TRO | JioHotstar partners with OpenAI to launch AI-powered content discovery

Plus, Gemini makes music now, and Snowflake and OpenAI formalise a $200 million partnership.

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Meliora Company
February 23, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Subscribe | 16th February, 2026

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. JioHotstar partners with OpenAI to launch AI-powered content discovery

India’s largest streaming platform JioHotstar has announced a partnership with OpenAI to deliver a ChatGPT-powered discovery experience, replacing conventional keyword search with multilingual conversational AI. Announced by Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi, the integration will serve JioHotstar’s nearly 500 million monthly users across more than 300,000 hours of programming in 19 languages. The tool also extends to live sports, offering real-time conversational access to match data and key moments. In a two-way integration, JioHotstar’s catalogue will also surface within ChatGPT itself, with direct links back to the platform.

Here’s why this matters: This partnership marks OpenAI’s first major consumer-facing integration in India, and it has chosen the country’s dominant streaming platform to do it. The logic is compelling on both sides - JioHotstar gains a next-generation discovery layer that solves one of streaming’s most persistent problems: helping users find what they want across a vast, multilingual catalogue. OpenAI gains distribution at a scale that few markets outside China can offer – nearly half a billion monthly users.

The live sports integration is particularly noteworthy: conversational AI applied to real-time sporting events is an early signal of how agentic interfaces will reshape the second-screen experience. India’s streaming market is projected to reach US$7 billion by 2027, with JioHotstar controlling roughly 40% following its merger. This is a blueprint for how AI-powered discovery could become the standard interface for content platforms globally.

2. Gemini makes music now

This week Google has launched Lyria 3, its most advanced music generation model, inside the Gemini app.

Users can now create 30-second tracks complete with vocals, lyrics and instrumentation from a text prompt or even a photo. The model is also being made available to YouTube creators globally through the Dream Track feature, expanding beyond the US-only pilot. All generated tracks are embedded with Google’s SynthID watermark for AI content identification, and the system is designed to produce original compositions rather than mimic existing artists. The launch arrives in an increasingly competitive space: ElevenLabs, now valued at US$11 billion following a US$500 million raise earlier this month, has already seen more than eight million songs created on its commercially licensed Eleven Music platform since August 2025.

Here’s why this matters: For creators and musicians, the question is not whether AI-generated music is coming – it is which platform will define how they use it. ElevenLabs is winning the professional creator market by solving for quality, control and rights clearance; Google is winning the casual creator market by solving for reach and frictionless access. The broader implication for the music industry is that GenAI composition is splitting into two lanes: production tools and platform features – and both are accelerating faster than most rights frameworks can keep pace with.

3. Snowflake and OpenAI formalise US$200 million partnership

Snowflake and OpenAI have announced a multi-year, US$200 million partnership that embeds OpenAI’s frontier models directly into Snowflake’s data platform. Under the deal, Snowflake’s 12,600 enterprise customers will gain access to OpenAI models through Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, the company’s natural-language data interface, across all three major cloud providers.

Early adopters include Canva and WHOOP, both of which are already testing the integration for internal analytics. The agreement follows a separate US$200 million expansion with Anthropic announced in December, as Snowflake continues to position itself as a model-agnostic AI platform.

Here’s why this matters: This deal is all about the race to become the default operating layer for enterprise AI. Snowflake is making a clear strategic play: by embedding frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta directly into the platform where enterprise data already lives, it is removing the friction that has historically slowed adoption. Snowflake VP of AI Baris Gultekin put it directly: “Enterprises need choice, and we do not believe in locking customers into a single provider.” As agentic AI workflows move from pilot to production, platforms that offer governed, multi-model access to enterprise data will become the critical enabler, and Snowflake is positioning itself squarely at that intersection.

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In case you missed it, we recently announced the launch of Meliora Ventures Fund One - a specialist pre-seed fund backing CTO-led startups turning AI into practical, scaleable advantage.

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Ricky's career spans three decades at the intersection of journalism and technology. He has reported from conflict zones, led global newsrooms, and advised global companies from News Corp and CNN to Microsoft.

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