Three things that caught my eye this week;
Constantinople raising $62.5m a week after completing their first full bank migration
Only last week Constantinople shared they had moved MOVE Bank’s entire operation onto their platform in under a year - this week the AFR reports they have closed a $62.5m round led by Square Peg and Airtree. Notably they are both existing investors and Australian VCs, bucking the trend where we are seeing larger rounds have international VCs participate. This rounds sets them up to cross the $1b valuation next time they raise, having already 8 banks on 10-15 year contracts with another 2 forecasted before the year ends. Without knowing how their contracts are structured and when the revenue would actually fall and opt-outs before a full migration is complete, it’s still a really strong proposition with strong committed revenue and pipeline.
Blackbird closing their sixth fund at just over $1b
As Capital Brief reports it is slightly lower than the $1.2b target and $1.032b raised in 2022 but still almost twice the size of Airtree’s $650m Fund V from last August, and Square Peg’s $650m in February this year. Combined that’s over $2b in capital across the big three VCs in the last 12 months. Whilst these mega funds won’t be seen in downmarket - I have still many smaller funds announcing funds this year - with Scale Investors $30m+ first fund being the latest.
This is great news for local startups, with more capital ready to deploy especially at earlier stages where we see most activity from Australian VCs - but I also expect to see an increasing amount of this capital deployed to overseas startups as we have seen this week with Airtree leading a Seed round for SF based Foremark Legal.
Canva locks in, literally
At the Stripe Tour this week in Sydney Cliff Obrecht told the crowd has moved in with the AI team at their Surry Hills campus to fix the cost problem that stalled AI 2.0 with tests of AI 2.1 reortedly cutting their cost per design by 90%. With their scale and ambitions renting will always be more expensive, but does require this level of up front capital and time investment.
The other side to Canva this week is that the AFR reports sign ups in Brazil, their second largest market went backwards YoY but smaller growth markets grew in Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines. This builds on from recent news that MAU was flattening and a downgrade in their recent valuation.
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Jared Kristensen has left Audience Republic, the Sydney live-events marketing platform he founded in 2015, raised more than $10m for and sold to US private equity backed ticketing group AudienceView a year ago, and is building a new startup called Neuma (LinkedIn)
Guardhouse, the Australian workforce management platform built for physical security companies, has acquired Mobohubb, a Florida company whose software verifies guard patrols with GPS-stamped proof-of-service and daily activity reporting, for undisclosed consideration; the deal was supported by Sundance Growth, which took a platform stake in Guardhouse earlier this year (BNA)
SCX.ai, the Sydney company selling AI inference capacity on SambaNova’s air-cooled chips to Australian government and enterprise customers, fell as much as 30% on its ASX debut after raising $40m at 30c a share, closing at 25c; cornerstone backers were Ellerston Capital, Wilson Asset Management and Frazis Capital (AFR)
Partnerships & Deals
HEO, the Sydney company that images objects in orbit by tasking other operators' Earth observation satellites during their idle time, has signed a deal with Planet to use its SkySat constellation on undisclosed terms, giving HEO access to more than 50 sensors in orbit; the SkySat imagery goes to US government customers first for licensing reasons (SpaceNews)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Canva co-founder Cliff Obrecht has moved into a shed on the Surry Hills campus with the AI team to fix the cost blowout that stalled Canva AI 2.0, after a test of Canva AI 2.1 cut cost per design by 90%; co-founder Cameron Adams spent the same day on stage with Anthropic’s ANZ head, whose Claude Design product investors see as a long-term threat (AFR)
Diraq, the UNSW silicon quantum computing spinout, has opened its first laboratory outside Australia in Chicago, a temporary base until the 128-acre Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park is built (InnovationAus)
Matilda, an AI-native immigration law service, has launched its platform to partner visa clients, which it says cuts the time to prepare an application from about 100 hours to 10 and gives applicants and sponsors visibility over what the government requires; it has handled close to 400 partner visa applications (LinkedIn)
Stripe has launched Treasury in Australia, letting businesses hold and convert AUD, USD, GBP and EUR balances, settle instantly instead of waiting two days, and pay recipients in close to 100 countries - a direct move on Airwallex and Wise (Capital Brief)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
Airtree told investors in May it is pressure-testing whether portfolio companies have a credible AI story, and will push those that fail toward a trade sale, consolidation or acqui-hire rather than wait; it says 88% of fund value sits in AI-resilient positions and 14% of net assets are now under active management (AFR)
Blackbird has closed its sixth fund at just over $1b, short of both its $1.2b target and the $1.032b record it set with its 2022 vintage (Capital Brief)
Clare Ventures, a New Zealand investment firm, has backed Scale Investors Venture Fund 1, the debut fund of Australia’s first women-led VC firm, which has raised more than $30m for early-stage women-led ventures and made its first three investments, including maternal monitoring wearable Oli (Clare Ventures)
