Most of this week was one company. Firmus pulled what would have been the biggest ASX float since Telstra, and I’ll spend most of my time on that. The other thing worth a look is how much money is still going into the private side of the market, with Square Peg and AustralianSuper both putting numbers on it this week.

The Firmus week, as reported by the AFR, went like this.

• Monday; the syndicate was telling fund managers demand was “well in excess” of the $7.9b (US$5.5b) on offer.

• Tuesday; the book opened and CDC confirmed Project Southgate, the $73b, 1.6GW build announced in October 2025, was over after 42MW in Melbourne.

• Wednesday night; the bankers were offering stock at $8.25 instead of $11, a 25% cut

• Friday; the float was pulled.

Firmus say they’ll raise privately and consider another listing, which the AFR reports means the Nasdaq. I don’t think this is the AI trade ending; the OpenAI and Meta contracts are still there, and AirTrunk picked the same week to treble their Japan investment to as much as $43b (US$30b). What investors wouldn’t do is pay $44b (US$30.6b), ~600x FY26 revenue of US$50.8m, for a company with 46MW running and 865MW still to build, whilst 57.6% of the register could sell on day one. Australian Retirement Trust and UniSuper reportedly passed, and Airlie told their clients to think of it as a startup. The July terms are an interesting point to watch out for, as the AFR reported, NVIDIA, Blackstone and Coatue convert one for one if a listing is done by 30th November; if it slips six months they get 1.05 shares for every one they hold, 1.15 if it slips further, plus top up shares if their returns miss the targets, all of it diluting the founders and the early investors. The clauses can be renegotiated if both sides agree, but the private round Firmus are now talking about has a deadline attached, and whoever writes that cheque will know it.

Away from the ASX the private markets are continuing to move. Forbes Australia reports Square Peg has closed more than $1b across two funds, roughly 40% for early stage and 60% for the Opportunities fund that does bigger bets in and beyond the portfolio, their largest raise yet and the second $1b+ fund this year after Blackbird’s $1.05b in August. AustralianSuper say they’ve now committed more than $1.5b to Australian VC, up from ~$600m five years ago, and by their count have backed seven of the nine current unicorns. Heidi Health, 15 days after their $140m Series C, are about to take discounted compute from Innovation Victoria and ResetData in exchange for equity, which Capital Brief says is believed to be an Australian first. None of that depended on Firmus listing. The Heidi deal is the one I’m interested in seeing how it plays out; paying for compute with equity rather than cash is not something I’ve seen in Australia yet, and if it works for Heidi I’d expect other AI companies to ask for the similar terms.

What will be interesting to see is whether Firmus get a private round done before 30th November and at what valuation, and whether Swipejobs, which was in front of the same fund managers last week testing a $2b float on $753m of first half revenue, still gets a hearing. I’d expect the window isn’t shut, just that the next company through it gets priced on revenue it already has rather than speculation, hype and a good PR campaign.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Firmus has pulled its $44b ASX float after CDC ended their $73b Project Southgate partnership and the $7.9b (US$5.5b) book-build fell short at $11 a share; it will now seek private funding and reportedly a Nasdaq listing (AFR)

• Unless Firmus lists by 30 November, its July terms give Nvidia, Blackstone and Coatue 1.05 to 1.15 shares for each they hold plus top-ups if returns lag, diluting founders and early investors (AFR)

• MUFG, the Japanese bank, has won ACCC approval to acquire Grow Inc, the AirTree-backed super administration platform behind HESTA’s botched system switch, at a $78m valuation, down from $250m last year (AFR)

• Software Combined, the aggregator that buys and holds B2B software businesses, has acquired Acendre, the recruitment and onboarding platform used by more than half of Commonwealth agencies, from US owner HireRoad for undisclosed consideration (BNA)

• Swipejobs, the AI job-matching platform, told fund managers first-half revenue hit $753m as it road-tests a $2b ASX float, leaving them unsure whether to value it as labour hire or an AI native (AFR)

Capital Markets

• RocketDNA, the ASX-listed drone-in-a-box data company serving miners including BHP Mitsubishi Alliance, has raised $2.23m in a placement at a 2.4% premium, with major shareholder Daniel Narayan lifting his stake to 19.5% (BNA)

Partnerships & Deals

• Arkeus, the defence sensor startup, has won its first Australian Army order for Warden, its AI-powered optical radar that lets Integrator surveillance drones detect and track objects day and night; value undisclosed (Startup Daily)

• Commonwealth Bank has become the first major corporate to pay for Australian news content used in workplace AI tools, signing a Copyright Agency licence covering prompts and summaries by its 50,000-plus staff (The Australian)

• Electro Optic Systems, the ASX-listed maker of remote weapon and counter-drone systems, has signed a conditional $700m (£370m) contract - its largest ever - for a nationwide counter-drone system in an unnamed Gulf state (BNA)

• Heidi Health will soon finalise a deal to take discounted compute from Innovation Victoria and data centre builder ResetData in exchange for a stake in the company, believed to be an Australian first (Capital Brief)

• Sea Forest, the ASX-listed maker of SeaFeed, a methane-cutting seaweed feed additive, has signed Teys Australia as exclusive beef distributor to 2030, targeting 480,000 head by June 2027 (BNA)

• Stakk, the ASX-listed fraud detection software company, has signed IBM to deploy its AI document processing across Australia and New Zealand from October, following its Candescent and FBI wins; revenue is volume-based and undisclosed (Australian FinTech)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• AirTrunk will treble its Japan data centre investment to as much as $43b (US$30b) and double its committed capacity there to more than 1GW, four months after committing US$30b to India (The Australian)

• Airwallex has set up a global holding company in London, renaming its UK entity Airwallex Global, as it leans into Europe while US politicians attack its China links (Capital Brief)

• Atlassian has rebuilt its MCP server so AI agents connect to Jira and Confluence on fewer tokens and added agent session tracking; Mike Cannon-Brookes expects customers to warm to Chinese open-weight models (AFR)

• The ELO2 consortium has unveiled the latest prototype of Roo-ver, Australia’s first lunar rover, funded by a $42m Space Agency grant and bound for the Moon’s south pole in 2030 (The Australian)

• Everlab, the preventive health startup, has launched OrganAge, a blood test that estimates the biological age of a member’s heart, brain, kidneys and other organs, live now for its Diagnostic and Protocol members (LinkedIn)

• Maincode, the Australian AI lab, has released Matilda-K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model post-trained in Australia on Chinese lab Moonshot’s open-weight Kimi K3 to hold its own identity and give balanced political answers (LinkedIn)

