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Icon
Icon is a New York startup that launched in 2024 as 'the world's first AI Admaker' - software pitched as ChatGPT plus CapCut for churning out short-form video ads in minutes. Founded by serial entrepreneur Kennan Davison (aka Kennan Frost) and backed by a $9.2M seed round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Icon paid a reported $12M for the icon.com domain and drew backing from OpenAI, Cognition and Pika executives plus celebrity angels. After users complained the fully-automated product fell short, the company pivoted toward human-filmed UGC ads (six ads for $999) branded 'The Human Admaker,' before reports in early 2026 said it had gone quiet.
Topview AI
Topview AI is a Singapore-based generative AI company that turns product links, images, and text into short-form marketing videos. Its AI Video Agent uses digital-human avatars, voice cloning, and automated editing so ecommerce brands, agencies, and creators can produce UGC-style ads and product videos without cameras, actors, or editors. Founded in 2022 by Jensen Wu and Albert Chen, Topview closed a $14M Series A led by Kamet Capital and, by early 2026, reported more than 5 million users generating over 500,000 videos a day.
Omneky
Omneky is a San Francisco generative-AI platform that automatically produces, tests, and optimizes advertising creative - image, video, and UGC-style spokesperson ads - and launches campaigns across Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Founded in 2018 by Hikari Senju, it was one of the earliest movers in applying generative AI to advertising, using computer vision and multimodal analysis to predict which creatives will perform and to close the loop between making ads and measuring them. The company has since pivoted toward 'agentic' AI advertising agents that set campaign goals, execute subtasks, and reallocate budget across channels.
NewForm
NewForm is a New York-based creative intelligence company that pairs an in-house creative studio with proprietary software called Framework. It makes paid social ads at scale - roughly 2,500 assets a month written, shot, and edited by people - runs them in market, and turns every result into a living map of what works for a brand. Founded by Hamza Alsamraee, Andrew Presser, and Alec Velikanov, NewForm puts strategists, producers, and engineers under one roof to close the gap between creative and media for performance teams.