Ukrainian AI Startup Zeely Wins $1M in Global Competition by Deel 

Ukrainian AI startup Zeely, a finalist of the IT Arena 2021 Startup Competition, has become one of the winners of The Pitch — an international startup competition organized by the American HR-tech company Deel.

Back in 2021, during the 10th anniversary edition of IT Arena, the team took 2nd place, receiving $18,000, as well as valuable pitching experience and the opportunity to connect with investors.

Winning The Pitch comes with $1 million in funding for each selected startup. More than 50,000 startups from around the world participated in the competition.

After a series of regional selections, around 80 companies advanced to the finals in Paris, where five startups were named winners, including Zeely. Each of them received a $1 million investment.

Alongside Zeely, the winners included Smart Bricks (USA & UAE), which develops data infrastructure for real estate investments; nybl (UAE), offering AI solutions for industry; Acceler8 (USA), which automates HR processes using artificial intelligence; and France-based Alpic, a platform for deploying AI applications in ChatGPT and Claude via the MCP protocol.

Zeely is a Ukrainian startup founded in 2021 by brothers Dmytro and Yaroslav Samoiliuk. The AI-powered platform helps small businesses create landing pages, generate content, and promote it on social media without requiring technical skills.