ($US100 million).
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Founded in 2024 by Kroonenburg, Jack White and Ed Ring, Cuttable allows brands to draft and generate new social media ads at scale.
Those ads are trained on existing creative assets, like product shots and videos, to maintain a brand’s aesthetics and tone of voice.
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Kroonenburg said the newly-relaunched platform is leveraging insights from the $370 million (US$260 million) of paid ad spending that has originated from Cuttable so far.
The platform is now expanding into “ads that learn”, with Cuttable examining Meta and TikTok ad performance, stock data from Shopify, and CRM insights to actively tell brands which ads they should publish next.
“We take what works for a brand, we turn that into new ads, and we do that from the brand’s existing photo shoots, video shoot assets. We publish them out to Meta, and then we learn from the results,” he said.
“So we bring the results back in, and then we learn, which means every time a brand publishes ads with Cuttable, they get a little bit smarter each time, which is the name of the game for driving ad performance.”
Deep dives into return on ad spend and click-through rates can highlight which hooks, messaging, and even colour treatments drive the best results, said Kroonenburg.
Yes to automation, no to AI slop
Cuttable exists into a world beset by AI slop — mass-produced AI content that can turn-off consumers — and widespread fears that sub-par AI tools could replace human creatives and marketers.
Kroonenburg said the platform is focused on making the most of the creative assets brands already have, instead of directly using AI image and video-generation technologies.
“We’re absolutely anti-AI slop as a company,” he said.
“The first thing we recognised when we started Cuttable is that brands said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this brand and I’ve got all of these assets. I’ve got Dropbox folders full of video shoots or photo shoots, and I don’t want to use generative AI to make video’.
“So, what we focus on is: ‘How do we help you use that footage to go further?’”
Human creatives and marketing leaders still have a valuable role as curators, but with Cuttable, “the human isn’t sitting there making it, they’re sitting there controlling the system.”
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Solving ads at scale
The major problem facing those creatives is the need for ads at volume: Cuttable estimates a brand must publish 42 social media ads before launching one that meaningfully increases revenue.
“You need a lot of ideas, a lot of ads, and a lot of shots on goal,” he said.
“And then the more you publish, the more likely you are to find winning ads and drive your performance.”
The thesis has won over Airtree Ventures, with partner James Cameron saying Cuttable’s growth has been “much faster than our (already very high) expectations”.
“The world of ad creative is being turned on its head by AI,” Cameron said in a statement, “and we’re excited to lead this round as Cuttable becomes the leading system that performance marketers reach for to make content work harder”.
The new funding will help the scaleup expand its teams in in Melbourne, New York and San Francisco, while enticing more brands to the stable of 450 companies already generating ads on the platform.
Prior to launching Cuttable, Kroonenburg and brother Ryan Kroonenburg sold online learning platform A Cloud Guru to US company Pluralsight in a deal worth $2 billion.