• Marbles, an AI-native accounting platform for Australian SMEs built on its own ledger, has launched from stealth with a 15-minute Xero migration tool and a Claude integration that reconciles the books (LinkedIn)

• Trellis Data, the Main Sequence-backed AI developer, says it is profitable and will ship its own large language model within a month, arguing Australia can build competitive models without weakening copyright (Capital Brief)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Nicola Forrest’s Coaxial Foundation will put $20m into Antler’s third Australian fund, which is raising $70m, and fund a $10m program giving women founders two $60k grants and 15% of their next round (Startup Daily)

• AustralianSuper has committed more than $1.5b to Australian VC, up from about $600m five years ago, backing 250-plus startups and seven of the nine current unicorns through Blackbird, Square Peg and AirTree (Australiansuper)

• Diraq, which builds quantum computers on standard silicon chips, has reached the final stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative - the US defence program testing whether a useful quantum computer can be built by 2033 - unlocking up to US$300m ($430m) in R&D funding (Forbes Australia)

• H2X Global, the hydrogen fuel cell truck maker, is seeking $6.1m to fund a comeback on five staff and $70k a month, and deliver its first vehicles to Swedish waste collector Renova (AFR)

• Australian founder Loong Wang’s US startup Metal has raised a US$32.5m ($46m) seed round co-led by Airwallex and its venture arm Capital 49, building blockchain rails to settle stablecoins and tokenised assets for banks (AFR)

• Square Peg has closed more than $1b across two funds, its largest raise yet - 40% for early-stage Fund 6, 60% for Opportunities Fund 3 for bigger bets in and beyond its portfolio (Forbes Australia)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• The Industry Department gave Anthropic its draft data centre guidelines while negotiating the April MOU that binds it to them, FOI documents show; Anthropic denies influencing the final rules (The Age)

• Anthropic is finalising a deal letting Australia’s AI Safety Institute independently evaluate its frontier models, and told the inquiry it has found no sign its models breached Australian government systems (Forbes Australia)

• Labor senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah has broken ranks over the budget’s R&D tax changes - cash refunds cut off for older companies - as 20 research bodies warn clinical trials will move offshore (AFR)

• Kmart has pulled its $89 Anko camera glasses from sale online as the Privacy Commissioner opens an investigation into Shenzhen Qingcheng, the Chinese company behind their HeyCyan app (The Age)

• Australia’s national AI standards will make companies responsible for building their products safely rather than impose prescriptive rules, Assistant Minister for Science and Technology Andrew Charlton says, as consultation closes Friday (InnovationAus)

• OpenAI and Anthropic told parliament’s AI inquiry copyright licensing costs will decide whether they invest here, as OpenAI’s Jason Kwon called its Medicare breach response ‘not good enough’ and backed mandatory reporting (AFR)

Funding Rounds

• Lubdub, a MedTech home cardiac kit that combines dry-electrode ECG, saliva biomarker test and handsfree ultrasound for people to detect heart disease, has raised $6m in a Seed round from Angel Investors (Business News)

• Energy Bay, an energy platform that builds and operates rooftop solar and battery embedded networks for property owners to cut power costs, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Pacific Equity Partners (AFR)

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News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Ampol, the ASX-listed fuel retailer and refiner, has agreed to acquire Evie Networks, the EV fast-charging operator with more than 1,030 bays backed by Trevor St Baker, for $225m in cash, pending ACCC clearance (Startup Daily)

• Firmus has pushed its $7.2b IPO bookbuild back to 8th October after signing to supply Meta compute at its Southeast Asian sites, a deal sources say lifts forecast FY28 EBIT about 15% to US$5.75b (AFR)

• Firmus has priced its IPO at $11 a share - a $44b (US$30.6b) equity value, below the US$50b it had pitched - with indicative orders already above the US$5b raise (Capital Brief)

• Thoma Bravo has appointed Barrenjoey and Goldman Sachs to run Nearmap’s ASX relisting, targeting this time next year for the aerial imaging company it took private for $1.06b in 2022 (AFR)

• Potentia Capital is preparing to sell Rex, the real estate software company it bought in 2022, with Gresham and Baird courting US and UK buyers after unsolicited approaches; Potentia’s Fund II owns more than 80% (AFR)

Capital Markets

• Megaport has won three AI compute contracts worth $978.6m through Latitude.sh, the cloud provider it bought in November, lifting FY27 revenue guidance to $720m-$810m; one customer is prepaying $281.5m for early GPU access (AFR)

• OFX, the ASX-listed international payments company, is investigating a cyber incident in which some client data was accessed, though no accounts or funds appear touched, while its $247m takeover by Equals remains pending (BNA)

• REA Group, the owner of realestate.com.au, has agreed to acquire a 35% stake in Distilled, the Irish owner of the Daft.ie property portal and DoneDeal.ie car marketplace, for $409m (€248m) in cash (BNA)

Partnerships & Deals

• Atlassian has signed a ten-year virtual power purchase agreement for almost 70% of the output of a community-owned solar and battery farm in Goulburn, to power its Sydney headquarters when it opens in 2028 (Startup Daily)

• AUDC, issuer of the AUDD Australian dollar stablecoin, has signed an MoU with Indonesia’s IDRX to explore settling Australian dollar-rupiah payments on-chain without routing through the US dollar (Australian FinTech)

• DroneShield has won a US Department of Defense contract worth up to $716m (US$500m) over three years to supply counter-drone systems under the Domestic Shield program protecting military sites, though it guarantees no orders (BNA)

• Paperbark, whose software shows ecommerce brands where customers drop off after an ad converts, has signed Unilever brands Onnit and Olly after two pivots and a $120k cheque from Watchful’s Josh Parsons (Startup Daily)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• WeMoney has launched WeMoney Connect, which turns Consumer Data Right bank data into a lender-ready credit assessment applying each lender’s policy within minutes, for banks, mutuals, non-bank lenders and brokers (Australian FinTech)

• Airwallex has rebuilt its Business Accounts around an organisation-level view of entities, balances and currencies, and opened them to AI agents through its AgentOS toolkit so agents can move money and manage FX within approvals (Airwallex)

• Heidi Health has launched Heidi II, agents that prep charts, draft referrals and chase patient follow-ups, a week after its $140m Series C; they can’t prescribe or diagnose, which would make them TGA-regulated devices (AFR)

• Lorikeet, the maker of AI service agents, has added agent traffic detection to its B2A suite, flagging support messages that come from AI agents, up to 3% of inbound today, so companies can prioritise humans (LinkedIn)

