Meliora backs five GenAI startups across Australia and Europe

Meliora, the advisory and ventures company led by former Optus and Seven West Media executive Clive Dickens, has announced investments in five generative AI startups spanning Australia, the UK, Ireland and France, reinforcing its strategy to back early-stage products with clear business utility.

The new additions join a portfolio of 17 startups backed by Meliora Ventures, the company’s investment arm, with at least eight of those focused on generative AI. The latest round includes Relevance AI (Sydney), Quickfind AI (Dublin–Paris), Alludium AI (London–Dublin), Fluency AI (Melbourne) and Blunge AI (Brisbane). Fluency and Blunge are also supported through Meliora’s new partnership with NextGen Ventures, a student-focused VC founded by Mitchell Hughes and Jerry X’Lingson.

“These are all effectively fast-growing small businesses operating on a global scale that are going to solve complex business problems for immediate small, medium and large enterprises via AI,” Dickens said. “This isn’t about purely investing in fast-growing generative AI startups. We’re not a pure investor. We are an advisory business, creative business and a ventures business.”

Meliora’s focus is on B2B solutions that can be used immediately by clients across the telecommunications, media and technology sectors. Dickens said several of the startups already have tangible, working products - from intelligent procurement tools to SOP compliance solutions and brand-safe AI creative.

“We want to bring these fantastic products and services to the benefit of our advisory clients,” he said. “We don’t just do PowerPoints and strategy. We want to change business outcomes.”

The company is also betting heavily on the potential of agentic AI. Two of its latest investments, Relevance and Alludium, operate in that space and have been developing infrastructure and applications that allow autonomous agents to handle complex workflows and decision-making.

“It is a very big market. There’s a lot of opportunity and Relevance have already proved that,” Dickens said. “Ludium, who are slightly earlier stage than Relevance, are based out of London, but also Dublin. They're in that space as well. But I suppose what it actually indicates is how big the opportunity is in agentic.”

While large players like Salesforce and Zendesk are building top-down enterprise solutions, Dickens believes startups will play a key role in how the agentic AI market unfolds.

“Even Salesforce are just utilising the same foundation layers. Salesforce don’t have their own large language model and they don’t need one. They’re basically tapping into the same existing foundation layers. All they have is a big balance sheet, a big workforce, some fantastic people and some great clients,” he said.

Dickens added that the true shift lies in how agentic AI changes the software model itself. “This isn’t just a plugin. It changes everybody’s model. So all this new software needs to be written from the ground up.”

The collaboration with NextGen Ventures is also central to Meliora’s positioning as an early-stage specialist with strong advisory depth. “Big ideas don’t wait for decades of corporate experience,” Dickens said. “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.”

Dickens added that Meliora’s investments are designed to support its advisory model and give clients early access to transformative tools.

“These are cash investments... but the bigger part is actually how these investments can help our advisory clients. That’s the real aha moment,” he said. “We’re not Blackbird. We’re not Airtree. They’re phenomenal. They’re a later-stage business. We’re into these very early-stage businesses because we think we can bring the benefits of these businesses to our future clients.”

Meliora works exclusively in the telecom, media and technology space and typically partners with only one client per vertical in each region. Dickens said after just three weeks in market, his team had hit the ground running.

“We’re talking to everybody,” he said. “But we can’t work with everybody. This is a very competitive space. We’ve decided to operate in this quite niche segment of TMT, because that’s where our experience is.”

As for the broader enterprise AI shift, Dickens said most companies are still unsure how to implement AI meaningfully - despite the hype.

“People are telling me, ‘I love AI or I don’t understand AI, but I’m not sure how AI can help my business yet’,” he said. “And people have got set up rooms of people and subcommittees and hackathons, and it’s like, no, no. You don’t need to do that. You need to think about it as an application layer... there are thousands of AI application apps that will already help you streamline your procurement or your compliance or your sales process.”

Meliora’s view is that GenAI will be more than a cost-saver. “Our sweet spot is actually looking at how GenAI can identify customer growth and revenue growth, not just make businesses operate more efficiently,” Dickens said.