AI advertising

Chinese Team Secures $25M Seed Funding from Top Silicon Valley VC, Using AI Agents to Manage $1M Monthly Ad Spend

Honghao Wang

— 4 min read
Chinese Team Secures $25M Seed Funding from Top Silicon Valley VC, Using AI Agents to Manage $1M Monthly Ad Spend

Intro: Breaking the Ad Management Bottleneck

High advertising agency fees but no transparency?

Managing Google Ads yourself feels overly complex?

MAI offers a new approach — an AI Agent that runs ads automatically 24/7, boosting average client sales by 40% and tripling profitable spend within 90 days.

Only 10% of the ad budget is charged as a fee, with full transparency and control.

Seed round led by Kleiner Perkins.

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Why small businesses underperform in ads

For SMBs, the gap isn't product quality or budget — it's the absence of a dedicated growth team.

Big companies have growth engineers monitoring every campaign in real time, quickly reacting to market shifts.

Small businesses? Often it's the founder wrestling with analytics dashboards, or paying steep agency fees for vague reports.

Result: Growth bottleneck for many good brands.

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MAI’s Origin Story

Fresh off $25M seed funding (Kleiner Perkins, Gaorong Ventures, UpHonest Capital), MAI built an AI agent that automatically manages and optimizes ads, giving SMBs enterprise-grade capabilities.

Real impact:

  • Average +40% sales growth
  • Manages millions in Google Ads monthly spend
  • Transparent, results‑driven operations

Founders:

  • Yuchen Wu: 10 years @ Google (ads ML), scaled Instacart growth tech
  • Jian Wang: e‑commerce engines @ Google, Instacart

Mission: Democratize enterprise-level marketing power via AI agents.

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The Digital Advertising Dilemma

  • Industry growth: e-commerce +8% annually
  • Main channel: Google Ads, but complex & time‑consuming
  • Competition: Fiercer than ever due to fragmented channels
  • SMB challenge: Time + expertise gap

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Two Bad Choices

Option 1: DIY Ads

  • Hours spent on bids, keywords, conversion data, targeting tests
  • Impossible to master alongside other founder duties
  • Risk of burning budget without results
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Option 2: Hire an Agency

  • High % fees, incentives misaligned
  • Opaque results & unclear decisions
  • > _“Expensive and opaque — lots of fees but little clarity.”_ — Mike Bires, NutritionFaktory CEO

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The Cost of Wasted Ad Spend

Common causes:

  • Wrong audience targeting
  • Irrelevant clicks
  • Internal campaign overlap
  • Poor conversion tracking
  • Weak landing pages

Signs of waste:

  • High impressions + low CTR
  • Many clicks + no conversions
  • Rising CPA without sales growth
  • Low ROAS across campaigns

Solution: Weekly audits & budget reallocation to proven drivers

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MAI’s AI Agent Solution

Core idea: Put ads on autopilot — scale spend profitably.

Features:

  • Deep data integration (e‑commerce, CRM)
  • 24/7 bid & budget adjustment
  • Real-time opportunity detection
  • Transparent decision dashboards

💡 Also note: AiToEarn官网 applies similar automation in multi-platform content monetization — publishing to Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, etc. with analytics & AI model rankings.

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Why MAI is Different

  • Not a black box — complete visibility into every change
  • Learns unique products/customers
  • Handles thousands of products & creative variations
  • Optimizes for revenue & profit, not vanity metrics

Core Capabilities

  • Automated bid optimization: adjusts bids in real time per auction signals
  • Predictive audience targeting: pre‑filters for high‑conversion users
  • Real-time performance monitoring: instant budget shifts when performance changes
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Technical Edge: Proprietary Reinforcement Learning

Most AI agent startups wrap an LLM. MAI adds:

  • Proprietary RL system that learns from campaign outcomes
  • No pre-set rules — finds patterns humans miss
  • Fully integrated, clean data pipelines for accuracy
  • Clients retain full ad account ownership

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Case Study: NutritionFaktory

Within 90 days, MAI:

  • Tripled profitable ad spend
  • Delivered record-breaking sales/profits (July & Aug)
  • Provided immediate, transparent performance feedback
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Industry Reach

Clients include Dreo, Dr. Woof Apparel, Fanka, Flamingo, Patpat, Velotric, Vivaia — spanning apparel, hardware, and consumer goods.

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Investor Perspective

$25M seed led by Kleiner Perkins — unusual size for seed funding.

Backing based on:

  • Importance of SMB performance marketing
  • Democratization of enterprise tools
  • Founders’ deep industry expertise
  • Opportunity to expand across the marketing value chain
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Future of Ad Management

Moving from manual to AI agent-driven era due to:

  • Increasing platform complexity
  • Exploding data volumes
  • Accelerating market changes

Role shift: humans focus on strategy & creativity, AI agents on execution & optimization.

Pricing: 10% of ad budget — incentives aligned, ROI‑driven, ROAS guarantee.

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Challenges

  • Trust in AI decision-making
  • Complexity of data integration
  • Competition from tech giants & startups
  • Regulatory/privacy compliance
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Industry Takeaways

  • Target real, costly pain points
  • Founders’ domain expertise matters
  • Ensure true technical differentiation
  • Provide tangible, measurable value
  • Launch with right market timing

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Conclusion

MAI exemplifies how AI agents can unlock SMB growth by removing operational complexity, aligning incentives, and focusing on transparent, data-driven profitability.

For creators, platforms like AiToEarn官网 mirror these principles in content workflows — integrating generation, cross-platform publishing, analytics, and monetization.

Follow “Deep Thinking Circle” for more in-depth tech & business insights.

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If you’d like, I can also prepare a short executive summary version of this to share with your team. Would you like me to create that next?

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