• Orbit 2 Orbit, the space logistics startup building reusable cargo vehicles to service satellites and space stations, is pitching a shipping-container standard for orbital freight after a $1.4m seed round led by Fusion Venture Labs (BNA)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Baseten, the US AI inference company co-founded by two Australians and backed by Blackbird, is reportedly raising US$2b-US$2.5b at a $37b (US$26b) valuation, double June’s, after an OpenAI deal to route tasks to open-weight models (AFR)

• Big Picture Medical, whose software lets patient data from one clinic’s AI tools make sense in another’s, is raising $10m at about a $100m valuation, courting US strategic investors ahead of a November close (AFR)

• Eastend Ventures, the South Australian VC, has closed Eastend Ventures Fund 1 at $30m - below the $50m it targeted - to back B2B startups in SA, WA and Queensland, with Funds SA as cornerstone (Startup Daily)

• Six quantum projects led by Silicon Quantum Computing, QuantX Labs, Avicena Systems, FeBI Technologies, iQ Sense and Q Factorial will share $12.3m in round two of the federal government’s $36m Critical Technologies Challenge Program (InnovationAus)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• Australian AI policy researcher Janet Egan says a sovereign frontier model would cost about $500b and Australia’s real leverage is hosting frontier training compute and charging AI labs into a fund for creatives (POLITICO)

• The Tech Council says Treasury’s R&D and CGT changes are a ‘pincer movement’ on startups: most of a software company’s R&D claim could become ineligible, while the CGT carve-out’s tests shut out the biggest scaleups (Startup Daily)

• Finance says 12,000 public servants across 33 agencies trialling the GovAI chatbot have given positive feedback, as phase two adds new models, web search and large-document handling (InnovationAus)

• South Australia has named RBA board member Iain Ross to chair the nation’s first Royal Commission into AI, with ex-Tech Council chief Kate Pounder and Stanford’s Christopher Manning as commissioners, reporting by July 2027 (Capital Brief)

• Labor has flagged mandatory reporting of AI agent breaches as ‘a minimum’ and is weighing new legal liabilities for AI companies, with the changes likely to land in the national AI standards due by year-end (InnovationAus)

• OpenAI has apologised to Australia, admitting its agent ran commands and took credentials and internal files from the Medicare statistics portal, and has paused tool-use training of its most capable models (The Age)

• OpenAI will run a year-long Australian taskforce of independent experts on containing rogue agents, global affairs chief Chris Lehane says, confirming it has shelved its GPT-6.1 Astra model over deception in testing (AFR)

• Queensland added ‘additional gateways’ to its $470m PsiQuantum contract last year after reviewing the joint federal-state deal for a Brisbane quantum computer, Treasurer David Janetzki has revealed (InnovationAus)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• Tank Stream Labs, the startup coworking operator Scalare Partners bought for $5.5m last year, has opened its eighth site and first in Queensland, giving the ASX-listed accelerator a Brisbane base alongside Planet Startup (BNA)

People Moves & Spotlights

• InDebted, the debt collection fintech, has named Advanced Navigation revenue chief Chris McNamara CEO and ex-Morgan Stanley banker Brendan Lee CFO, completing the search begun when founder Josh Foreman stepped back in April (BNA)

• Neara, the $1.1b infrastructure modelling software company, has hired former Adobe product VP Ian Wang as chief product officer and says more of its hiring pipeline is Australians in the US looking to come home (Capital Brief)

• Nexl, the CRM and growth platform used by more than 150 law firms, has appointed Matt Redden as CEO from 5th October; founder Philipp Thurner becomes chairman and head of innovation (LinkedIn)

• Redbelly Network, the blockchain built for regulated financial markets, has hired former Monoova CEO Christian Westerlind Wigstrom as chief executive from November to lead its push into tokenising assets such as shares and funds (Startup Daily)

Reports & Data

• ATO transparency data shows some of Australia’s biggest tech companies and data centre operators paid no corporate tax in 2024-25, among more than 1,200 of the 4,299 largest companies that paid nothing (InnovationAus)

Other News & Updates

• With card surcharges banned from 1st October, fintechs are pushing to fix access to the New Payments Platform behind Osko, PayID and PayTo, saying operator AP+ ‘gets away with murder’ while the BECS migration stalls (Capital Brief)

• Harrison.ai’s founders have revealed its Series C valued the radiology AI company at $789m and that contracted recurring revenue has quadrupled to $40m in 18 months, calling April’s 34 job cuts a shift to commercialisation (Forbes)

• Sam Altman has promised Australia early access to OpenAI’s advanced models to plug cyber gaps whether or not training happens here, and says OpenAI won’t follow Anthropic to an IPO until safety concerns are contained (AFR)

• Australian organisations will be the first outside the US to receive funding from OpenAI’s US$1b defensive-AI plan, Sam Altman says, as Australian founders in San Francisco report the safety debate has slowed nobody down (AFR)

• RedEarth Energy Storage, the home battery maker backed by Ord Minnett, Perennial and Thorney, has collapsed into administration blaming cheaper imports, months after raising $5m at a $43.9m valuation for a planned ASX listing (AFR)

• Sicona, the silicon-carbon anode maker, says it needs $55m to finish its Port Kembla plant and warns Australia’s ‘small window’ to build a battery materials industry is closing as UK and US governments back rivals (InnovationAus)

Funding Rounds

• Trendspek, a software platform for infrastructure owners to inspect assets in 3D and plan maintenance from a shared record of their condition, has raised $6m from OIF Ventures (Startup Daily)

• R2Crete, a concrete recycling technology company turning demolition waste into low-carbon building materials for concrete producers, has raised $750k in a Pre-Seed round from University of Melbourne’s Genesis Pre-Seed Fund and Uniseed (Startup Daily)

• Skopos Bio, a biotech developing targeted radioactive medicines for patients with hard-to-treat cancers to spare healthy tissue, has raised $12m in a Seed round from Tenmile, Tin Alley Ventures and Yosemite (AFR)

• functionSPACE, a developer toolkit for building prediction markets that price numerical outcomes across a continuous range of possibilities, has raised $2.42m (US$1.7m) in a Pre-Seed round from Maven 11, Blockwall, SMAPE Capital (X)

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An OpenAI agent got into a Medicare portal on 18th June, and we only found out on Thursday when Albanese revealed it from New York, partway through a week of pushing for international AI guardrails. OpenAI noticed in August and emailed a public inbox on 10th September. It then took another five days to reach the Australian Signals Directorate. No personal data was accessed and, as far as I can tell, nobody was required to report it. InnovationAus reports the AI laws are being brought forward to the end of the year, whilst the AI Safety Institute has less than $30m over four years and can only advise. There’s a lot more to this, from what it means for the copyright fight to the local startups quietly running on Chinese models, and I’ll try and go deeper in a longer standalone piece soon.

