One prompt, a panel of models, one better answer at a quarter of the price. We made the launch film for Merge Fusion and ran the distribution behind it.

Industry | AI infrastructure, integrations

Founders | Shensi Ding, CEO, Gil Feig, CTO

Total raised | $75M

Back by | Accel, NEA, Addition

Engagement | Fusion launch film, distribution on X, event film for AI Engineer After Dark

Merge is the connectivity layer for AI: the integrations, tools and model routing that let companies put AI agents into production. Agent Handler connects agents to more than 300 tools, and Gateway routes their calls across every major model.

Shensi Ding and Gil Feig founded it in 2020, and it has raised $75 million from Accel, NEA and Addition.

In July, Merge shipped Fusion. It sends one prompt to a panel of models, and a judge writes one answer better than any of them alone. By Merge's own benchmarks it beats Fable 5 outright at a quarter of the cost.

Model ensembling is simple to state and easy to scroll past. Developers hear "a panel of models" and keep going. The launch had to land the result before anyone had time to file it under an idea they had heard before.

One team took Fusion from a brief to a feed: the script, the film, the post and the distribution behind it, each step built for the one after.

The film shows the panel working: the same question going out to several models, and one better answer coming back. It was cut for a developer feed, where the first three seconds decide whether anyone watches the rest.

A launch post only travels as far as its author's followers. So the film went out with 17 quote tweets from creators in AI and tech: the film in each creator's own feed, with their take on top, every one linking back to Shensi's post.

Shensi posted it on 23 July. It has passed 410,000 views on X.

Four days later she posted the result that mattered most: the launch week was the biggest sign-up week Merge Gateway has ever had.

Three weeks before Fusion, Merge, Vercel and Factory threw the official after party for AI Engineer at SFMOMA. If you build software in San Francisco, there is a good chance you were in the room: more than 2,600 people registered for a night of lightning talks, a DJ and the museum after hours.

Merge asked us for a short film to play on the big screen that night: a seamless loop made for a room rather than a feed, built around one idea, connect everything and maintain nothing.