This week was all about Canva, but not for the reason you’d think. Airtree and Blackbird spent the week managing pressure from their own LPs to turn Canva from paper to cash, all whilst making some major moves on their own future. Blackbird confirmed the closing of the largest venture fund in Australian history, and Airtree announced a new office in San Francisco.

Airtree asked investors in its 2014 first fund to extend its life by another 20 months to July 2028, and received enough pushback that the approval is still pending. Daniel Petre, one of the original cofounders of Airtree, whilst no longer involved in the daily operations is still an investor and has publicly called the justification “weak” for the extension - separate to the question of Canva itself, which many would still believe in. Blackbird is facing a similar challenge, whilst taking a different perspective in that they are now weighing continuation funds so that early investors can cash out. This is not about whether Canva is a good investment or not, and independent of recent downgrades in valuation - it’s a simple matter of funds reaching the end of their 10 year life and LPs ready to get their returns.

The timing of this news is news in itself - as mentioned Blackbird confirmed Fund 6 closing at $1.05b making it the largest venture fund ever in Australia with Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Schroders and Adams Street joining the super funds and Future Fund as backers. International investors are now showing up as LPs, not just on the cap table - a really promising signal for the future of Australian startups and venture capital. Airtree is opening up an office in San Francisco with Sid Kasbekar relocating. LPs are voting on both ends with their money - backing the next decade, but expecting their money back for the last.

In the 2025 State of Australian Startup Funding report it was estimated ~$12b of unrealised value sat in funds at the end of their life - I don’t have any insider information, but I’d gamble and say the lion’s share of that is with Canva. Until there’s a clear exit or large scale liquidity event for Canva you can expect to see more extensions, secondaries and continuation funds for all those involved. Whilst it’s not a game of chicken but more circumstance and timing, it will be interesting to see who moves first - LPs, VCs or Canva.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Genesis Group, the algae producer founded by ex-Qantas engineer Colin McGregor, has merged with $38m premium pet food brand Proudi and won national Coles distribution for its chlorella-based products - US expansion talks, including with Amazon, are under way (The Australian)

• Thoma Bravo, the US$170b US software investor, has lobbed a binding offer valuing Tanda, the bootstrapped Queensland payroll and workforce software company, at about $800m - it would take just under 50% with the four founders keeping control; signing is expected within weeks (AFR)

Capital Markets

• DroneShield posted a $32.2m first-half loss in new CEO Angus Bean’s first results after adding almost 200 staff - revenue climbed to $125.8m and guidance held, while the accounts revealed a confidential $3m settlement with an unnamed former executive (AFR)

• IREN, the Sydney-founded, Nasdaq-listed AI cloud provider, has secured $3.4b (US$2.4b) in debt led by Blue Owl with PIMCO to buy Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs for its Canadian campus - lenders are covering 90% of the chip cost at 9% interest, with no investment-grade customer behind it (Capital Brief)

• Xero has lifted CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy’s target pay 22% to $25.8m (US$18.5m) despite the stock halving in a year - investors call it ‘a bitter pill’ days before an AGM, after almost half of them voted against last year’s rem report (AFR)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• Rampart Capital, a new Australian lender backed by Zip co-founder Larry Diamond and Stake co-founder Matt Leibowitz, has quietly deployed more than $20m in loans against private company shares - letting startup founders and staff unlock cash without selling equity (Capital Brief)

• CommBank’s x15ventures has launched PaidIt, a platform that verifies and pays hard-to-find recipients of settlements, remediation and refunds ahead of the 2028 cheque phase-out - ASIC alone holds $2.7b in unclaimed money (StartUp ScaleUp)

• Diraq has opened a Santa Monica engineering hub - its third US site after Palo Alto and Chicago - tapping Southern California’s silicon spin qubit talent, with the 20-person team set to double inside 12 months (Diraq)