Outside the breach, Firmus will run their $7b IPO bookbuild on 6th and 7th October ahead of a 22nd October listing. That would make it the second largest float in Australian history after Telstra. Anthropic is in advanced talks to anchor AirTrunk’s planned data centre at Kurri Kurri in the Hunter, one of at least four Australian leases they’re working on. That’s the same week Victoria said new data centres will have to match their power use with new renewables and sit 150 metres from homes.

Airwallex is also back in a public fight over their China links. A second US congressman has flagged their Chinese entities, staff and investors as a potential national security risk. Investors in rival Ramp have piled in, and Keith Rabois warned Jack Zhang he’d be “pleading the Fifth soon”. It’s the second time in a year Airwallex has faced this in the US, but this time Zhang is hitting back with memes, long arguments on X and a formal rebuttal from a former US attorney. They’re also preparing for an IPO rumoured for 2027, and AUSTRAC ordered an independent audit of their compliance with money laundering rules earlier this year. What will be interesting to see is whether fighting it out this publicly helps or hurts them.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Tangerpay, the Australian fintech that lets laundromat customers tap to pay for machines, has merged with British laundry software company CleanCloud in a deal valuing Tangerpay at more than $70m (AFR)

• US private equity firm Thoma Bravo plans to relist Nearmap, the aerial imaging company it took private in 2022, on the ASX next year in a multibillion dollar float (AFR)

• Scope Systems, an enterprise software and advisory firm focused on mining, has acquired AssetHive, Silverhorse Technologies’ platform for managing maintenance and compliance on mines and infrastructure, for undisclosed consideration (LinkedIn)

• Genetic Signatures, the ASX-listed maker of hospital PCR tests, has agreed to acquire Microba, the ASX-listed gut microbiome testing company, in a merger paid entirely in shares, creating a $51m diagnostics group (BNA)

• Innovaero, the maker of military drones including the OWL-B strike drone, has listed on the ASX after an oversubscribed $40m IPO, valuing it at about $158m (Startup Researcher)

• NIQ, the US shopping data company formerly NielsenIQ, has launched a takeover bid, recommended by the target’s board, for The U Group, the Australian owner of receipt scanning app ReceiptJar, for undisclosed consideration (Startup Researcher)

• Catch co-founders Gabby and Hezi Leibovich are set to sell their Luxury Escapes shares, about 12% of the travel booking platform, to Ellerston Capital in a secondary sale valuing it at $525m (AFR)

• Elixinol Wellness, the ASX-listed hemp and wellness products company, has agreed to acquire Vitable, a personalised vitamin subscription platform, for up to $3.5m, mostly in shares (BNA)

• Firmus will run its $7b IPO bookbuild on 6-7 October for a 22 October ASX listing; lead manager Morgan Stanley’s analysts value it at up to $128b (US$90b) including debt (AFR)

• Ofload, the digital freight marketplace matching shippers with truck carriers, has acquired National Transport Solutions, a Queensland freight brokerage, for undisclosed consideration (BNA)

• Stakk, the ASX-listed fraud detection software company, has acquired ParaScript, a US AI document fraud detection firm, for $88.7m (US$63m) in cash, shares and deferred payments, completing a deal announced in July (Australian FinTech)

• Telix Pharmaceuticals, the ASX-listed biotech developing radioactive drugs that detect and treat cancer, has agreed to acquire ITM, a German supplier of medical radioisotopes, for up to $3.3b (US$2.35b), mostly in shares (BNA)

Partnerships & Deals

• Anthropic is in advanced talks to lease AirTrunk’s planned data centre on the old Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter site in the Hunter, one of at least four Australian leases in the works (AFR)

• Advanced Navigation has signed a $26m deal to supply Norway’s Kongsberg with hundreds of its Boreas navigation systems, which work when GPS is jammed, for counter-drone platforms Poland has ordered (Startup Daily)

• Anthropic is giving Australian researchers and deep tech startups another $10m in Claude API credits, taking its local science commitment to $13m since April; Victor Chang and the University of Canberra join (Capital Brief)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• DroneShield, the ASX-listed counter-drone maker, has opened a $13m research hub at Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen with South Australian government support - its first Australian office outside NSW (InnovationAus)

• Airtasker co-founder Jonathan Lui has relaunched Soho, his property app where users swipe through listings, as SohoAI, a chatbot that answers questions like which suburbs have the highest rental yields (SmartCompany)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Athletic Ventures, the VC backed by athletes including Sam Kerr and Pat Cummins, has joined the $351m (US$250m) raise by Fever, a ticketing platform founded in Spain, alongside EQT, Point72 and Baillie Gifford (AFR)

• Carthona Capital, the Australian early stage VC, has joined US startup Hubble Network’s $285m (US$200m) raise at a $2.3b (US$1.6b) valuation; its satellites pick up signals from cheap Bluetooth chips anywhere (AFR)

• CSIRO is quadrupling its backing for Atmosphere, Main Sequence’s pre-seed program that turns lab research into startups with cheques of about $500k, to $20m in the VC’s upcoming fourth fund (Capital Brief)

• Significant Ventures, the VC run by the Hindmarsh family, launches its $50m fourth fund to back early stage hardware and robotics startups; the Snow family and CDC founder Greg Boorer are among backers (AFR)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• Employment Hero has proposed a publicly seeded sovereign frontier AI lab, recruited through a global talent contest, with every Australian given an equal stake, in a submission to parliament’s AI committee (Capital Brief)

• Victoria will make new data centres match their power use with new renewables, cool with non-drinking water and sit 150m from homes; the industry warns the setback could push projects interstate (Startup Daily)

• NSW innovation minister Anoulack Chanthivong overruled an Investment NSW panel and hand-wrote ‘$0’ on a $40,000 grant for the Spark startup festival, FOI documents show (Startup Daily)

• The government will now introduce its AI laws - binding data centre energy and water rules, and rules for labs training frontier models here - by year’s end, months earlier than planned (InnovationAus)

• Anthropic has told parliament it accepts it won’t get a broad copyright exemption to train AI here, proposing a narrow conditional approval with opt-outs instead; the ABC and News Corp want stronger protections (AFR)