Airtree has led a $6m seed round for Foremark Legal, a San Francisco startup building an AI-native consumer law firm whose underwriting engine finds, prices and takes on personal injury claims before placing them with partner firms; the founders are a lawyer, a machine learning PhD and a former consumer startup founder (LinkedIn)
Orivium, the Melbourne deep tech company formerly known as EcoMetalx that uses a room-temperature electrochemical process to pull copper and other critical metals out of mining waste, low-grade ore and e-waste, is seeking a $30m Series B with Morgans as lead manager; former Lenovo chief executive Bill Amelio has joined as global CEO alongside founder Emma Clark (Startup Daily)
Vessev, the Auckland company building fully electric hydrofoiling passenger ferries, has raised a $27m Series A led by Blackbird to scale production; it has vessels going to Sydney Harbour, Perth’s Swan River in 2027, and a doubled order of 10 from Hobart operator Fly Derwent (Startup Daily)
Government, Policy & Regulation
Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton says Australia risks becoming a permanent importer of intelligence, with AI spending potentially reaching $20b to $40b a year within a decade - more than Australia earns exporting wheat - and wants data centre operators to give Australian startups and researchers compute access on favourable terms under Expectation 5 of the national data centre expectations (Startup Daily)
Federal parliament has launched its broadest AI inquiry yet through a new Joint Select Committee on AI, weeks after Anthony Albanese pledged a single national framework of AI laws to be led by an Office of AI in his own department (InnovationAus)
Tasmania’s parliament has launched an inquiry into AI data centres and whether to legislate for the sector, after community concern about energy and water use sharpened by Firmus’s claims about running on rainwater; more than 400MW of data centre capacity is planned for the state (InnovationAus)
Ecosystem & Hubs
Quantum Australia says its programs have generated $83.1m in economic value over two years, returning $2.15 directly and up to $6.87 with flow-on effects for every public dollar, and have spun out 15 quantum companies - up from six in March (BNA)
Australia’s first open access quantum computing testbed has gone live at the University of Queensland, giving researchers and startups hands-on access to quantum hardware almost two years after the Queensland government committed $6m to it through its quantum infrastructure program (InnovationAus)
People Moves & Spotlights
Paul Riley has stepped down as chief executive of Samsara Eco, the Canberra enzymatic plastics recycling company he founded five years ago, citing a worsening chronic illness; Matthew Koenings, who has worked with the company since 2024, is interim CEO while a permanent search runs, six weeks after Samsara launched a $100m Series B (LinkedIn)
Other News & Updates
Alphabet raised $5.5b in Australia’s largest Kangaroo bond, drawing more than $18b in orders at yields from 5.24% over three years to 6.98% over 20 - roughly what Australian startups raise in a good year, funded in a day; Betashares expects Amazon to follow (Startup Daily)
Canva’s new user sign-ups in Brazil, its second-largest market, have gone backwards year-on-year according to internal data seen by the AFR, while smaller markets including Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the Philippines grew; the decline follows flat monthly active users and a cut to full-year revenue growth guidance from 30% to 20% (AFR)
Funding Rounds
Visaible.ai, a customer-acquisition platform for hotels to fix online listings and protect direct bookings from AI-driven travel search, has raised $1m from Black Sheep Capital (Startup Daily)
Constantinople, a banking platform that runs a bank’s entire technology and operations on a single cloud platform for banks to lower costs, has raised $62.5m from Square Peg Capital and Airtree Ventures (AFR)
GYLD, a games research platform that provides evidence-backed reports for developers and publishers to guide development and release decisions, has raised $1.41m (USD $1m) in a Seed round from Kameha Ventures and Angel Investors (GamesBeat)
Seitec, a defence seismic-sensor maker that detects and tracks people, animals and vehicles for military and security teams to monitor threats, has raised $4m from Activate Capital, Beaten Zone Venture Partners an the University of New South Wales (BNA | Startup Daily)
Bower, an operating system for research labs to capture experiments into provenance-rich searchable records to preserve institutional knowledge, has raised $2m in a Pre-Seed round from TEN13, Admiralty Capital Group and Edale Capital (AFR)
Nbryo, a biotech which has developed an IVF platform to enable the production and transfer of embryos at scale in the beef and dairy industries, has raised an additional $10m in their Seed round from QIC, AgriZero, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tenacious Ventures (Startup Daily)
This includes the $2m that I reported last week from QIC, taking their entire Seed round to $20m
IIF, an app-based farm investment platform that lets consumers invest in farms to earn returns from Australian agricultural output, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Verdex Capital, AgFunder and Investible (AgFunderNews)
Neosframe, a creative automation platform for retail marketing teams to produce compliant on-brand, store-specific ads, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Future Now Capital and MooCoo Ventures (MooCoo Ventures)
Gamgee, a veterinary biotech making personalised mRNA cancer vaccines for dogs to train immune systems to attack tumours, has raised $5.62m (USD $4m) in a Seed round from Founders Fund and Angel Investors (GlobeNewswire)