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)