TRO | Cardinia Ventures Backed Select Star AI Acquired By Snowflake

Your Meliora briefing on how GenAI and Creativity are unlocking a brighter, smarter future.

Author

Meliora Company
December 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Subscribe | 1st December, 2025

In this fast-moving GenAI economy, headlines are everywhere but optimism is rare.

Here’s our take on 3 stories that will help you be relentlessly optimistic about the future.

1. AI Influences US$22b In Sales Across Thanksgiving & Black Friday

Black Friday set a new online spending record at US$11.8 billion, and for the first time, we have data showing how much of that was shaped by AI. Salesforce says AI influenced more than US$22b in sales across Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and Adobe reports AI traffic up more than 800% YoY — a signal that shoppers are already relying on AI systems to surface deals, compare options and make decisions faster.

Here’s why this matters: When personalised recommendations, smarter search and the first wave of agentic checkout drive billions in sales, retail isn’t “using” AI — it’s being rewired by it. We’re shifting from scrolling to specifying, from browsing to asking, from searching to buying. And the platforms that can turn intent into action with the least friction will set the pace for the next decade of commerce.

2. Cardinia Ventures Backed Select Star AI Acquired By Snowflake

This week, Select Star made headlines after it was announced the startup would be acquired by Snowflake. Founded in 2020, the Select Star vision is to make data easier to find, understand and use via intelligent metadata context. Meliora International Managing Partner Clive Dickens was an early advocate and investor in Select Star via Cardinia Ventures, so it’s great to see this deal take place.

Here’s why this matters: Great AI depends on great data, and most organisations don’t have a clear handle on what they actually have — let alone how it’s being used. That’s where this acquisition becomes a perfect fit. Snowflake already runs the data infrastructure for thousands of companies; Select Star adds the context, lineage and clarity that make that data usable for high-quality AI.

Bringing the two together means enterprises get more than storage — they get a foundation where their data is organised, discoverable and trustworthy. And in AI, the quality of the model is ultimately constrained by the quality of the data beneath it. Snowflake + Select Star closes that gap, giving teams the confidence to build AI systems that are faster, safer and measurably more accurate.

3. Anthropic Enables Claude Into Excel and Chrome With Opus 4.5

Anthropic has released Opus 4.5, a major update that boosts long-context reasoning, improves accuracy across scientific and analytical tasks, and introduces a more stable memory system. The release also brings Claude directly into Chrome and Excel, letting people analyse data, summarise information and automate tasks from inside the tools they already use.

Here’s why this matters: Yes, another week, another model. But with Claude now woven into Chrome and Excel, GenAI stops being something you ‘open’ and starts being something that’s always there, raising the quality of every decision and speeding up the work that actually moves the needle. It’s a glimpse of a future where AI is genuinely a core part of our day-to-day workflow and a reliable constant partner in both amplifying human capability and driving efficiency.

Still Curious?

Our Pursuit Of Better

Den, the startup behind getden.io, is pitching itself as an AI-powered workspace where teams can build and collaborate with agents, using a natural-language, no-code agent builder plus tooling to manage agents when they get stuck, and more than 80 integrations across common work apps. The company says it is backed by Y Combinator, which typically means pre-seed funding via YC’s standard $500,000 investment (split across a $125,000 equity component plus a $375,000 uncapped MFN SAFE), giving Den early capital to push adoption with design partners and expand its agent platform.

Suno, the GenAI platform allowing anyone to create free, original music in seconds, has raised $250m at a US$2.45b pre-money valuation in its Series-C funding round. In their statement, the Suno team note that over the last two years, nearly 100 million people have made music on Suno. We love that Suno makes high-quality music production accessible to all.

After achieving a Gold Medal-Level Performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad, Harmonic, the math focused AI startup by the CEO of RobinHood Markets, has been valued at US$1.45b after raising $120m in its Series C funding round. With a goal of ‘forging the world’s most advanced mathematical reasoning engine’, the team are building a machine that can read a problem, translate it into logic, construct a proof the way a mathematician would, and then prove to the computer that every step is valid - giving you certainty rather than probability.

The Story of Omny Studio’s Podcast Pivot

This week we’re telling the incredible story of Omny Studio and how three founders started out to solve the problem of personalised radio, but ended up building something else entirely. With thanks to our Strategic Partner 18Sixty, this week we bring you The Story of Omny Studio’s Podcast Pivot.

Strategic Partner Spotlight

IV.AI is a human-centered AI platform that transforms unstructured data into actionable insights, enabling global enterprises to make smarter, faster decisions across complex challenges. Based in Los Angeles, the IV.AI team are working on one clear mission: to make humans smarter with AI - not just the other way around.

Goldilocks are specialists in crafting business stories that stand out through workshops, coaching, keynotes and consultancy. With decades working across some of the UK’s leading media brands, Goldilocks Ltd helps people, teams and businesses tell their stories in a compelling way - whatever the format.

The Pursuit of Better, Together

If this week’s newsletter sparked something, pass it on to a colleague. The best conversations often start with “You’ve got to read this”.