• Firmus’s 288MW Bell Bay AI data centre won council approval despite a 6,000-signature petition - it will make Firmus Tasmania’s biggest power user, and landed 24 hours before national cabinet took up data centre rules (Startup Daily)

• Airtree is opening a US presence, with Sid Kasbekar relocating to San Francisco to build a dedicated platform for ANZ founders starting or scaling there - ‘we back antipodean founders wherever they’re building... we go where they go’ (LinkedIn)

• Fremantle Seaweed has secured the CSIRO-linked FutureFeed licence to sell Reef4Beef, its methane-cutting Asparagopsis feed supplement, to Australian cattle farmers - clearing the way for commercial sales from its WA ocean farms, starting with feedlots (StartUp ScaleUp)

• Gilmour Space completed a full mission-duration, 116-second hot-fire of its upgraded 110kN Sirius engine - validating the fixes from its failed first orbital launch, with TestFlight 2 targeted for early 2027 (LinkedIn)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Built Living, the Wesfarmers-Built prefab construction venture, has secured a $120m National Reconstruction Fund loan for a Perth factory making components for 2,000 apartments a year - Wesfarmers is adding $100m in equity, with production from 2028 (SmartCompany)

• Gega Elements has been awarded a $1.98m ARENA grant to build a low-emissions pilot plant refining gallium and germanium - critical semiconductor and solar inputs not currently refined anywhere in Australia (LinkedIn)

• Artesian’s GrainInnovate and Hort Innovation venture funds have joined the US$12.5m seed round of TerraBlaster, a US-headquartered agtech whose towed laser sensor maps soil nutrients at 0.06ha resolution - with Australian availability to follow its 2027 beta systems (LinkedIn)

• Blackbird is weighing continuation funds so early investors can cash out of Canva and other long-held stakes - its 2015 fund, holding Gilmour Space and Fleet Space, has returned just 0.7x and was quietly extended this year, while its first fund has returned 11x (AFR)

• Airtree’s push to extend its 2014 first fund to July 2028 has erupted into open conflict - LP approval is stuck near 70% of the 75% needed, and co-founder Daniel Petre has gone public, saying investors got a ‘weak justification’ and only one chance since 2023 to sell down Canva (AFR)

• Blackbird has officially confirmed its sixth fund closed at $1.05b - the largest ANZ venture fund on record, edging past its own $1.032b 2022 raise - with Morgan Stanley, Schroders and Adams Street Partners its first big US institutional LPs (AFR)

• Galileo Ventures hits a $15m first close on Expansion, its $30m second fund, to write $250-500k pre-seed cheques into Australian and Bay Area founders; Innovation Victoria is cornerstone investor, with US VC Brad Feld among new LPs (Capital Brief)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• From 20 October the Fair Work Commission will require parties to disclose how generative AI was used in case documents - with costs orders or dismissal for hallucinated claims, after lodgments jumped 44% alongside mass AI adoption (SmartCompany)

• Albanese will require new data centres to add more renewable power than they draw, minimise water use and stay away from homes, schools and farmland - mandatory national rules from early 2027 - as Queensland pushes back, wanting gas and coal-powered builds (SmartCompany)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• Airwallex’s Latitude 37 program has handed its first cohort - 10 Australian AI startups spanning robotics, road intelligence and exam-prep - $100k each in equity-free funding, with Blackbird-backed Superstat among them (SmartCompany)

• Canberra’s new Buy Australian AI program will put AI startups through an eight-week Stone & Chalk accelerator to sell to the big four banks and Cuscal - and founders are sceptical, with Maincode’s CEO calling it ‘performance theatre’ (AFR)

Reports & Data

• The flip side of the SaaSpocalypse: Australia’s tech company count grew 4% to 26,250 last financial year, outpacing 3.1% growth across all businesses - ABS data suggesting the layoffs are seeding a new wave of startups (Capital Brief)

