🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #167 28th June 2026
$487m raised across 10 rounds, Airwallex launches two new products T:0 and Airi, Blackbird makes its largest ever investment, Culture Amp and Immutable make layoffs
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 Researcher)
Advent Partners, a mid-market private equity firm, has acquired a 70% stake in aXcelerate, a Brisbane training-management software provider for vocational education, for undisclosed consideration (AFR)
Singapore online car marketplace Carro has acquired Australian used-car platform CarPlace for an undisclosed amount, marking its entry into Australia through Autoleague’s WA, Queensland and Victorian footprint (Startup Researcher)
Fresho, a Melbourne food-wholesale order-management platform, has acquired Freshmetrics, a UK order and inventory software provider for food wholesalers, for an undisclosed amount in its second UK deal this month (BNA)
Qualcomm, a Nasdaq-listed chipmaker, has agreed to acquire Modular, a Silicon Valley AI software startup co-founded by Australian Tim Davis, for US$3.9b ($5.6b) in shares to expand its AI software stack across chip architectures (The Australian)
Capital Markets
ClearVue Technologies has announced a $6m capital raise via a $5m placement and fully underwritten $1m share purchase plan to fund product certification, operational systems, IP and international commercialisation (LinkedIn)
Novatti, an ASX-listed payments firm, sells $1.2m of shares in AUDC, the issuer of Australian-dollar stablecoin AUDD that it incubated, in a partial exit while retaining an 18.5m-share stake (Australian FinTech)
Pro Medicus has agreed to invest $10m in Echo IQ (ASX:EIQ) through a secured convertible note and resell its EchoSolv AI cardiology platform through Visage 7, with a second $10m tied to US FDA clearance (Startup Researcher)
WiseTech shares fall 11% after the AFP opens an investigation into founder and executive chairman Richard White over alleged exploitation of an individual’s immigration status (Capital Brief)
Partnerships & Deals
Australian AI cloud company IREN has become the Golden State Warriors’ Official AI Cloud Partner, putting its badge on team jerseys as it targets Bay Area enterprise, AI lab and startup customers (LinkedIn)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
MCi Carbon has opened Australia’s first carbon refinery in Newcastle, using captured CO2 from Orica’s Kooragang Island ammonia operations to make carbon-embodied products for materials such as concrete, paper and glass (Reuters)
Airwallex has launched T:0, an AI finance platform for bookkeeping, reporting and finance operations, and Airi, a checkout product that will evolve into an agentic consumer wallet, after raising $320m at an $11b valuation (LinkedIn)
BuildPass has launched BuildPass Finance and BuildPass Preconstruction, expanding from field operations into an AI-native all-in-one construction platform covering tenders, estimating, job costing, invoice automation, progress claims, WIP reporting and cash forecasting (LinkedIn)
Canva launches Canva Grow 2.0, an AI marketing-automation platform that generates ads, publishes them across Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn, then tracks performance and auto-refreshes the creative based on results; built on its MagicBrief acquisition (Capital Brief)
Australian healthtech Heidi has launched in the UAE and established Dubai as its Middle East headquarters, partnering with Nabta Health after supporting 800 patient interactions in five months (LinkedIn)
Australian cybersecurity startup Nullify says its AI security platform can reproduce attacks and attach proof-of-exploit evidence to vulnerability findings, aiming to reduce manual triage work for security teams (LinkedIn)
Qualitas, an ASX-listed private credit fund manager, has launched an in-house AI software platform to speed underwriting and data verification, while keeping final investment decisions with its team (Capital Brief)
Uluu has opened a demonstration plant to scale production of its seaweed-based plastic alternative 100x, supporting customer pilots across beauty, fashion and automotive (LinkedIn)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
The UNSW-led Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics has secured $95.4m from ARENA to extend its solar PV research program to 2033, as part of a $220m national research initiative (UNSW)
Blackbird has made its largest single investment, putting more than $200m into California-based Baseten, an Australian-founded AI infrastructure startup that helps companies cut AI deployment and inference costs, as part of its US$1.5b Series F (Forbes)
Adelaide VC firm Eastend Ventures has secured at least $5m from Funds SA for its debut fund, taking commitments to $25m as it targets $50m to back early-stage startups across SA, WA and Queensland (The Advertiser)
Oli, a Sydney maternal-health medtech building a wearable to predict birth complications, wins a $2m federal grant to establish Sydney manufacturing, following a $6.5m Series A3 raise (BNA)
OncoRes Medical has been awarded a $3m CRC-P grant with UWA and Clinipath Pathology to explore using its precision imaging technology in prostate cancer surgery (Direct)
Brisbane-based Powerhouse Ventures has signed an MoU with a European fund manager to co-manage its planned US$100m ($143m) Critical Infrastructure Opportunities fund, with US$50m in earmarked LP commitments (Money Management)
Robinhood buys ~$US25m of Canva Class A common stock through its NYSE-listed Robinhood Ventures Fund, in what is most likely a secondary purchase from existing shareholders rather than fresh capital for Canva (Robinhood)
University of Sydney plans a later-stage venture fund to commercialise its deep-tech and biotech spin-outs, courting VC and super backers to keep research onshore (AFR)
KKR-backed fleet electrification firm Zenobe raises $400m in debt to expand its electric bus and truck fleet across Australia and New Zealand; clients include Woolworths and Kelsian (AFR)
Government, Policy & Regulation
