The Meliora Company, the advisory, ventures and creative business founded by former Shazam advisor and Seven West Media and Optus executive Clive Dickens, has announced investments in five generative AI startups across the UK, Ireland, France and Australia, doubling down on its belief that business has much to learn from the innovation and creativity thriving in the AI startup ecosystem.
Backed through Meliora Ventures, the company’s investment arm, the start-ups are creating tangible, working GenAI products already available to use across entertainment media, telecommunications and digital marketplaces. Each venture reflects Meliora’s broader mission to champion creative intelligence and bold innovation that businesses, large or small, can harness and learn from today.
“The Gen AI race is not just between OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, Meta or DeepSeek. It’s also being driven by a huge range of AI startups who are now unlocking the potential of the large language models and turning them into tangible new products that are transformative for business and consumers.” said Dickens, managing partner at Meliora.
“These are focused, entrepreneurial teams solving real problems in highly innovative ways and are more important to the AI ecosystem and the future of business than ever before. This is where the creative intelligence of AI lives, and Meliora is backing it.”
The startups are all building GenAI products with clear utility, not just future promises. From brand-safe, AI-generated creative to enterprise-grade AI agents, these new ventures are delivering results now.
Meliora Ventures supports its portfolio with more than capital, offering deep technical insight, strategic product guidance and critical commercial introductions to accelerate growth. With a presence in APAC, EMEA and the Americas, Meliora is well positioned to support ambitious founders.
The latest startups backed by Meliora Ventures include:
- Relevance AI (Sydney) — Offers no-code vector-based workflows, empowering non-technical teams to deploy advanced AI productivity tools, such as customer feedback analysis, automated tagging, and intelligent search.
- Quickfind AI (Dublin–Paris) — Delivers intelligent procurement support for SMBs through conversational AI that simplifies complex purchasing decisions.
- Alludium AI (London-Dublin) — Builds enterprise-grade infrastructure for LLM-based agents that help businesses to automate workflows, enhance decision-making, and improve operational efficiency.
- Fluency AI (Melbourne via NextGen Ventures) — Creates and converts fragmented SOPs into generative workflows, helping enterprise teams reduce compliance risk and scale operational efficiency.
- Blunge AI (Brisbane via NextGen Ventures) — Enables brand-safe, AI-generated visual content for creative teams, media companies and marketers.
Meliora is also backing the next generation of AI founders through a new collaboration with NextGen Ventures, Australia’s first student focused venture capital fund. Founded by Mitchell Hughes and Jerry X’Lingson, NextGen has already raised $2 million of its $2.5 million target to support emerging start-ups across Australia.
“We’re deeply grateful for the hands-on support from Meliora Ventures, who were one of our first believers in the fund” said Mitchell Hughes, co-founder of NextGen Ventures.
“Big ideas don’t wait for decades of corporate experience. They come from wherever there’s ambition, urgency and the freedom to think differently,” concluded Dickens.
“NextGen Ventures is tapping into a raw pipeline of student talent, and we’re excited to be backing them not just through capital, but with strategic thinking and the right introductions.”
