Australian advisory business Meliora invests in five Gen AI startups

Product development advisory and ventures business The Meliora Company (Meliora), through its investment arm Meliora Ventures, has invested in five generative AI startups across the UK, Ireland, France, and Australia.

The startups, which include Alludium AI, Blunge AI, Fluence AI, Quickfind AI, and Relevance AI, are claimed by Meliora to be creating tangible GenAI products to use across entertainment media, telecommunications, and digital marketplaces.

Sydney-based Relevance AI offers no-code vector-based workflows, aiming to empower non-technical teams to deploy advanced AI productivity tools, such as customer feedback analysis, automated tagging and intelligent search.

The company recently secured US$24 million (A$37 million) in Series B funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, King River Capital, Insight Partners and Peak XV to accelerate its mission of empowering knowledge workers to create specialised AI agents.

Meliora Ventures is also collaborating with NextGen Ventures, Australia’s first student-focused venture capital fund, to support new AI founders in Australia.

Melbourne-based Fluency AI and Brisbane-based Blunge AI are two of the companies to receive investment from Meliora via NextGen Ventures.

Fluency AI creates and converts fragmented standard operating procedures into generative workflows, intending to help enterprise teams reduce compliance risk and scale operational efficiency.

Blunge AI enables brand-safe, AI-generated visual content for creative teams, media companies and marketers.

Meliora founder and managing partner Clive Dickens said the Gen AI race is not just between OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, Meta or DeepSeek, but is also being driven by a huge range of AI startups who are unlocking the potential of LLMs and turning them into tangible products.

“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,” he said.

“This is where the creative intelligence of AI lives, and Meliora is backing it.

“Big ideas don’t wait for decades of corporate experience. They come from wherever there’s ambition, urgency and the freedom to think differently. 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.”

The Meliora Company, launched earlier this month, has hubs in Sydney, Los Angeles, and London and includes three pillars: Meliora Advisory, Meliora Ventures, and Meliora Creative.