This Week in Australian Startups #72, 16th June 2024
Another busy week with plenty of funding to talk about, and another busy week at home but no rebrand this time as a just in time edition this week!
No deep dive again, but keep an eye out as I’ll be posting my second update of my experience in the Compound program this week on LinkedIn - make sure to follow/connect with me if you already aren’t to get notified!
Top News
Hello Clever announces an Australian first partnership with Tyro Payments where customers can receive instant cashback for in-store purchases (Caroline Tran)
Zach Kitschke, Canva’s CMO shares how they designed for virality at Canva Create (LinkedIn)
Artesian announced four new partners - Robert Williams, Alexandra Clunies-Ross, Rohan Gray, and Kate Robinson (Artesian)
Employment Hero now has over 1M employees on its platform (Ben Thompson)
Australian review of the 2024 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (Chad Renando)
ASIC halts crowdfunding campaign for Hirehood amid share type concerns (Startup Daily)
Disability tech accelerator Remarkable is now backing startups with VC to Series A (Startup Daily)
Diraq is going to make a hybrid chip combining quantum and classical processors (Startup Daily)
Blockchain Australia rebrands as Digital Economy Council of Australia amid refocus (Startup Daily)
Sydney slides as Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide rise in global startup cities rankings (Startup Daily)
“Set for relaunch”: Byron Bay composting tech startup Subpod makes a comeback with US-based manufacturer (SmartCompany)
Telix Pharmaceuticals, one of Australia’s largest biotech companies, has announced it’s withdrawn plans to raise USD$200 million and list on the Nasdaq (BNA)
Qantas to acquire Byron Bay’s TripADeal travel agency for $211M (BNA)
GIP throws hat in the ring for $15b-plus AirTrunk; lobs NBIO (AFR)
Canva co-founder calls for ‘wartime’ approach to staff performance (AFR)
Inside Canva’s plan to harness one in every five internet users (The Australian)
What Canva, Rokt and Aussie VCs have learned about US IPOs (AFR)
Sonic Healthcare-backed Harrison.ai boots up $100m-plus Series C raise (AFR)
Five V Capital poaches Quadrant, Navis Capital dealmakers (AFR)
Opthea launches $220M capital raising, MST on ticket (AFR)
Zoho identifies Australia as key market in global expansion (The Australian)
Investor Adir Shiffman loses Sleeping Duck lawsuit (Capital Brief)
IBM, Amazon and the Big Tech players Australia is racing in quantum computing (Capital Brief)
$523M battery bet should target new chemistries, advanced lithium (InnovationAus)
Fed Govt dishes out $13.5M to 12 aviation tech projects (InnovationAus)
Google forecasts Australia’s AI opportunity at $290B in 2030 (InnovationAus)
Funding Rounds
The Leaf Protein Co, Plant-based nutrition startup, has raised $850K in a pre-Seed round led by University of Melbourne Genesis Pre-Seed Fund (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)
Switchboard, Supply chain integration startup, has raised $1.5M from Archangel, AfterWork, Investible, Skalata, Startmate, TEN13, and The Fund (Startup Daily | AfterWork | Investible)
Farmbot, an agritech providing remote monitoring solutions for the agriculture industry, has raised $4.6M in a bridging round (Startup Daily | SmartCompany | BNA)
Atticus, legal tech startup which makes document review and verification software, has raised $10.84M (Startup Daily | AFR | The Australian)
Bridgit, a fintech that offers bridging loans to homeowners moving house, has raised a $14.2M Series A led by OIF Ventures (Startup Daily | BNA)
Hard Fizz, the FMCG startup making a hard seltzer, has raised $2.5M (SmartCompany | BNA)
MyPremo, a premium creator hub which gives recording artists an alternative way to sell their music, has raised $1M through an equity crowdfunding campaign (Birchal)
iion, a startup which is building an adtech platform for the gaming advertising market, has raised an undisclosed Seed round led by TEN13 with participation from Archangel and PixCapital (iion | TEN13 | mi-3)