Jeffrey Katzenberg bets big on AI video ads with a $15.5 million investment in Creatify

Fast Company

3 days ago

Jeffrey Katzenberg has long backed ambitious ventures—from cofounding animation studio DreamWorks to championing digital innovation through his investment firm WndrCo. Now, he's supporting a bold new vision for the future of advertising. WndrCo has co-led a $15.5 million Series A investment in Creatify, an AI video ad platform that has quietly reached $9 million in annual recurring revenue just 18 months after launch.
Co-led alongside Kindred Ventures, the latest round brings Creatify's total funding to $23 million, with Katzenberg also joining the company's board.
Founded by a trio of engineers who previously built video ad products at Snap, Meta, Airbnb, and Meta's AI research lab FAIR, the San Francisco-based startup helps businesses rapidly produce high-performing, AI-powered video ads for social media—without relying on traditional production or content creators.
'I've spent my career looking for the tools that give storytellers an edge. That's why I'm excited about AI video,' Jeffrey Katzenberg, cofounder and CEO of DreamWorks SKG and WndrCo, tells Fast Company. 'Brands today need hundreds of custom ads across dozens of platforms, fast and cost-effectively. Traditional production just can't keep up, but AI can. That's what makes it a game changer.'
The platform features a library of over 750 lifelike AI avatars and more than 140 natural-sounding voices, enabling brands to deliver personalized messages in up to 29 languages. It also includes a built-in scriptwriting tool for crafting ad narratives.
Creatify's cofounder and CEO, Yinan Na, says his experience working on Snap Spotlight and Meta video ads taught him that great creative content, when guided by the right algorithms, naturally finds its audience.
'I saw video's unique power to engage audiences at scale, but also how complex and out of reach video advertising can be for most businesses. Those experiences shaped my vision for Creatify as the 'Shopify of video ads'—an AI-driven platform that automates as a one-click video advertising experience,' Yinan says. 'It's about harnessing AI to democratize creativity and empower entrepreneurs everywhere to scale their storytelling and grow their businesses.'
Creatify has grown to over one million users, with brands like Zumper, NewsBreak, Binance, and Alibaba.com using the platform to launch hundreds of ad creatives each month. To advance automation further, Creatify is now launching an AI agent that autonomously generates, tests, and optimizes short-form video ads.
'I've seen firsthand how technology opens new doors, from hand-drawn to CGI animation, and now AI. What excites me about Creatify is that it's breaking down barriers around video creation. When production takes minutes instead of weeks, more people get to tell their stories. That's a real shift,' says Katzenberg.
AdMax: An AI Agent for Ad Creatives
The startup's pitch is simple yet disruptive. Video accounts for 82% of internet traffic, yet only 35% of ad spend. Why? Because high-quality video production doesn't scale fast enough for today's digital economy. Creatify aims to solve this with AdMax, an end-to-end AI platform that can generate dozens of video ad variations in minutes.
Built for performance-driven platforms like TikTok and Meta's ad ecosystems, AdMax autonomously analyzes top-performing competitor ads to generate creative insights, then creates dozens of UGC-style videos featuring AI avatars and tests them directly on Meta and TikTok.
At the heart of the platform is 'Ad Intelligence,' a proprietary engine that identifies which scripts, visuals, and formats convert best.
'AdMax learns which creative elements drive better results and autonomously adjusts campaigns on the fly, continuously improving outcomes with minimal human input,' says Yinan. 'The system uses LLMs to script tailored ads, while powerful VLMs and diffusion models edit and generate the corresponding imagery and video contents. It acts like a 24/7 creative strategist, content producer, and media optimizer—rolled into one with the power of AI.'
With API integrations and team workspaces, AdMax is designed to streamline production workflows for large marketing teams.
'AdMax is a real breakthrough. What used to take weeks and cost tens of thousands now happens in minutes for a fraction of the price,' Katzenberg says. 'That's not just efficiency; it's creativity and effectiveness, and it's a fundamental shift in how this business will work.'
Scalable Creativity, Engineered by Industry Veterans
Creatify's founding team brings significant AI engineering experience. CEO Yinan Na is joined by chief scientist Ledell Wu, formerly of Meta's FAIR lab and a contributor to open-source projects like PyTorch-BigGraph, for which she earned an ICML Test-of-Time Award. CTO Xin Zhou, a veteran of Meta and Airbnb, specializes in building scalable AI systems and recommendation engines.
Now joining the board, Katzenberg brings decades of experience shaping the entertainment and media industries.
He began his career at Paramount Pictures, rising from assistant to president of production under Michael Eisner and contributing to classics like Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1984, Katzenberg joined Disney as Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, revitalizing its film division into a box office powerhouse.
After leaving Disney in 1994, he cofounded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, producing hits like Gladiator, Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and A Beautiful Mind. After taking the studio public and later selling it to NBCUniversal for $3.8 billion, Katzenberg founded WndrCo in 2017.
He believes technology should turn storytelling into business results. To him, Creatify isn't just a new tool, it's a creative shift.
'When I joined Disney in 1984, animation was still painted by hand—incredible work, but slow and tedious. Today, there's no ink-and-paint department, yet more people work in animation than ever before. Technology didn't take those jobs, it transformed them,' Katzenberg says. 'That's the pattern: innovation expands opportunity and pushes creativity forward.'
A New Era of Advertising
Early adopters are already seeing impact. Real estate platform Zumper produces over 300 video ads monthly using Creatify, saving about $20,000 each month. NewsBreak advertisers launch tailored creatives in minutes instead of days, reporting improved engagement across audience segments. Marketers no longer wait weeks for agencies to deliver polished campaigns.
'We've designed our AI to act as a strategic copilot—not a replacement. Our full-funnel intelligence draws from a rich blend of brand guidelines, historical performance, and real-time industry trends to generate creatives,' says Yinan. 'Marketers are always in control—they can review, refine, and approve any AI-generated asset. Our goal is to empower them with better data and sharper ideas that drive conversions, all while preserving their unique voice and creative intuition.'
What's Next for Creatify?
With the fresh capital, Creatify plans to grow its R&D team, enhance customer success efforts, and roll out new features. Upcoming releases include Batch Mode 2.0 for generating hyper-targeted ad variations in bulk, along with AI-powered market insights and automated multichannel publishing.
As AI tools evolve from assistants to autonomous creators, a deeper question emerges: what becomes of agencies, creative teams, and the craft of storytelling when a model can do it all on demand?
'The human touch is still everything. AI doesn't work on its own, it follows vision, direction, and feedback,' Katzenberg says. 'Creatify isn't replacing marketers; it's a copilot, not the pilot itself. The best technology has always done the same thing: helped people do what they do best—only faster, smarter, and at greater scale.'