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TRO | Clive Dickens and former Director of Product at Optus, Jack Lonergan, reunite in partnership at Meliora

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

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Meliora Company
December 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Subscribe | 15th 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. Clive Dickens and former Director of Product at Optus, Jack Lonergan, reunite in partnership at Meliora. 

We are pleased to share that Jack Lonergan will be joining Meliora as a Partner from February 2026.

Jack brings over 15 years of product development and user experience leadership from senior roles at Optus, Seven West Media, and Southern Cross Austereo, where he conceived, built and scaled multiple high-profile awarding winning digital products and platforms. 

Jack Lonergan: Partner

Here’s why this matters: With Jack’s experience and track record of building digital products and platforms from concept to scale, Meliora is increasingly positioned to work with our growth partners not only in defining strategy but in conceiving, designing, and shipping digital products that can reshape the TMT industry.

2. Disney’s OpenAI bet shows Hollywood’s new power play is AI.

This week, Meliora Managing Partner Clive Dickens spoke to Mediaweek Australia about Disney’s AU$1.5b investment in OpenAI, which will see the company roll out ChatGPT internally, lean on OpenAI's models to build new tools and experiences, and take warrants that give it the option to buy more equity in OpenAI in the future - as well as the ability for OpenAI to integrate Disney characters into its Sora Gen AI video product.

Here’s why this matters: For a long time, we have had a theory here that the real disruption in Hollywood is not consolidation, it’s AI.

UGC, enabled by Gen AI, is the next frontier in media and entertainment, and this agreement underscores that idea. A few weeks back, The Relentless Optimist newsletter covered the tease by Disney CEO Bob Iger around the potential for Gen AI enabled UGC, and in his discussion with Mediaweek, Clive reflects on this moment - “at that point when he made that comment on that earnings call, he was obviously in negotiation with the world’s biggest AI company. Yet, no one actually made the connection between his comment and today’s announcement.” 

Audience behaviour, content creation and platform loyalty are all being rewritten by Gen AI – and traditional studios are scrambling to protect their turf by wrapping their most valuable IP around the change.

3. SpaceX plans IPO at over US$1.5tn.

SpaceX has announced an insider share sale that values the company at US$800b, setting up what could be the largest initial public offering of all time. The valuation leaves OpenAI’s September valuation of US$500b in the dust - making SpaceX again, the world’s most valuable closely held company.

Here’s why this matters: The largest IPO in history took place in 2019, when the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company began public trading as Aramco and raised $29 billion. Now SpaceX is poised to potentially match or exceed this value. The decision is surprising because Elon Musk has resisted going public with SpaceX for a long time. However, raising large amounts of money in the next 18 months would allow Musk to have significant capital to deploy at SpaceX as the influence of AI technology grows.

Still Curious?

Our Pursuit Of Better

Fal, a startup that hosts image, video, and audio AI models for developers, has announced that it raised a US$140m Series D in it’s third fundraise of the year. The company is now valued at US$4.5b, which is three times what it was worth when it raised it’s Series C raise of US$125m in July. Fal provides the infrastructure layer for multimodal AI for customers, including Adobe, Shopify, Canva, and Quora.

If you’ve been in attendance at one of our Meliora ‘State of the Gen AI economy’ presentations, it's likely you've heard us talk about Harvey - the legal AI startup that is making waves in both the legal and VC communities. Harvey has recently announced the business is now valued at US$8b after a recent funding round raising US$160m, shortly after closing a Series E round that raised $300m in June. Harvey was one of OpenAI's first investments via its startup fund and continues to go from strength to strength.

Medra, an AI-enabled platform for physical scientists is beginning to build momentum. The business has two parts: physical AI that can deliver robotic execution with human-level dexterity, and scientific AI which combines scientific reasoning and real-time optimisation. This week, the company announced it had raised US$52 million in Series A funding round, only three months after it’s public launch. We’ll be watching this one with interest.

The Story of the Race that Nearly Broke the Internet

A bold idea was about to become a reality - for the first time, Australia’s most iconic sporting event, The Melbourne Cup, would be live streamed to devices across the country.

What had led up to this moment is a story of courage, curiosity and creativity. Of overcoming the odds to deliver, in just 100 days, something that had never been done before.

With thanks to our Strategic Partner 18Sixty, this week we bring you The Story of the Race that Nearly Broke the Internet.

Strategic Partner Spotlight

1983 Creative is a global studio producing film, editorial, animation, and visual arts that help brands tell stories with world-class cinematic polish—delivering end-to-end production across commercials, documentaries and TV campaigns. The 1983 Creative team are renowned for their cinematic quality and evocative storytelling.

This newsletter is supported by the team at Backchat Media - specialists in building digital strategy that delivers a strong ROI. From performance marketing to content production via GenAI enabled marketing workflows, Backchat works with media, government and eCommerce partners internationally.

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”.