TRO | Paramount plans a move into Gen AI short form vertical video

Plus, AI Agents have their own Social Media network now, and ElevenLabs launches AI album 'The Eleven Album'.

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Meliora Company
February 02, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Subscribe | 2 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. Paramount plans a move into Gen AI short form vertical video

This week it was announced that Paramount+ is working toward adding short-form vertical video to its streaming service, following in the footsteps of other video streaming platforms including Disney+ and Netflix. The move, it seems, will be accelerated by Gen AI as the product looks for ways to get ‘a million clips into the short form UX as quickly as possible’. Reports also indicate that the media company is interested in hosting UGC and interactive shopping capabilities within the platform.

Here’s why this matters: We’re seeing an increasing rise in the role of short form vertical video in the roadmaps of major media platforms - from Netflix to Spotify and more recently iHeartRadio announcing their intentions to integrate short form vertical video into their products. With Gen AI making short-form video economically viable at scale and lowering the cost of experimentation, media companies are increasingly able to keep up with the speed of attention.

2. ElevenLabs launches AI powered album ‘The Eleven Album’ with Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel and more

Vertical AI business ElevenLabs has launched ‘The Eleven Album’ - in collaboration with world-class artists - including Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel, Patrick Patrikios and more.

The album spans rap, pop, R&B, EDM, cinematic scoring, and global sounds to explore what’s possible when artists and AI create together.

The album is available to stream here.

Here’s why this matters: The Eleven Album launches a new creative workflow with each artist using Eleven Music in different ways - from generating compositions to write over to experimenting with new genres or accelerating production. The Eleven Music model enables the artists to have granular control over the composition, and maintain full authorship control and commercial rights.

3. AI Agents have their own social media platform now

A wild week in Agentic AI this week as AI agents develop their own social network. With the launch of Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) earlier in the week, developers and technologists have been running out to buy Mac Mini’s and setting up their own Moltbot AI Agents. Now, these agents have been socialising on Moltbook - in its simplest form a variation of Reddit, it’s a community of agents posting, replying to and upvoting each other’s comments. Whilst the social network was built by a human, it is now managed by the developer’s AI agent.

Here’s why this matters: It’s challenging to put into words just how fascinating this development is - Moltbook has been used by more than 37,000 AI agents, and more than 1 million humans have visited the website to observe the agents’ behaviour in less than a week. Moltbook is the latest in a series of rapid AI advancements in the past few months, building on AI enhanced coding tools created by AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. These AI powered coding assistants, like Anthropic’s Claude Code, have allowed software engineers to work more quickly and efficiently.

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Our Pursuit Of Better

Flora, the creative AI tool, has announced a Series A raise of US$42m. Backed by Redpoint, Vercel, Frame.io, and Fal, the subscription tool uses generative workflows that allow design and marketing teams to create branded assets at scale.

AI security start-up, Outtake, has just raised US$40m from Iconiq, Satya Nadella, Bill Ackman, and a host of other big names. Founded by former Palantir engineer, Alex Dhillon, the cybersecurity platform helps enterprises detect and take down identity fraud. The company has seen their annual recurring revenue increase sixfold year-on-year, and its customer base grow tenfold.

Upwind, a cloud security platform, has raised US$250m at US$1b valuation. The platform prioritises an “inside-out” take on cloud security, where network requests and API traffic function as context to help security teams better triage urgent risks vs risks that can wait.

The Story of Absolute Radio - a brand worth fighting for.

Absolute Radio is born but three days before launch, a legal challenge over the name threatens to throw all of their plans off course.

This is a story of how courageous courage, curiosity and relentless optimism led to the creation of one the radio industry’s most well-known brands.

Meliora Associate Spotlight

Murray Barnett - UK

Murray is a seasoned executive with deep expertise in monetising and maximising sports media and commercial rights across global markets. As founder of 26West Sport, he lead a specialised consultancy transforming how sports properties package, value and monetise their media and sponsorship rights.

Celia Wallace - Australia

Celia brings a deep expertise in customer growth, brand strategy and business transformation, shaped by a rare combination of consulting, client and global advertising agency experience. Her experience spans both London and Australia, where she held senior roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, T&Pm, and M&C Saatchi Australia.

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