TLDR
Melbourne AI ad platform Cuttable has raised a A$20 million Series A led by Airtree Ventures. Its own analysis of 280,000-plus ads found brands need roughly 42 attempts to find one winner, with nearly half of all ads losing money. The raise comes five weeks before Black Friday; Cuttable says brands launch 3.4 times as many ads a day in November as in October.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The raise
Melbourne ad-tech company Cuttable announced a A$20 million Series A on 22 October 2026, led by Airtree Ventures, with existing backers Square Peg, Rampersand and Glitch Capital also participating.[1] It follows a A$5.5 million seed Square Peg led in July 2024 and a A$4.5 million top-up in August 2025.[2][3] Startup Daily reports a further A$5.7 million in March 2026 at a A$100 million valuation, used to launch in New York.[1]
Cuttable was founded in 2023 by Sam Kroonenburg, Jack White and Ed Ring, and incubated inside Melbourne agency Sunday Gravy, which White started with his brother Ant in 2021.[1] Kroonenburg co-founded A Cloud Guru, which sold in 2021 for more than US$2 billion; Ring is a former Swisse marketer.[4]
How the platform works
Cuttable ingests a brand's product catalogue, existing photos and video, and past ad results, then predicts which ads to make next, cuts them in every required format, publishes directly to Meta and TikTok, and feeds performance data back into the model.[4] Brands approve every ad before it runs.
Kroonenburg put the distinction plainly: "Everyone has taught AI to make ads. Almost nobody has taught the ads to learn."[1] Airtree partner James Cameron said: "The world of ad creative is being turned on its head by AI."[1] He told Campaign Brief: "Since we backed Cuttable's seed round, their growth has been much faster than our (already very high) expectations."[4]
The numbers behind the raise
Cuttable's analysis of more than 280,000 ads covering US$260 million in Meta spend across 680 e-commerce brands found that brands need around 42 ads to find one that meaningfully moves the business.[1] The distribution underneath that average makes the waste concrete.
| Metric | Finding |
|---|---|
| Ads needed to find one winner | ~42 |
| Share of revenue from top 1% of ads | 50% |
| Share of ads losing money | Nearly half |
| Median ad's lifespan before meaningful spend lost | About two weeks |
| Cost-per-click change over six quarters | +35% |
| Click-through-rate change over same period | −22% |
Just 1% of ads in Cuttable's dataset generated half of all attributed revenue, while nearly half of all ads lost money outright.[1] More than a third earned nothing.[1] Cuttable also found cost per click rose 35% over six quarters while click-through rates fell 22%, and the median ad stopped receiving meaningful spend within about two weeks.[4]
Five weeks before Black Friday
Cuttable's data shows brands launch 3.4 times as many ads a day in November as in October, ahead of Black Friday.[4]
Cuttable works with more than 440 e-commerce brands, including Cotton On, July, Kathmandu and lululemon.[1] Cuttable says brands average a 4.4 times return on ad spend after switching and that campaigns go live in a day rather than two to three weeks; those are its own figures.[4] The money will go on teams in Melbourne, New York and San Francisco. Black Friday falls on 27 November.
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How much has Cuttable raised in total?
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James Dore is founder and editor of Prompt the Market and Strategy Director at Bushnote, a Sydney strategy, SEO and AI search agency. He has a background in strategy, media and financial services, and led consumer product marketing at MONEYME. He writes on AI search, answer engines, technology policy and media economics.