• An OpenAI agent breached a Medicare statistics portal in June while researching medicine spending, the Prime Minister has revealed; OpenAI took almost three months to tell the government, emailing a public inbox (Capital Brief)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• The University of Newcastle’s I2N accelerator has picked 12 startups for its 2026 cohort, including Envirocone’s recycled cardboard blast hole cones for mines and Mechanistic Health’s drug interaction checker (Startup Daily)

• Seven startups have won $15.6m in CUREator+ dementia grants from the Medical Research Future Fund, including TasTest’s digital dementia risk check and CodeBreakers’ gene editing for childhood dementia (Startup Daily)

Reports & Data

• Companies claimed $17b in R&D tax breaks in 2023-24 as growth slowed sharply, ATO data shows; seven now claim more than $100m each, with Afterpay joining the list (InnovationAus)

Other News & Updates

• A second US congressman has called Airwallex’s Chinese entities, staff and investors a potential US security risk; Jack Zhang has hit back with a formal rebuttal from a former US attorney (Capital Brief)

Funding Rounds

• Amber Electric, the energy retailer on a mission to shift Australia to 100% renewables, has raised $78.9m (€49m) in a Series E round from 1GT, ETF Partners, Innovation Victoria and E.ON (Capital Brief | Startup Daily)

• HEO, a space platform that tasks satellites to image in-orbit objects for governments to secure sovereign metre imagery, has raised $37m (USD $25m) in a Series B round from Beaten Zone Venture Partners, AirTree Ventures, Salus Ventures, TEN13, DCode Capital, Deepwater, Dumm Capital, National Reconstruction Fund, Paspalis Capital, UNSW and Angel Investors (Capital Brief | Startup Daily | The Australian)

• OpenDebt, a fintech platform that deploys AI agents to automate debt collection for lenders and businesses to recover overdue payments, has raised $2m in a Pre-Seed round from Blackbird Ventures and Antler Australia (The Australian | OpenDebt | Startup Daily)

• Heidi Health, which develops a AI-powered medical scribe and clinical workflow automation tool to reduce admin for clinicians, has raised $140m in a Series C round from Blackbird Ventures, Phoenix Court, Point72 Private Investments and Headline. The round also included $335m growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. (Capital Brief | Startup Daily | The Australian | The Age)

• Kinoxis Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech developing brain-penetrant small-molecule ALOX15 inhibitors to treat agitation in people with dementia, has raised $6.75m from Main Sequence, Uniseed, UniSuper, University of Sydney, Stoic VC and Avicella Capital (Startup Daily | Kinoxis Therapeutics)

• RentBetter, a proptech platform that helps Australian landlords self-manage rentals to avoid agent fees, has raised $5m from EVP (Startup Daily)

• Medcast, a clinical AI knowledge and learning platform for Australian clinicians to surface governed, searchable clinical answers for safer decisions, has raised $5.4m from Best Practice Software (Startup Daily)

• Reimagine Labs, a MedTech wearable drug-delivery system that gives precision, electronically controlled dosing for people with epilepsy to reduce seizures, has raised an Undiscloused amount in a Seed round from Monash University, Innovation Victoria and Praxis Precision Medicines (LinkedIn)

• Auric, a connected scent device and app that delivers personalised scent rituals for home users to manage mood through guided aromatherapy, has raised an Undiscloused amount from Scalare Partners (Newsfile | Auric)

• Zeligate, an HR Tech platform that delivers verified interview-ready shortlists for high-volume employers to speed hiring decisions, has raised $750k in a Seed round (Zeligate)

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News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Firmus is seeking $7b in its IPO - Australia’s second-largest after Telstra’s $14b in 1997 - on a contracted book that has grown eightfold since April to $95b (US$67.8b) (AFR)

• Netwealth, the ASX-listed wealth management platform, has agreed to acquire Paradino, an AI tool that automates advisers’ file notes and compliance paperwork, for up to $29m in cash, shares and earn-outs (BNA)

• Overwatch Technologies, a Perth company that uses drone-mounted radio sensors to find ships that have switched off their transponders, is seeking $8m in an ASX IPO that values it at $26.7m (BNA)

• Savic Motorcycles, the Melbourne maker of Australia’s first high-performance electric motorbike, is seeking an acquirer, strategic investor or manufacturing partner through a formal process to scale production (BNA)

• Sicona, the Australian developer of silicon-carbon anode material for fast-charging batteries, has acquired New Orleans rival Advano for undisclosed consideration, giving it a US factory as the US bans Chinese battery technology (The Australian)

• Swipejobs, the AI job-matching platform that bought Expert360, will pitch Sydney and Melbourne fund managers on 21 September for an ASX float expected to value it at about $2b including debt (AFR)

• Xpansiv, the Sydney-born operator of energy and carbon certificate markets, has agreed to acquire Formbay, an Australian platform that creates and verifies rooftop solar and battery certificates, for undisclosed consideration (Xpansiv)

Capital Markets

• Echo IQ says the FDA knocked back its heart failure software over the statistics in its clinical validation, not the technology, and is weighing an appeal or a new application (Capital Brief)

Partnerships & Deals

• AirTrunk will fund Sydney startup Emergence Quantum to adapt cryogenic cooling built for quantum computers to hyperscale data centres, aiming to cut water use and make chips run faster (Capital Brief)

• Anthropic has signed its first Australian data centre lease - all of Zerra DC’s planned 2.1GW, $31b Western Downs campus in Queensland - to run Claude rather than train it, subject to foreign investment approval (The Australian)

• Firmus has a five-year agreement with Nvidia to deploy at least 10GW of chips - about a third of Australia’s electricity generation - which would need hundreds of billions of dollars in financing (AFR)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• Lorikeet, the maker of AI customer service agents, has launched B2A (’business to agent’), tools for companies to serve the personal AI agents now shopping, booking and cancelling for their customers (LinkedIn)

• Omniscient Neurotechnology, the brain-mapping software company, has won its third FDA clearance, for a tool that uses a patient’s own scans to guide deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s and tremor (LinkedIn)

• Sapia.ai, the AI hiring platform, has launched experience scoring, which rates the depth and relevance of a candidate’s past work from a structured chat interview instead of a CV (Startup Researcher)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Airtree told investors that losing Eucalyptus’s Series A on valuation - it underbid and only got in at Series B - changed its approach to ‘leaning in harder, earlier’ (AFR)

• Akeeko Medical, a Melbourne startup whose device lets urologists place kidney stone stents at the bedside without a general anaesthetic, is seeking $8m in a raise led by veteran stockbroker Hugh Robertson (AFR)

• Future Secure AI, the Sydney-founded maker of AI agents for corporate back-office work, is finalising a $105m-$119m (US$75m-US$85m) convertible note round at a $1.8b valuation cap before a planned 2027 ASX float (AFR)

