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TRO | Meliora Ventures launches new specialist AI focused investment fund
Meliora Ventures announces new strategic investments in leading Aussie startups Springboards.AI and StoryDesk.AI
Meliora Company
February 11, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Subscribe | 11th February, 2026
We spend every edition of TRO tracking the AI companies, products and ideas reshaping the TMT landscape. Today, we’re writing about one closer to home.
The Meliora Company has launched Meliora Ventures Fund One (MVF1) — a specialist pre-seed fund backing CTO-led startups turning AI into practical, scalable advantage.
The fund is raising US$3 million from sophisticated wholesale investors, with a target of 15–20 investments over the next 20 months across Vertical AI, Generative AI products and SaaS platforms with an AI differentiator.
If you’ve been reading TRO, we are sure none of this will surprise you.
Every week we highlight proof points for the same thesis: that the deepest value in AI won’t come from general-purpose models alone, but from purpose-built products solving domain-specific problems at speed.
Meliora Ventures Fund One is how we’re acting on that conviction — pairing capital with the strategic, commercial and product expertise of the Meliora advisory practice to give founders a genuine edge from day one.
Our MVF1 investments
We’re excited to confirm that Meliora Ventures Fund One will participate in pre-seed rounds for two Australian startups we believe are exemplars of the opportunity ahead:
 | Springboards.AI - Building Gen AI tools for advertising creatives, making it faster and more cost-effective for agencies and brands to produce high-quality creative at scale. |
 | Storydesk.ai - a Gen AI-powered assistant purpose-built for journalists, designed to accelerate research, story development and production workflows across newsrooms. |
Both are CTO-led, both are solving real problems in clearly defined verticals, and both are exactly the kind of company we built this fund to support.
The team behind the fund
Meliora Partners Jack Lonergan (right) and Clive Dickens (left).
Meliora Ventures Fund One is led by Meliora’s Managing Partner Clive Dickens and Partner Jack Lonergan.
We’ve also welcomed two exceptional strategic advisors to the fund: Chris Barton, co-founder of Shazam, and William Hedberg, former senior executive at Singtel Optus and Seven West Media. Both bring deep experience working with ambitious technology founders from pre-seed through to Series A.
Read the coverage
The launch has been covered across Australian media today:
Capital Brief — Clive Dickens hunts AI media startups with Meliora Ventures’ debut fund.
Marketing Interactive — Clive Dickens backs CTO-led AI startups with new Meliora Ventures fund.
B&T — Meliora bets on AI: New fund to target CTO-led startups
Mediaweek — Meliora Ventures launches $4.6m AI-focused pre-seed fund