Other News & Updates

• OpenAI’s application to trademark ChatGPT in Australia is being formally opposed by GPT Group, the ASX-listed property landlord - the two entered a six-month cooling-off period in July to negotiate (Capital Brief)

Funding Rounds

• Sicona Battery Technologies, who makes Silicon-Carbon (SiC) anode materials that supercharge next-gen Lithium-ion batteries, has raised $1.69m from Himadri Speciality Chemical (pv magazine)

• Superhero, a superannuation and share trading platform, has raised $20m from a total of $30m target expected to close, from the Salter Brothers (AFR)

• Facet Amtech, a CleanTech developing a catalyst that makes ammonia directly from air and water for fertiliser producers to cut costs, has raised $3m in a Seed round from Uniseed and Main Sequenc`e (AgFunderNews | Main Sequence)

• Pay.com.au, a FinTech platform that lets businesses pay everyday expenses with linked bank accounts and credit cards to earn flexible rewards, has raised $39.13m (US$28m) in a Series E round (Capital Brief)

Share

Three things that caught my eye this week;

Constantinople raising $62.5m a week after completing their first full bank migration

Only last week Constantinople shared they had moved MOVE Bank’s entire operation onto their platform in under a year - this week the AFR reports they have closed a $62.5m round led by Square Peg and Airtree. Notably they are both existing investors and Australian VCs, bucking the trend where we are seeing larger rounds have international VCs participate. This rounds sets them up to cross the $1b valuation next time they raise, having already 8 banks on 10-15 year contracts with another 2 forecasted before the year ends. Without knowing how their contracts are structured and when the revenue would actually fall and opt-outs before a full migration is complete, it’s still a really strong proposition with strong committed revenue and pipeline.

Blackbird closing their sixth fund at just over $1b

As Capital Brief reports it is slightly lower than the $1.2b target and $1.032b raised in 2022 but still almost twice the size of Airtree’s $650m Fund V from last August, and Square Peg’s $650m in February this year. Combined that’s over $2b in capital across the big three VCs in the last 12 months. Whilst these mega funds won’t be seen in downmarket - I have still many smaller funds announcing funds this year - with Scale Investors $30m+ first fund being the latest.

This is great news for local startups, with more capital ready to deploy especially at earlier stages where we see most activity from Australian VCs - but I also expect to see an increasing amount of this capital deployed to overseas startups as we have seen this week with Airtree leading a Seed round for SF based Foremark Legal.

Canva locks in, literally

At the Stripe Tour this week in Sydney Cliff Obrecht told the crowd has moved in with the AI team at their Surry Hills campus to fix the cost problem that stalled AI 2.0 with tests of AI 2.1 reortedly cutting their cost per design by 90%. With their scale and ambitions renting will always be more expensive, but does require this level of up front capital and time investment.

The other side to Canva this week is that the AFR reports sign ups in Brazil, their second largest market went backwards YoY but smaller growth markets grew in Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines. This builds on from recent news that MAU was flattening and a downgrade in their recent valuation.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Jared Kristensen has left Audience Republic, the Sydney live-events marketing platform he founded in 2015, raised more than $10m for and sold to US private equity backed ticketing group AudienceView a year ago, and is building a new startup called Neuma (LinkedIn)

• Guardhouse, the Australian workforce management platform built for physical security companies, has acquired Mobohubb, a Florida company whose software verifies guard patrols with GPS-stamped proof-of-service and daily activity reporting, for undisclosed consideration; the deal was supported by Sundance Growth, which took a platform stake in Guardhouse earlier this year (BNA)

• SCX.ai, the Sydney company selling AI inference capacity on SambaNova’s air-cooled chips to Australian government and enterprise customers, fell as much as 30% on its ASX debut after raising $40m at 30c a share, closing at 25c; cornerstone backers were Ellerston Capital, Wilson Asset Management and Frazis Capital (AFR)

