Zeely's SEC filing records an $8.84M offering with $5 left

Why it matters

The Form D describes the $8,838,947 offering as fully closed, with $8,838,942 sold and $5 remaining. Its disclosed size is about 4.4 times the combined value of Zeely's two previously reported $1 million financings.

A Form D filed by Zeely on September 14th describes the $8,838,947 amount offered as fully closed, while recording $8,838,942 sold and $5 remaining. The filing lists founders Dmytro Samoiliuk and Yaroslav Samoiliuk as Zeely executives and gives August 31st as the first sale date.

The offering drew 24 investors under Rule 506(b), according to the SEC filing. It does not identify those investors, name a lead, disclose a valuation or give the financing a round name. Zeely has not labeled it a Series A in the supplied record.

The $8.84 million offering is about 4.4 times Zeely's previously reported $2 million in financing: a $1 million seed round announced in 2023 and a separate $1 million prize from Deel's startup competition in 2026. That comparison assumes the new offering does not overlap with the broader financing that Zeely discussed after winning the Deel award.

Zeely, an AI marketing platform for small businesses, was founded by Dmytro Samoiliuk, Yaroslav Samoiliuk and Alina Bondarenko. Zeely says it was founded in Ukraine in 2022. The SEC record lists Zeely as a Delaware corporation with its principal business address in Wilmington.

The Deel prize preceded the filing

Zeely won the $1 million grand prize in The Pitch by Deel, a competition run with J.P. Morgan, in May. TechUkraine reported that the competition received more than 50,000 applications.

In a July 24th interview with AIN, Zeely's team said the Deel prize would become part of a broader investment in Zeely 2.0. The legal terms were still being finalized at the time. The later SEC filing does not establish whether the Deel investment is included in the $8.84 million offering, so the two disclosures cannot be treated as entirely separate pools of capital.

Zeely described Zeely 2.0 to AIN as an expansion across the performance-marketing cycle, covering creative production, campaign launch and scaling with an agentic software layer. The filing provides no product milestones or allocation of proceeds.

A much larger financing than Zeely's seed

Zeely reports a workforce of more than 200 people.

Dmytro Samoiliuk previously ran a digital-marketing agency in Ukraine, according to TechCrunch. Zeely's leadership materials credit him with more than 11 years in technical leadership, marketing and outsourcing-team management. Yaroslav Samoiliuk built sales teams before taking responsibility for Zeely's operations, growth and campaign-launch workflows. Bondarenko's company profile describes her move from content and marketing work into her role as co-founder and chief content officer.

Bondarenko has said the founders' experience trying to start an earlier business convinced them that small companies needed a simpler route into online commerce. All three founders were later selected for Forbes' 30 Under 30 Europe list, according to Zeely's Forbes profile.

Zeely is selling a full advertising workflow

According to Zeely's website, users can provide product information or a link to generate static advertisements, UGC-style and talking-head videos, and ad copy. Zeely also lists workflows or connections for Shopify, Google Ads, Etsy, Amazon, WooCommerce, TikTok and Instagram.

Zeely pitches small businesses on creating marketing assets and managing campaigns through one product.

That puts Zeely alongside products focused on different portions of the advertising process. AdCreative.ai emphasizes creative generation and performance scoring. Pencil combines ad generation with media-account data, performance prediction and human review. Creatify converts product links into video advertisements using AI avatars.

On its About page, Zeely says more than 70% of its paying customers are in the United States and claims $75 million in annual recurring revenue. Those figures are company-reported; the available sources do not independently establish its ARR, profitability or retention.

The filing does not disclose how Zeely will use the reported capital.