• Gilmour Space is now seeking $280m-$700m (US$200m-US$500m) in a further Series E extension; its CFO says a US IPO is planned for 2028 and talks have begun with Nasdaq and the NYSE (Capital Brief)

• Hysata has won an ARENA grant of up to $49m towards a $98m Port Kembla production line making 50MW of its hydrogen electrolysers a year, expandable to 200MW (Capital Brief)

• Main Sequence, the CSIRO-founded deep tech VC, is raising its fourth fund with a reported $400m target and $75m already committed by the federal government; its third fund raised $450m in 2023 (Forbes)

• T. Rowe Price and Franklin Templeton have cut the value of their Canva stakes by 9% and 6% this year, implying US$38.2b and US$39.3b - smaller cuts than Blackbird’s 17% to US$34.9b (Forbes)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• Treasury’s draft VC tax changes lift the ESVCLP fund size cap from $200m to $270m and the investee asset cap from $50m to $80m from July 2027, with no indexation (Startup Daily)

• Victoria’s Coalition has pledged to abolish Breakthrough Victoria, the state VC fund now inside Innovation Victoria, and sell its 100-plus investments if it wins November’s election, claiming $1.27b in savings over a decade (Startup Daily)

• The Office of AI has opened consultation on the National AI Standards - minimum rules for large data centres and conditions for training frontier models here - with submissions due 9 October (Capital Brief)

• Any company hacked by an AI agent could have to report it under Security of Critical Infrastructure Act changes Home Affairs is considering; only critical infrastructure operators must report cyber breaches today (Capital Brief)

• The federal government is considering barring camera-equipped smart glasses from government workplaces on privacy and security grounds, in what it says could be the first ban of its kind (InnovationAus)

• Leaked Attorney-General’s Department slides show the government weighing opt-out AI training on Australian content, including an option where AI companies that sign enough licensing deals owe other creators nothing (ABC News)

• The government appears to have dropped a plan to let AI companies train on copyrighted work for free once they signed enough licensing deals; an opt-out model creators oppose remains (AFR)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• ARENA has launched Launchpad, a $30m program: $15m in grants of $500k to $1m for 15 to 30 pre-seed and seed clean energy startups, and $15m for the ecosystem partners that support them (InnovationAus)

People Moves & Spotlights

• Industry Minister Tim Ayres has appointed Colterlec chief executive Rodney Henderson and investment specialist Anna Shave to the National Reconstruction Fund board for three years, replacing Ahmed Fahour and Karen Smith-Pomeroy (InnovationAus)

• NSW has made Kate Farr its permanent director of innovation and collaboration, in charge of delivering the state’s 10-year Innovation Blueprint, after acting in the role since April (InnovationAus)

• Silicon Quantum Computing has hired John Hollister, the former CFO of US chip maker GlobalFoundries, as chief financial officer as it sets up its own quantum chip manufacturing in Australia (Forbes)

Other News & Updates

• Dabble, the online betting app, has paid $1.07m in ACMA penalties for failing to close 157 accounts of people on the BetStop self-exclusion register and sending 839 marketing messages to self-excluded people (BNA)

• Heidi won Scaleup of the Year and AI Gamechanger at Startup Daily’s Best in Tech Awards; SiteHive was named Startup of the Year and Ovum AI’s Ariella Heffernan-Marks Best New Founder (Startup Daily)

Funding Rounds

• Elita, Australia’s first pet stem cell bank which allows pet owners to collect and store stem cells during routine desexing procedures, has raised $1.9m in a Seed round from Boost VC, Gandel Invest, Artesian, Touch Ventures and M8 Ventures (Capital Brief | Startup Daily)

• Evatto, an AI event-management platform that automates event programme administration for enterprise teams to replace spreadsheets and manual work, has raised $1.02m in a Pre-Seed round from Purpose Ventures (Startup Daily)

• Medow Health AI, an AI ‘co-pilot’ for medical practice management software, has raised $3.5m from Angel Investors (AFR | Startup Daily)

• ReFresh, a psychosocial risk management platform that helps organisations detect, assess, and control workplace hazards to meet WHS compliance and ISO 45003 standards, has raised $2.5m in a Seed round from Black Nova Venture Capital, Antler Australia and Archangel Ventures (Startup Daily)

• Buildkite, a CI/CD platform that runs build and test pipelines on customers’ infrastructure for engineering teams to ship software faster, raised $21m through a convertible note in January this year (Capital Brief | Startup Daily)

• Quillio, a legal AI platform for law firms and in-house counsel to draft and review contracts faster, cutting manual review time, has raised $775k from Angel Investors (Capital Brief)

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A fortnightly wrap and late evening send today - back to regularly scheduling programming from next week!

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• 4DS Memory, the ASX-listed memory chip developer, has agreed to acquire Jenesys, an Australian edge-AI startup whose software lets unmanned vehicle fleets coordinate without a central command node, for $5m in shares (Startup Researcher)

• Eftsure, the Sydney-founded payment verification platform, has acquired Relish, a US vendor data validation and AI invoice processing company, for undisclosed consideration - its third international move in a year (BNA)

• Firmus will start IPO investor meetings next week on an ‘accelerated path’ to the ASX at a $15.5b valuation - its US$2b preference shares convert one-for-one if it lists by 30 November (AFR)

• OneVentures expects a record year for biotech M&A as $300b of drug revenue comes off patent within five years and pharma buys earlier - Australian life science VC has grown 15-fold since 2010 to $1.9b (AFR)

• Parratech, the Western Sydney maker of data centre enclosures for AirTrunk, NextDC, AWS and Microsoft, has drawn a bid from EQT valuing it above $1b as its Luminis-run sale continues (AFR)

• Bids are in for Stack Infrastructure’s $25b-plus Asia Pacific data centres - a GIP, Nvidia, Microsoft and MGX consortium with IFM versus Macquarie; Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital is a minority owner (AFR)

• ASX-bound Swipejobs has acquired Expert360 for a reported $16m, three years after a $165m Heidrick & Struggles buyout collapsed - only Series C holders like Airtree get paid; founder Bridget Loudon-Harris gets nothing (AFR)

Capital Markets

• The ASX is courting VC-backed tech companies in Australia, NZ, Singapore and the US for listings, pitching itself as the exit route for funds under pressure to return capital (Capital Brief)

• DroneShield’s committed 2026 revenue has reached $251m, the bottom of its $250m to $270m guidance, and its next-generation RfRecon radio frequency detector has won a first order (BNA)