Partnerships & Deals

• HEO, the Sydney company that images objects in orbit by tasking other operators' Earth observation satellites during their idle time, has signed a deal with Planet to use its SkySat constellation on undisclosed terms, giving HEO access to more than 50 sensors in orbit; the SkySat imagery goes to US government customers first for licensing reasons (SpaceNews)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht has moved into a shed on the Surry Hills campus with the AI team to fix the cost blowout that stalled Canva AI 2.0, after a test of Canva AI 2.1 cut cost per design by 90%; co-founder Cameron Adams spent the same day on stage with Anthropic’s ANZ head, whose Claude Design product investors see as a long-term threat (AFR)

• Diraq, the UNSW silicon quantum computing spinout, has opened its first laboratory outside Australia in Chicago, a temporary base until the 128-acre Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is built (InnovationAus)

• Matilda, an AI-native immigration law service, has launched its platform to partner visa clients, which it says cuts the time to prepare an application from about 100 hours to 10 and gives applicants and sponsors visibility over what the government requires; it has handled close to 400 partner visa applications (LinkedIn)

• Stripe has launched Treasury in Australia, letting businesses hold and convert AUD, USD, GBP and EUR balances, settle instantly instead of waiting two days, and pay recipients in close to 100 countries - a direct move on Airwallex and Wise (Capital Brief)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Airtree told investors in May it is pressure-testing whether portfolio companies have a credible AI story, and will push those that fail toward a trade sale, consolidation or acqui-hire rather than wait; it says 88% of fund value sits in AI-resilient positions and 14% of net assets are now under active management (AFR)

• Blackbird has closed its sixth fund at just over $1b, short of both its $1.2b target and the $1.032b record it set with its 2022 vintage (Capital Brief)

• Clare Ventures, a New Zealand investment firm, has backed Scale Investors Venture Fund 1, the debut fund of Australia’s first women-led VC firm, which has raised more than $30m for early-stage women-led ventures and made its first three investments, including maternal monitoring wearable Oli (Clare Ventures)

• Airtree has led a $6m seed round for Foremark Legal, a San Francisco startup building an AI-native consumer law firm whose underwriting engine finds, prices and takes on personal injury claims before placing them with partner firms; the founders are a lawyer, a machine learning PhD and a former consumer startup founder (LinkedIn)

• Orivium, the Melbourne deep tech company formerly known as EcoMetalx that uses a room-temperature electrochemical process to pull copper and other critical metals out of mining waste, low-grade ore and e-waste, is seeking a $30m Series B with Morgans as lead manager; former Lenovo chief executive Bill Amelio has joined as global CEO alongside founder Emma Clark (Startup Daily)

• Vessev, the Auckland company building fully electric hydrofoiling passenger ferries, has raised a $27m Series A led by Blackbird to scale production; it has vessels going to Sydney Harbour, Perth’s Swan River in 2027, and a doubled order of 10 from Hobart operator Fly Derwent (Startup Daily)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton says Australia risks becoming a permanent importer of intelligence, with AI spending potentially reaching $20b to $40b a year within a decade - more than Australia earns exporting wheat - and wants data centre operators to give Australian startups and researchers compute access on favourable terms under Expectation 5 of the national data centre expectations (Startup Daily)

• Federal parliament has launched its broadest AI inquiry yet through a new Joint Select Committee on AI, weeks after Anthony Albanese pledged a single national framework of AI laws to be led by an Office of AI in his own department (InnovationAus)

• Tasmania’s parliament has launched an inquiry into AI data centres and whether to legislate for the sector, after community concern about energy and water use sharpened by Firmus’s claims about running on rainwater; more than 400MW of data centre capacity is planned for the state (InnovationAus)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• Quantum Australia says its programs have generated $83.1m in economic value over two years, returning $2.15 directly and up to $6.87 with flow-on effects for every public dollar, and have spun out 15 quantum companies - up from six in March (BNA)

