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)