• Echo IQ’s shares halved after the FDA refused to clear its EchoSolv HF heart failure software, two months after a $110m raise - the clearance Pro Medicus’s optional second $10m hinged on (Small Caps)

• NextDC is raising $1.1b in subordinated convertible notes at a 1.25% to 1.75% coupon to fund its Australian build-out, five months after $750m of subordinated notes in April (BNA)

Partnerships & Deals

• Acusensus has won its first Victorian government contract, a $1.7m two-year trial of two fixed speed cameras - finally adding its home state to NSW, Queensland, SA, WA and the ACT (BNA)

• Apate.ai has partnered with US telco analytics vendor Mobileum to sell its scam-baiting AI agents to carriers worldwide, a week after its $11.4m (US$8.15m) seed round (ARN)

• Coles will cut ties with Palantir - the US surveillance company named in a 2025 UN report on companies profiting from what it calls a genocide in Gaza - after an 85,000-signature GetUp campaign (The Age)

• Commonwealth Bank has taken naming rights on a 24/7 finance news channel from LeadStory, the Australian-owned streaming news platform that says it reaches 16 million viewers a month (Mediaweek)

• Firmus has signed OpenAI as anchor customer for two new AI data centres in Malaysia - its first officially named big customer - taking contracted capacity past 900MW, none of it in Australia (AFR)

• Firmus has committed $416m (US$300m) as cornerstone customer on SUBCO’s APX East subsea cable, locking in 150 terabits per second of Australia-US capacity for 25 years from late 2028 (BNA)

• FlexSysAI, an EnergyLab-backed Sydney startup, is testing with ResetData, CSIRO and UQ whether AI workloads can be cut 20% to 50% within seconds of a grid signal, letting data centres connect faster (BNA)

• Gilmour Space and Hypersonix have partnered to offer hypersonic flight tests from Gilmour’s Bowen spaceport, pairing Gilmour’s rockets with Hypersonix’s scramjets for Australian and AUKUS defence customers (BNA)

• Keeyu, the Sydney startup whose AI agents fix post-purchase delivery problems for online retailers, has signed Billabong - the brand that sponsored CEO Jevon Le Roux as a pro surfer in the 1990s (LinkedIn)

• Nvidia says it will help partners including Firmus and Sharon AI build 2GW of AI data centre capacity in Australia by the end of 2027 - more than all existing data centres use today (AFR)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• Airwallex is investing US$43m in the UAE over five years, expanding its Dubai office as it works toward full central bank licences it holds in-principle approval for (Australian FinTech)

• Atlassian will start charging for AI use beyond included Rovo credits from 3 December - US1c a credit - after Rovo usage grew more than 50% quarter on quarter (AFR)

• MooCoo Ventures has opened Angelmatic to its syndicate investors - a $10,000 commitment automatically split into ten $1,000 cheques across rules-screened early-stage deals, run with Brisbane Angels since 2019 (LinkedIn)

• Canva is about to launch its own foundation image model, built by its 140-person research lab and pitched as on par with Google’s Nano Banana, as Google’s new Pics tool comes after its enterprise users (AFR)

• Canva says enterprise use of its Docs and Sheets apps grew 83% and 59% year on year as it pushes into Microsoft and Google’s productivity turf; it counts 265 million users, 31 million paying (Forbes)

• Diraq will install an eight-qubit silicon quantum computer inside Equinix’s Sydney data centre by October - the first quantum machine in an Australian commercial data centre, it says (Forbes)

• Eucalyptus has retired its Pilot men’s health brand in Australia and relaunched it as Hims - the first big change since Hims & Hers bought Eucalyptus for $1.6b in February (AFR)

• Isaacus, the Australian legal AI company, has unveiled Blackstone Graph, a knowledge graph linking laws, cases, regulators and people across jurisdictions and built for AI agents rather than human readers (LinkedIn)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• Airtree has won the vote to extend its 2014 first fund to July 2028, keeping its Canva stake - it will waive fees for a year and has 22 months to exit (AFR)

• Beaten Zone, Steve Baxter’s Brisbane defence tech VC, has closed its debut fund at $26m, up from $20m a month earlier - Baxter is the largest investor with $6m (BNA)

• Blackbird was named VC firm of the year at the Australian Investment Council awards, with Brandon Capital winning for Myricx Bio, Airtree for HotDoc and OneVentures for diversity (LinkedIn)

• Brandon Capital has deployed about $60m of the National Reconstruction Fund’s $150m commitment across 10 biotechs in a year - AdvanCell took $15.4m - the NRF’s only investment in a fund so far (Forbes)

• Drumbeat, the Auckland PR platform from the venture studio behind Tracksuit, has raised NZ$2m ($1.64m) led by Icehouse Ventures with Australian marketers Adam Ferrier and Henry Innis among backers (Startup Daily)

• ENA Respiratory, the Melbourne biotech developing a once-weekly antiviral nasal spray, has won a $2.98m Biointelect Venturer grant for a first trial of INNA-051 in asthma patients from early 2027 (Startup Daily)

• Skalata Ventures has rebranded as Tall Order Ventures a month after Rohan Workman and Maxine Lee bought out Paul Little, relaunching as a first-cheque fund for AI-era founders with AI-run sourcing and diligence (Startup Daily)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• The government has released draft legislation banning non-compete clauses for workers earning under $190,100, holding firm against business and tech pushback - removing a barrier to staff leaving to start companies (InnovationAus)

• Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has launched a Financial Innovation Strategy that scraps the legislated fintech sandbox - used by just 19 fintechs in five years - for a flexible model run through ASIC’s relief powers (Capital Brief)

• Treasurer Jim Chalmers has signed off on a House economics committee inquiry, chaired by Ed Husic, into why technology advances haven’t lifted Australia’s productivity (InnovationAus)

• eSafety wants smart glasses to blur faces by default and show when they’re recording, while Rowland’s draft privacy laws add a right to erasure and an IDLock tool in myGov from 2027 (Startup Daily)

• Chalmers has widened the startup CGT carve-out - no $10m lifetime cap, a three-year holding period and eligibility up to 15 years old - and given biotechs a 15-year R&D offset window (SmartCompany)

• King River Capital predicts a ‘flood’ of super money into venture within two to three years if Treasury’s proposed VC-specific performance benchmark and ASIC’s fee disclosure review go ahead (Forbes)

• Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has ruled out an import ban on camera-equipped smart glasses, citing their value for vision-impaired users, as $90 Kmart versions spread (SmartCompany)

• The NSW government will set up a $150m fund to co-invest in startups spun out of the state’s universities from July 2027 - if Labor wins the March election (Startup Daily)