• Australia’s first open access quantum computing testbed has gone live at the University of Queensland, giving researchers and startups hands-on access to quantum hardware almost two years after the Queensland government committed $6m to it through its quantum infrastructure program (InnovationAus)

People Moves & Spotlights

• Paul Riley has stepped down as chief executive of Samsara Eco, the Canberra enzymatic plastics recycling company he founded five years ago, citing a worsening chronic illness; Matthew Koenings, who has worked with the company since 2024, is interim CEO while a permanent search runs, six weeks after Samsara launched a $100m Series B (LinkedIn)

Other News & Updates

• Alphabet raised $5.5b in Australia’s largest Kangaroo bond, drawing more than $18b in orders at yields from 5.24% over three years to 6.98% over 20 - roughly what Australian startups raise in a good year, funded in a day; Betashares expects Amazon to follow (Startup Daily)

• Canva’s new user sign-ups in Brazil, its second-largest market, have gone backwards year-on-year according to internal data seen by the AFR, while smaller markets including Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines grew; the decline follows flat monthly active users and a cut to full-year revenue growth guidance from 30% to 20% (AFR)

Funding Rounds

• Visaible.ai, a customer-acquisition platform for hotels to fix online listings and protect direct bookings from AI-driven travel search, has raised $1m from Black Sheep Capital (Startup Daily)

• Constantinople, a banking platform that runs a bank’s entire technology and operations on a single cloud platform for banks to lower costs, has raised $62.5m from Square Peg Capital and Airtree Ventures (AFR)

• GYLD, a games research platform that provides evidence-backed reports for developers and publishers to guide development and release decisions, has raised $1.41m (USD $1m) in a Seed round from Kameha Ventures and Angel Investors (GamesBeat)

• Seitec, a defence seismic-sensor maker that detects and tracks people, animals and vehicles for military and security teams to monitor threats, has raised $4m from Activate Capital, Beaten Zone Venture Partners an the University of New South Wales (BNA | Startup Daily)

• Bower, an operating system for research labs to capture experiments into provenance-rich searchable records to preserve institutional knowledge, has raised $2m in a Pre-Seed round from TEN13, Admiralty Capital Group and Edale Capital (AFR)

• Nbryo, a biotech which has developed an IVF platform to enable the production and transfer of embryos at scale in the beef and dairy industries, has raised an additional $10m in their Seed round from QIC, AgriZero, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tenacious Ventures (Startup Daily)

  • This includes the $2m that I reported last week from QIC, taking their entire Seed round to $20m

• IIF, an app-based farm investment platform that lets consumers invest in farms to earn returns from Australian agricultural output, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Verdex Capital, AgFunder and Investible (AgFunderNews)

• Neosframe, a creative automation platform for retail marketing teams to produce compliant on-brand, store-specific ads, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Future Now Capital and MooCoo Ventures (MooCoo Ventures)

• Gamgee, a veterinary biotech making personalised mRNA cancer vaccines for dogs to train immune systems to attack tumours, has raised $5.62m (USD $4m) in a Seed round from Founders Fund and Angel Investors (GlobeNewswire)

Share

A lot of funding rounds this week but also plenty of headlines that caught my eye. Canva was not able to defend their US$42b valuation in the end, with both Blackbird and Airtree marking down their investments ~17% to a US$34.9b valuation reportedly putting an IPO on ice for now.

The South Australian government meanwhile had their cake and ate it too - …

Read more

Four things caught my eye this week; Atlassian’s rebound quarter, Canva’s downgrade, the News Bargaining Incentive, and Firmus finally completing its raise.

