🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #148, 8th February 2026
$45.9m raised across 6 rounds, Square Peg closes $650m for new fund, Aura acquires Qoria for $972m in all shares deal, Cut Through Venture releases the State of Australian Startup Funding 2025 report
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Cars4us, one of Australia’s largest used car online marketplaces has been acquired by Toyota Tsusho Corporation for a $120m (Courier Mail)
Aura, an AI-powered online safety platform for families, acquires Qoria, a student online safety and digital wellbeing platform used by schools and parents, for $972m in an all shares deal (Startup Researcher)
IMDEX, a mining tech sensing and data company, acquires Datarock, an AI geoscience software platform, for $31m (Capital Brief)
Sharon AI, a GPU-as-a-service data centre startup eyeing an ASX IPO, kicks off a two-day investor roadshow with site visits at NextDC (AFR)
ShopBack, a Singapore-based shopping rewards platform backed by Westpac, Temasek and SoftBank, weighs an ASX IPO after a last reported valuation of $1.4b (AFR)
Vena, an Excel-native FP&A and planning platform, acquires Acterys, a Power BI planning and analytics (ARN)
Wrkr, a super & payments compliance fintech, has acquired PaidRight, a real-time payroll compliance platform, for $11.4m in shares (Startup Researcher)
Capital Markets
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes says AI is boosting their growth signals in Q2 FY26 despite the “SaaS is dead” noise in recorded Loom (LinkedIn)
AI fears wipe $9b off the ASX in five days as Atlassian and REA move to calm investors (AFR)
Partnerships & Deals
Gilmour Space Technologies and Transcelestial have entered a long-term strategic partnership to bring laser communications capabilities to advance how data moves on satellites (InnovationAus)
QuantX Labs, a precision timing and quantum sensing startup, has completed an optical atomic clock R&D project with Defence Trailblazer and the University of Adelaide to advance its next-gen TEMPO timing technology (Startup Researcher)
Space Machines Company has been awarded a $2.9m contract by the Australian Government to develop an autonomous space threat detection system (LinkedIn)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Advanced Navigation nails US Defence GPS-jamming test (Startup Daily)
Airwallex launches AI Assistant to automate finance ops—helping teams set up accounts, manage payments and cards, and get in-app product answers (Direct)
Silicon Quantum Computing, a quantum machine learning company, launches Quantum Twins, a materials and molecule discovery simulator for quantum physics and chemistry (Capital Brief)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
Additive Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre funds first project: $1.8m for entX and the University of Adelaide to 3D-print GenX next-gen batteries for space and defence (InnovationAus)
Maas Group buys $100m of Firmus shares from an existing investor, valuing the AI data centre startup at about $6 billion (The Australian)
Square Peg locks in $650m as new fund vintage hits first close (Capital Brief)
Government, Policy & Regulation
Victoria puts $5.5m on the table to be Australia’s AI capital (Startup Daily)
Australia makes landmark decision that ‘prediction markets’ like Polymarket are gambling (Crikey)
Brisbane crypto exchange Swyftx donated nearly $50k to a Sydney Labor candidate – 10% of the sector’s donations before the 2025 election (Startup Daily)
People Moves & Spotlights
Brian Collins announces he has stepped into the role of CEO of Enterprize Tasmania (LinkedIn)
Stone & Chalk CEO Chris Kirk to step down on April 10, ending a decade leading Australia’s startup hub network (LinkedIn)
Reports & Data
Cut Through Venture and Folklore Ventures release the annual State of Australian Startup Funding for 2025 (Direct)
Funding Rounds
Diraq, a global leader in quantum computing based on silicon quantum dots, has raised $20m from the National Reconstruction Fund (AFR | Capital Brief | The Australian)
Agentsy, a proptech platform that gives real estate teams AI assistants to automate admin and close more deals, has raised $700k in a Pre-Seed round from Empress Capital (SmartCompany)
CorePlan, a mining platform that centralises drilling workflows and billing, has raised $5m in a Seed round from EVP (SmartCompany | Startup Rise)
Teacher’s Buddy, an EdTech platform that uses AI to generate lesson plans and reports for teachers to reduce admin time, has raised $2m in a Seed round from Soul Capital and Giant Leap (SmartCompany)
Nullify, a cybersecurity platform that uses AI to find, triage and auto-fix bugs for security teams to cut backlog fast, has raised $17.8m | $12.5m USD in a Seed round from SYN Ventures and Black Nova (SiliconANGLE | LinkedIn)
CrossCourtAI, a PropTech AI platform that automates underwriting documents for real estate and private credit teams to speed deal screening, has raised $400k from Startmate, Sydney Angels and VentureCrowd (LinkedIn)
Cortisonic, a sonic edge AI chipmaker that uses sound waves to run low-power machine learning for edge devices to cut energy consumption, has raised an undisclosed amount from Main Sequence (Direct)