The agency killer
Stefan Nuijten didn't start Aizy to build another dashboard. The Breda-based entrepreneur, who founded the company in 2024, had watched performance marketing calcify into a manual, billable-hour business: agencies charging retainers to do work that was increasingly automatable, small businesses overpaying for campaign management that software could handle better.
His thesis was blunt. As he told EU-Startups, performance marketing was moving away from manual campaign management toward scalable, AI-driven systems, and his mission was to fundamentally redesign the economics of the whole category. Not to build a slightly better agency. To make the agency model itself obsolete for routine work.
The product connected directly to businesses' Google and Meta advertising accounts and used AI-driven optimization to continuously improve budget allocation, campaign performance and conversions. Where a traditional agency account manager might check campaigns weekly, Aizy's system never stopped tuning. The pitch to small and mid-sized businesses was simple: better returns, fewer errors, no retainer.
The timing was deliberate. By 2024, AI had matured enough to handle the pattern-matching work of campaign optimization — bid adjustments, audience segmentation, creative testing — but most agencies were still selling human hours. Nuijten saw an arbitrage: the technology to automate the work existed, but the business models hadn't caught up. Aizy was built to close that gap, wrapping AI optimization in a product that small businesses could use without hiring an agency at all.
€2M ARR in twelve months
Aizy's first year was unusually fast. The company reached €2M in ARR, built a client base of more than 150 organizations across retail, e-commerce and automotive, and grew to 25 employees — all within twelve months of launch. That pace attracted investors quickly: a €1.5 million raise in August, followed by a €2 million round in February 2026 that valued the company at €22 million, less than a year after it started.
The investor roster was notable. Alongside founder Nuijten himself, who led the February round, backers included DeGiro co-founder Gijs Nagel and technology investors Michiel Mol and Joost van der Klooster. Having a founder put his own capital behind the round was a deliberate signal — conviction you can verify on a cap table, not just in a pitch deck.
But Nuijten wasn't just raising to grow headcount. The plan, as he described it, was to expand internationally while making AI-driven performance marketing accessible to far more businesses and agencies. The agency piece was key: rather than treating agencies as the enemy, Aizy sold them the platform, letting partners serve more clients with greater profitability. Competitors became customers.
The Uptmz acquisition
In May 2026, Aizy made its boldest move: acquiring Uptmz, a fellow Dutch performance marketing software company. Uptmz had spent seven years building a scalable platform focused on Google and Microsoft advertising, with deep automation and campaign management capabilities. Combined, the two companies served more than 600 customers across multiple countries.
The strategic logic was consolidation. The AI marketing sector was fragmenting into point solutions — one tool for creative, another for bidding, another for reporting. Aizy and Uptmz bet that customers wanted the opposite: a single integrated platform combining software, AI-powered optimization and human strategic support. As Nuijten put it, bringing the two together gave them a unique opportunity to take the lead in a market still in its early stages.
The acquisition also filled a product gap. Uptmz brought Microsoft advertising depth and enterprise-grade automation that would have taken Aizy years to build. Under Aizy, the platform would continue developing inside an AI-first environment — the acquirer's architecture becoming the foundation for both customer bases.
Why it worked
Aizy's story compresses several startup lessons into eighteen months. First, speed compounds: hitting €2M ARR in year one created the valuation and credibility that made the Uptmz acquisition possible. Without that traction, Aizy would have been the acquiree, not the acquirer.
Second, the 'arm the incumbents' strategy is underrated. Most AI startups position themselves as replacements for existing players. Aizy positioned itself as leverage for agencies — giving them software that made each account manager dramatically more productive. That turned a hostile channel into a friendly one and unlocked distribution that pure direct-to-business marketing couldn't match.
Third, European AI startups can win by consolidating early. While US competitors raised larger rounds to outspend each other, Aizy used a modest €3.5M in total funding to buy revenue, customers and technology in a single acquisition. In a market moving toward integrated platforms, the consolidator often beats the best-funded point solution. Aizy's bet is that performance marketing's future belongs to whoever owns the whole workflow — and they're buying their way there.
There's also a geographic lesson. Aizy built in Breda, not Amsterdam or London, and focused first on Dutch and European SMBs — a market the big US adtech platforms serve poorly. By the time American competitors noticed, Aizy had 600 customers, a €22M valuation and an acquisition under its belt. Starting in an overlooked market gave them room to build momentum before the giants arrived.
The playbook
- Arm the agencies — Instead of competing with agencies on service, Aizy sold agencies the software to serve more clients profitably — turning potential competitors into a distribution channel.
- Automate the billable hour — By connecting directly to Google, Microsoft and Meta ad accounts and optimizing continuously, Aizy replaced the billable-hour model with always-on automation — structurally better economics, not just a nicer dashboard.
- Buy, don't just build — Rather than building every capability from scratch, Aizy acquired Uptmz's seven-year-old platform and 600-customer base — buying distribution and technology in one move.
- Founder-led rounds signal conviction — Nuijten led the €2M round himself alongside existing investors — a founder putting personal capital behind the vision, which signaled conviction to the market and the team.
- Expand the surface, reuse the core — Aizy started with Google and Meta, then expanded to Microsoft — and via acquisition, to full-funnel services. Each expansion reused the same AI optimization core.