Atlassian and Canva gave us opposite versions of the SaaSpocalypse. Atlassian booked its first quarterly operating profit in more than two years, with revenue up 28% to US$1.8b and cloud up 31%, and …

Read more

A lot happened this week without much of it being funding rounds. Three things caught my eye; Canva making its case to nervous investors, Maincode shipping its Australian coding agent into the middle of the sovereignty debate, and Aussie Angels growing up into Ventari. The four rounds that did land were small, early and entirely local - I’ll get to thos…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Point Wild, a Boston AI cybersecurity company valued at $2.9b and backed by Warburg Pincus, Accel and General Catalyst, has mandated Goldman Sachs for an ASX listing targeting a $500m raise at a possible $5b valuation, joining Firmus, Sharon …

Read more

A much later send than usual, apologies for anyone who missed your morning Sunday read! I moved houses on Friday, and what should have taken 3-4 hours turned into 10+ hours and the rest of the weekend spent living amongst boxes…

A huge week for funding - $606.5m across seven rounds, the biggest week I've tracked in 2026 and the biggest since December 2…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Boston-based digital safety app Aura prepares to list on the ASX via backdoor merger with Qoria, completing a deal that valued the combined group at $3b when announced in February - Qoria stock has since halved (Capital Brief)

• EQT, the Swedish…

Read more

News

Capital Markets

• ASX-listed Echo IQ has secured a $110m placement to expand its cardiovascular AI diagnostics platform across the US (BNA)

• IREN has approved a four-year equity compensation package for co-founders and co-CEOs Will and Dan Roberts worth about A$1.…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Acorn, a skills and development platform, has acquired B Online Learning, an Australia and New Zealand eLearning provider, for an undisclosed amount to add content creation and training services to its workforce readiness platform (Startup Re…

Read more

Spot something a little different? Welcome to the new look Haris’s Newsletter and This Week in Australian Startups.

Today makes it 166 editions and counting - when I first started I was writing regular essays and deep dives each week. As time went on and the responsibilities and realities life caught up with me, whether that’s been a new and demanding j…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Fresho, a Melbourne-based food-wholesale ordering platform, has acquired Nation Wilcox, a UK ERP provider for food suppliers, for an undisclosed amount to expand in Britain and accelerate its AI product roadmap (BNA)

• Vinyl Group, an ASX-listed…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• 4DMedical has signed a US radiology deal with SimonMed, agreed to acquire Vienna AI imaging startup Contextflow and launched a US$2m pulmonary embolism program with Mass General Brigham (BNA)

• Airwallex has acquired Leapfin to expand from payme…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Firmus’ planned ASX float appears to be slipping beyond earlier June and September timelines as investors await formal IPO dates for the AI factory company (Capital Brief)

Capital Markets

• DroneShield shareholders have delivered a first strike a…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja says Canva does not need an IPO as the $84b design software company shifts deeper into AI and continues scaling in private markets (AFR)

• Codan, an ASX-listed Australian defence technology company, has acquire…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Humankind, a Wellington HR consultancy, has acquired The Mintable, a management training startup backed by Blackbird, for an undisclosed sum. (Startup Daily)

• NAB has acquired Banked, a London-founded account-to-account payments company, for an…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Canva’s local filings show revenue surged past $4.1b and the Australian business swung to profit as the design giant prepares for an AI-era IPO (AFR)

• Catch co-founders Gabby and Hezi Leibovich have acquired collapsed online sales platform Clic…

Read more

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Hipages, an ASX-listed tradie marketplace, has acquired a 51% stake in VIZ Insurance, a digital insurance platform for tradespeople, for $1.4m as it expands into insurance distribution (BNA)

Capital Markets

• Atlassian shares surge 27% after upgr…

Read more

A day late due to a scheduling issue on my side, apologies for anyone who missed their Sunday morning read!

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• AirTrunk has acquired Lumina CloudInfra, an Indian data centre operator, for an undisclosed amount as part of a $7b push into India’s A…

Read more

A longer wrap up than usual and later send this week - needing a bit of extra time to curate the last 2 weeks worth of news and funding rounds in Australia.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• CleanPeak Energy buys Sustainable Energy Infrastructure for an undisclosed amount, add…

Read more