• Draft digital duty of care laws would let Australians opt out of social media algorithms and make platforms, apps and AI chatbots liable for harmful content, with fines above $100m (AFR)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• ElectraLith, the Monash spinout whose electrochemical process extracts and refines battery-grade lithium in one step without water or chemicals, has won the Grand Prix at the World Materials Forum start-up challenge in Paris (EIN Presswire)

• EVP has launched 40x, a three-day peer program for up to 40 revenue-generating ANZ software founders planning to raise within 12 months - applications close 15 September (Startup Daily)

• Perth accelerator Plus Eight has moved nine startups, including TradieScribe and RecruitMate AI, into the second phase of its tenth cohort with the seed pool lifted to $1m after the Spinifex Foundation joined (Startup Researcher)

• Spark, Sydney’s free grassroots startup festival, returns from 21 September with about 60 events across NSW and will launch the Spark Foundation, a charity to put founders in front of ministers and investors (Startup Daily)

• North Australian SeaCulture, which grows seaweed in remote locations for uses including mine site rehabilitation, has won Croc Pitch 2026 in Darwin, with up to $1m of Paspalis venture capital on offer (ABC)

People Moves & Spotlights

• DroneShield has hired former MYOB and Afterpay finance chief Rebecca Lowde as CFO from 2 November, replacing Carla Balanco after eight years (Capital Brief)

• Robert Snow has joined Canberra’s Significant Ventures as a general partner, bringing investment banking M&A experience and uniting the Snow and Hindmarsh families behind Canberra ventures (LinkedIn)

• Stake has added former Tech Council chief Damian Kassabgi to its board, but CEO Matt Leibowitz says a raise is ‘not on my horizon’ - it is now Australia’s third largest broker by customers (Capital Brief)

• Swyftx has made Andrea Yuen permanent CEO and Cathryn Lyall permanent chair after both served as interims since April, with co-founder Alex Harper stepping back to executive director (Australian FinTech)

• WiseTech has appointed former Seven West Media chief Jeff Howard as CFO from 28 September, ending nearly two years with Caroline Pham as interim (Capital Brief)

Reports & Data

• Fintechs raised $1.73b in FY26, up 137%, but 56% went to Airwallex - without it the sector grew 5% and deal count hit a seven-year low, according to Triple Bubble and Cut Through Venture (Startup Daily)

• Oxford Economics expects Australian data centre investment to reach $60b by 2030, from $20b this year, adding $78b to the economy and 80,000 to 100,000 jobs a year (SmartCompany)

• Modelling for Transgrid puts NSW data centre peak demand at 3.5GW by 2035, double AEMO’s forecast, as EnergyAustralia pitches Yallourn’s site for 2GW of data centres when the coal plant closes (The Australian)

Other News & Updates

• AMSL Aero, the Sydney hydrogen-electric VTOL aircraft maker backed by Hostplus and Telstra Super, is up for sale after a $30m raise fell over - headcount is down from about 70 to six (Capital Brief)

• Bupa is redirecting 77% of its Doctors on Demand telehealth referrals to Hola Health, the Perth startup it part-owns - a $6m revenue hit for ASX-listed Vitura, which has sent Bupa a breach notice (BNA)

• Canva has been hiring senior US staff to rehearse earnings calls, manage analysts and prepare guidance - the plumbing of a public company - though it says there’s nothing new on IPO timing (Capital Brief)

• Firmus is leaning on Asia ahead of its float as Australian builds lag - its Melbourne service for a hyperscaler believed to be Meta only started last month and Launceston has slipped (AFR)

• Harrison.ai has laid off Australian staff and launched a US teleradiology practice paying radiologists to read scans with its AI, a year after the National Reconstruction Fund put in $32m to keep it in Australia (ABC News)

Funding Rounds

31st August to 6th September - $72.8m across 5 rounds

• Apate.AI, a cyber-intelligence platform that deploys conversational AI bots for banks, telcos and crypto exchanges to disrupt scams, has raised $11.37m (US $8.1.5m) in a Seed round from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures and Baobab Ventures (Startup Daily | Wall Street Journal)

• Gridsight, an AI platform that helps electricity network operators monitor and manage distributed energy resources, has raised $36.26m (US $26m) in a Series B round from Insight Partners, Galvanize, AirTree Ventures, Energy Transition Ventures and Aera VC (Capital Brief | AFR | LinkedIn)

• Pearler, an investing platform for everyday Australian investors to invest in ASX and US shares and ETFs to build long-term wealth, has raised $16m in a Series A round from Portage Ventures, Altered Capital, No Brand, Partners Horizon Fund and Angel Investors (AFR)

• GonGlobal, a MedTech inhaled IVF therapy that delivers ovarian stimulation hormones for fertility patients to avoid injections, has raised $1.2m from Innovation Victoria and RMIT University (Startup Daily | Innovation Victoria)

• Future Maintenance Technologies, an autonomous robotics inspection platform that scans rolling stock for rail operators to reduce maintenance downtime, has raised $8m from Queensland Investment Corporation, Next Wave Partners and Taronga Group (Next Wave Partners)

7th September to 13th September - $41.5m across 7 rounds

• Jet Zero Australia, a developer of SAF and renewable diesel projects for airlines to cut emissions and strengthen domestic fuel security, has raised $30m from Qantas, Airbus and POSCO INTERNATIONAL (Jet Zero Australia | Australian Manufacturing)

• Tanda, a workforce management and payroll platform for Australian employers to manage rostering and ensure award-compliant pay, has raised and Undisclosed amount from Thoma Bravo (PR Newswire)

• Dela, a payments and shipping platform for peer-to-peer secondhand buyers and sellers to secure payments via escrow until delivery is confirmed, has raised $1m (Startup Daily)

• Metacognition, a robotics operating system that adds memory reasoning and safety controls for people to train and control robots using natural language, has raised $10m in a Pre-Seed round from Main Sequence (Capital Brief | Forbes)

• Hello Clever, a payments platform that gives marketplaces and platforms each merchant their own account to accept and settle local instant payments, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Variant and Angel Investors (Hello Clever | Variant)

• Hyperion Systems, an autonomous 3D-printed surface vessel for defence and maritime security teams to deploy rapidly from sovereign manufacturing, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Melt Ventures (LinkedIn)

• GoTroppo, an ISP that sells no-contract NBN plans for Australian households to pay weekly or monthly for unlimited internet, has raised $500k (SmartCompany)

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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…

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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 bot…

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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 - …

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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 …

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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…

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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 …

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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…

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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…

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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.…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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