San Francisco–based startup GIGR, operating under the brand Playad, has raised $5.4 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate the development of AI-powered marketing agents that help teams create, test, and optimise advertising creatives with minimal manual effort.
The funding round was led by BRV Capital Management and Mirae Asset Venture Investment, with participation from notable angel investors including Bora Chung (board member at Krafton and former Bill.com executive), Jihun Yu (founder of Hyprsense, acquired by Epic Games), and Krew Capital.
Moving Beyond Fragmented Creative Workflows
Despite the availability of modern marketing tools, producing high-performing ad creatives remains a slow and costly process. Marketing teams often move through disconnected stages—from briefing and production to revisions and performance analysis—without a clear feedback loop that informs what to build next.
GIGR believes the next evolution in marketing will not come from incremental tooling, but from AI-native workflows that continuously learn from performance signals. The company is building a multi-agent marketing system that supports the entire creative lifecycle, including briefing, production, experimentation, measurement, and iteration. The goal is to help teams test faster, learn quicker, and improve creative outcomes with every cycle.
Why Playad Focuses on Interactive Ads First
GIGR’s flagship product, Playad, launched in the third quarter of 2025 and begins with interactive ad formats, where performance signals are strongest. In industries such as gaming, interactive and playable ads are widely adopted because they allow users to experience the product before installing, often resulting in higher conversion rates and lower cost per install (CPI).
These formats also capture granular user actions—such as taps, swipes, and choices—providing deeper insight into how users engage with an ad, not just whether it performs well. Industry data indicates that playable ad performance reached record highs in 2025, highlighting the growing effectiveness of interactive formats.
Historically, however, interactive ads have been slow to produce, expensive to scale, and heavily dependent on specialised developers. Playad aims to change this by making interactive creatives fast to build, easy to iterate, and accessible to marketers without engineering bottlenecks. Teams can rapidly create variations and run A/B tests, turning creative production into a repeatable, cost-efficient workflow.
While interactive ads serve as the initial entry point, Playad is designed as a broader AI-native creative platform, enabling iteration across image, video, and interactive formats within a single system.
AI Agents That Turn Performance Into Action
“Marketing performance increasingly depends on how quickly teams can learn from creative and act on those learnings,” said Steve Chung, co-founder of GIGR. “We’re building AI agents that make iteration the default, allowing teams to apply what’s already working in the market to their next creative without sacrificing quality.”
Customers initially adopt Playad for speed, but remain for the confidence it brings to creative decision-making. According to the company, users have reported production cost reductions of up to 90%, along with measurable improvements in acquisition efficiency and return on ad spend (ROAS).
“We’re not trying to simply produce more assets,” said Jay Cho, CEO and co-founder of GIGR. “Every launch creates learning, and that learning directly improves the next creative decision. Creative is the most powerful lever in modern digital marketing, and our platform helps eliminate uncertainty around it.”
A Seven-Founder Team Built for Scale
GIGR’s founding team brings experience from high-growth startups and global technology companies, united by a shared focus on removing friction between creative iteration and ad performance. The company’s seven-founder structure is unusual, with each founder owning a distinct problem area while collaborating closely on rebuilding broken marketing workflows.
With fresh capital in place, GIGR plans to further expand its AI marketing platform and deepen adoption among performance-driven teams seeking faster, smarter creative experimentation.
Ruchi Kumar is the associate editor at Entrepreneur News Network and TVW News India, where she leads editorial strategy, brand storytelling, and startup ecosystem coverage. With a strong focus on innovation, business, and marketing insights, he curates impactful narratives that spotlight India’s evolving entrepreneurial landscape.