Zeely, Inc.

What is Zeely?

Zeely, Inc. is a private software company that makes the Zeely AI marketing app, which lets small businesses generate ad creative and launch paid campaigns from a phone. Founded in Ukraine in 2022, it is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, with teams in Kyiv and Warsaw.

Is Zeely publicly traded?

No. Zeely is a private startup. Its outside capital comes from a 2023 seed round, grant and accelerator programs, and a 2026 competition award backed by Deel. There is no public stock.

When was Zeely founded?

Zeely was founded in Ukraine in 2022 by Dmytro Samoiliuk, Yaroslav Samoiliuk, and Alina Bondarenko. It gained early recognition as a Top 3 startup at Slush 2022 and raised its seed round in April 2023.

Who owns Zeely?

Zeely is owned by its three co-founders, who remain in control, plus early investors including Vesna.Capital, Angel One Fund, Imaguru Ventures, and ZAS Ventures. The company has no parent corporation and no controlling outside investor.

What is Zeely's market position?

Zeely is a niche AI marketing platform for small businesses, competing with ad platforms' own simplified tools and AI creative generators. It reports more than 1 million users and a team of about 200, with the United States as its primary market.

Where is Zeely based?

Zeely, Inc. is legally headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. Its product, engineering, and creative teams operate from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Warsaw, Poland, a structure adopted after its Ukrainian founding.

Zeely was founded in Ukraine in 2022, during the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion. The founders had spent years running digital marketing for small clients and kept seeing the same pattern: business owners wanted customers but could not navigate ad managers or interpret results. The founding question was whether a small business owner could launch a measurable paid campaign from a phone in under ten minutes.

The first app version combined a simple mobile web store builder with AI-generated ad creative and one-tap promotion across social platforms. It was aimed deliberately at users with no design or marketing background.

Late 2022 brought early recognition when Zeely was named a Top 3 startup at Slush, selected from about 1,200 competing teams at the Helsinki conference. In April 2023 the company raised a $1 million seed round backed by Vesna.Capital, Angel One Fund, Imaguru Ventures, ZAS Ventures, and angels Murat Abdrakhmanov and Adrian J. Slywotzky. Earlier support came from the Ukrainian Startup Fund and Google for Startups programs, including the Ukraine Support Fund. The company said at the time it was targeting an annual recurring revenue run rate of $3 million.

Through 2024 and 2025 the product shifted from a web store plus promotion tool into a full-cycle ad platform. Creative generation absorbed performance marketing frameworks covering offer, hook, structure, and messaging hierarchy, and campaign management moved in-app with Meta Ads integration. In 2026 Zeely won a startup competition backed by Deel, selected from more than 50,000 applicants and judged by partners from firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Tencent, bringing roughly $1 million in early-stage capital.

By mid-2026 the company reported a team of more than 200 specialists across performance marketing, AI and machine learning, engineering, and creative, headquartered in Delaware with operating teams in Kyiv and Warsaw.