NSW 2026-27 budget omits any mention of startups or Tech Central as the Minns government winds back innovation support; the lone business measure is $37m for small business advisory (Startup Daily)
Labor has denied claims it is considering an AI copyright carve-out for tech companies, after David Pocock alleged cabinet could weigh model-training exemptions tied to data centre investment and creator funding (The Australian)
The South Australian government will draft legislation to regulate AI data centres as it tries to attract billions of dollars in investment while managing concerns over water use, energy demand and household power bills (ABC)
The ABC will roll out Anthropic’s Claude as its standard enterprise AI tool, starting with 100 internal AI Champions, as staff raise concerns over job security, consultation and transparency (Crikey)
Eucalyptus founder Tim Doyle, who sold to Hims & Hers for $1.6b, says founders’ CGT backlash is ‘self-interest in a superhero cape’ and the $10m-capped discount rightly protects employees (AFR)
From June 27, search engines such as Google and Bing must use age-assurance to shield children from harmful content under Australia’s online safety codes, or face fines up to $49.5m per breach (The Age)
Ecosystem & Hubs
Melbourne deep-tech hub CoLabs launches Kinesis, a $397k LaunchVic-backed pre-accelerator helping deep-tech founders validate product-market fit before building; takes no equity (Startup Daily)
Geelong startup Enterprise Monkey wins Australia’s UN AI for Good final for Agents for Humanity, a free AI-agent platform for under-resourced charities; advances to the Geneva summit in July (Startup Daily)
Five conservation start-ups graduate from Taronga Zoo’s Hatch accelerator, with impact-payments platform GreenPay winning the $50k top prize (Startup Daily)
Roam Technologies founder Shan-Shan Wang wins the Sydney Startup World Cup final for handheld oxygen device Juno, advancing to the San Francisco global final and its $US1m investment prize (Startup Daily)
People Moves & Spotlights
Airwallex has appointed Pranav Sood as CFO, with the former Airwallex Executive GM for EMEA returning from Bain Capital, where he was Operating Partner (LinkedIn)
Gilmour Space Technologies has appointed former NASA Deputy Administrator and astronaut Pamela Melroy to its board as it scales launch, satellite and advanced manufacturing capabilities (LinkedIn)
Loam Bio appoints US ag-tech veteran Rob Hranac as CEO to drive US expansion; co-founder Guy Hudson moves to executive chair (BNA)
MinterEllison has appointed former Domain Group chief data officer Pooyan Asgari as its first Chief AI Officer, a newly created role to lead the law firm’s AI strategy (Point Blank)
Vow has appointed former chief of staff Alex Andrews as CEO, with founder George Peppou moving to executive director as the company cuts jobs and pivots beyond lab-grown meat (Forbes)
Reports & Data
LaunchVic has released new research showing Victoria now has more than 4,400 startups with a combined ecosystem value of $139b, ahead of its next phase under Innovation Victoria (LaunchVic)
Other News & Updates
Culture Amp, the Melbourne employee-engagement software firm, cuts 70 jobs (about 9% of staff) in its third layoff round in three years, under new CEO Caroline Rawlinson (Capital Brief)
Financiers Ben Madsen and Simon Raftery settle their dispute over a $140m stake in AI data centre start-up Firmus days before trial, clearing an overhang ahead of a planned $7b ASX float (AFR)
Immutable has cut 29 roles from its game development teams and will outsource most work on its titles as it pivots from Web3 game development toward Immutable Audience, its AI-powered game-growth platform for traditional and Web3 publishers (Forbes)
Privacy Commissioner rules Monash IVF and telehealth firm Medmate breached the Privacy Act by tracking visitors’ health searches via Meta and TikTok pixels without consent; both ordered to delete data, no fine (The Age)
Funding Rounds
Airwallex, a global payments and financial platform for businesses, has raised $464.1m ($320m USD) in a Series H round from Addition, Baillie Gifford, Hummingbird, QED Investors, T. Rowe Price, Hedosophia, Haun Ventures, Washington University in St. Louis, Amex Ventures and Square Peg Capital (Forbes | AFR | Capital Brief)
Avarni, a climate disclosure platform for Australian companies to report AASB S2 climate disclosures to meet regulatory requirements, has raised $ in a Seed round from MooCoo Ventures, Main Sequence, Sprint Ventures and Brisbane Angels (MooCoo Ventures)
Avertro, a cybersecurity platform that generates executive-ready risk reports for security leaders to translate cyber risk into business decisions, has raised $ in a Undisclosed round from Black Nova, Exhort Ventures, No Brand Holdings and Angel Investors (LinkedIn)
Birchal, an Australian Equity Crowdfunding platform for consumer brands and companies, has raised $846k in a Seed round in a crowdfunding campaign (Birchal)
Chaty AI, a travel AI assistant for tour and attraction operators to automate guest messaging and customer service, has raised $1.66m ($1.15m USD) in a Seed round (PhocusWire)
Circolo, a ticketing and event-operations platform for event teams to manage registrations and guest logistics across in-person and virtual events, has raised $300k in a Pre-Seed round from Angel Investors (Direct)
Coast 4C, an aquaculture platform for smallholder seaweed farmers to raise yields using data-driven crop and supply management, has raised $3.61m ($2.5m USD) in a Seed round from Hatch Blue (The Fish Site)
Ovum AI, a holistic AI health assistant for women, has raised $4m in a Seed round from Admiralty Capital Group, Antler Australia, Giant Leap, Brisbane Angels, Aviron Investments, Foggy Valley Aotearoa, The Alice Anderson Fund, Think & Grow and Angel Investors (The Australian | Forbes | Capital Brief)
Spacecube, a modular building system that makes rapid-deploy accommodation and event structures for responders and organisers to speed setup, has raised $300k from IAG Firemark Ventures (Direct | AFR)
Visionary Machines, a defence tech startup whose flagship product Pandion Sentinel provides signal-free autonomous navigation and drone detection capabilities, has raised $9.5m in a Pre-IPO round (AFR)