🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #171, 19th July 2026
$2m raised across 1 round, Hall gets acquires by Tracksuit, Revolut gets an unrestricted banking licence in Australia, Cut Through Venture's Q2 2026 report is released
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Point Wild, a Boston AI cybersecurity company valued at $2.9b and backed by Warburg Pincus, Accel and General Catalyst, has mandated Goldman Sachs for an ASX listing targeting a $500m raise at a possible $5b valuation, joining Firmus, Sharon AI and Morse Micro in the local floats pipeline (AFR)
McKenna Worldwide Services, the Australian arm of SingPost-owned logistics group Quantium Solutions, has acquired the Sendle brand, domains and trademarks from liquidators for undisclosed consideration and relaunched the parcel service, six months after the Sydney startup’s US merger collapsed (BNA)
Monvia, a 29-year-old provider of policy administration and claims software to life insurers, has listed on the ASX as MNV after a $17.5m IPO at $1.10 a share, valuing it at $103.5m on FY25 pro forma revenue of $27.1m (ARN)
Morse Micro, the Sydney chipmaker behind long-range, low-power Wi-Fi HaLow chips, is testing investor appetite for a $150m to $200m ASX IPO above its $600m private valuation; JPMorgan and Canaccord Genuity start early-look meetings with fundies in August (AFR)
Tracksuit, the Auckland brand tracking platform backed by Blackbird, has acquired Hall, the Sydney startup tracking how brands are described in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, for undisclosed consideration; Hall founder Kai Forsyth joins as product lead of AI visibility (SmartCompany)
WiseTech Global, the ASX-listed logistics software company, has agreed to acquire FRDM.ai, a Californian AI platform that maps supplier networks beyond direct suppliers and scores supply chain risk in real time, for $10m upfront in cash and shares plus up to $14.31m in cash earn-outs (Capital Brief)
Capital Markets
AirTrunk, the Blackstone and CPPIB-owned data centre operator, will float a $S4b ($4.4b) REIT on the Singapore Exchange in October, selling down half of four data centres including its 185MW Melbourne site, in what would be Singapore’s biggest IPO in nine years (AFR)
AirTrunk has assembled a $4.3b debt package from a seven-bank syndicate including Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING and Morgan Stanley to fund SYD3, its 400MW data centre at Eastern Creek in Western Sydney (AFR)
Radiopharm Theranostics, the $67m ASX-listed biotech developing cancer diagnostics and treatments, is raising $16m via a $10m two-tranche placement at 1.5c - a 21% discount - plus a $6m share purchase plan, with shares down more than 95% since its 2021 IPO (AFR)
Zip Co, the ASX-listed buy now pay later provider, will wind down its New Zealand business to concentrate capital on Australia and the US; the financial impact is expected to be immaterial to the group (Australian FinTech)
Partnerships & Deals
IREN, the Sydney-founded, Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner turned AI cloud provider, has signed $4b (US$2.8b) of new multi-year contracts with AI developers, lifting its AI cloud revenue target to US$4b with 85% already contracted (Capital Brief)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Puralink, the Sydney pipe-robotics startup, has launched Ferret Alpha 2, a new version of its inspection robot that runs autonomously in pipes from 14cm up to 1.5m wide, a range that previously took separate machines (LinkedIn)
Revolut has become the first global fintech granted an unrestricted banking licence in Australia, with APRA approval letting it take deposits guaranteed to $250k and write loans as CEO Matt Baxby targets share from the big four (Capital Brief)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
GrainInnovate, the GRDC grower-levy fund managed by Sydney’s Artesian, has invested in Moa Technology’s £22.2m (A$42m) Series C; the Oxford spinout is discovering novel mode-of-action herbicides to break weed resistance, a priority for Australian grain growers (LinkedIn)
HAMR Energy has won the first award under the federal $250m Low Carbon Liquid Fuels priority, up to $32m from ARENA, to engineer Australia’s first large-scale methanol-to-jet refinery at Port Adelaide, turning Green Triangle forestry residues into about 140m litres of aviation fuel a year (Direct)
Kite Magnetics, the Monash spinout making nanocrystalline motor cores that replace electrical steel in EV stators, has won a $2m Industry Growth Program grant toward a $4.1m commercialisation project; the non-dilutive money lands ahead of a planned $22m Series A (Australian Manufacturing)
Lug+Carrie, the Australian eBike subscription service trading as Wombi in Los Angeles and Seattle, has secured an $18m asset-backed debt facility from Catalytic Impact Capital to reach 15,000 subscribers across Australia and the US by 2028 (Capital Brief)
Square Peg has told LPs it returned 30% across all funds in FY26 and a 26% gross IRR since founding in 2012, with more than $US1b already realised at a 41% gross IRR on exits; three portfolio companies are now valued above $US10b - Canva, Airwallex and Supabase (LinkedIn)
Government, Policy & Regulation
Industry minister Tim Ayres has released the Statement on Space, naming five areas where Australia has an edge - trusted space services, spaceflight ecosystem, space platforms, microgravity and exploration technologies - ending years of industry calls for a national space strategy (InnovationAus)
Federal government names five AI safety priorities: a legislated Digital Duty of Care for AI companies, privacy law reform, workplace AI safety, consumer law changes covering surveillance pricing and agentic commerce, and a framework for automated decision-making in government (Capital Brief)
Fergus Hanson, a former diplomat and Australian Strategic Policy Institute director, will head the Prime Minister’s Office of AI, as Anthony Albanese tells Labor’s national conference creatives will get the strongest possible protections against AI companies using their work (InnovationAus)
The National Reconstruction Fund has issued its Statement of Intent, confirming it will run $6.15b across three new sub-funds - a $1b Economic Resilience Program of zero-interest loans, a $5b Net Zero Fund and a $150m Forestry Growth Fund - and will use concessional terms where a deal would not otherwise happen (LinkedIn)
Victoria will introduce what Premier Jacinta Allan says are Australia’s toughest workplace surveillance laws, barring employers from using AI to track worker behaviour or mine biometric data to read emotions without a legitimate purpose (InnovationAus)
Ecosystem & Hubs
More than a dozen Australian universities have formed the HEDx AI Innovation Coalition to build AI tools on shared infrastructure and set common standards for how the technology is rolled out (InnovationAus)
People Moves & Spotlights
Main Sequence Ventures, the CSIRO-founded deep tech firm managing $1b, has promoted Alejandra Romero to principal to lead its semiconductor, quantum and AI hardware investing; she has backed Q-CTRL, Diraq and Quantum Brilliance and co-built portfolio company Cortisonic (BNA)
Sharon AI, the Nasdaq-listed neocloud renting Nvidia compute to customers including Canva, has hired Macquarie’s Anuj Goel as CFO and former Spark NZ general counsel Melissa Anastasiou as chief legal officer ahead of a planned $600m ASX float (Startup Researcher)
Xero’s CTO resigns in second leadership departure this month (Forbes)
Reports & Data
Cut Through Venture’s Q2 2026 report puts Australian startup funding at $1.7b across 64 deals, taking first-half funding to $3.5b and making it the second-strongest start to a year behind 2022; Firmus’ $725m and Airwallex’s $460m took close to 70% of the quarter between them, and sub-$5m rounds fell to their lowest level on record (LinkedIn)
Australian equity crowdfunding raised $40.6m across 49 campaigns from 18,000 investors in FY26, up 40% on FY25 on larger average raises of $829k; OnMarket hosted all ten biggest deals and took 73% market share from Birchal, which cut its own valuation 87% (BNA)
Other News & Updates
Mike Cannon-Brookes says Atlassian’s 40-storey Sydney tower still stacks up despite remote work and 1,600 job cuts, costing a third less per square metre than its current space; Atlassian will sub-lease a third to half of the building, which topped out this week and opens in 2028 (AFR)
Blackmagic Design co-founder Peter Barber has sued in the Federal Court alleging fellow founder Grant Petty blocked a Five V Capital investment valuing the Melbourne video technology company at up to $1.5b and stopped dividends after 2022; Barber wants a buyout at independent valuation or liquidation (AFR)
Funding Rounds
Early Bird, a HealthTech startup developing a hangover prevention capsule that breaks down alcohol's toxic byproducts, alongside a gut health clinic, has raised $2m in a Seed round from Hyper Ventures and Angel Investors (AFR)