A fortnightly wrap and late evening send today - back to regularly scheduling programming from next week!
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
4DS Memory, the ASX-listed memory chip developer, has agreed to acquire Jenesys, an Australian edge-AI startup whose software lets unmanned vehicle fleets coordinate without a central command node, for $5m in shares (Startup Researcher)
Eftsure, the Sydney-founded payment verification platform, has acquired Relish, a US vendor data validation and AI invoice processing company, for undisclosed consideration - its third international move in a year (BNA)
Firmus will start IPO investor meetings next week on an ‘accelerated path’ to the ASX at a $15.5b valuation - its US$2b preference shares convert one-for-one if it lists by 30 November (AFR)
OneVentures expects a record year for biotech M&A as $300b of drug revenue comes off patent within five years and pharma buys earlier - Australian life science VC has grown 15-fold since 2010 to $1.9b (AFR)
Parratech, the Western Sydney maker of data centre enclosures for AirTrunk, NextDC, AWS and Microsoft, has drawn a bid from EQT valuing it above $1b as its Luminis-run sale continues (AFR)
Bids are in for Stack Infrastructure’s $25b-plus Asia Pacific data centres - a GIP, Nvidia, Microsoft and MGX consortium with IFM versus Macquarie; Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital is a minority owner (AFR)
ASX-bound Swipejobs has acquired Expert360 for a reported $16m, three years after a $165m Heidrick & Struggles buyout collapsed - only Series C holders like Airtree get paid; founder Bridget Loudon-Harris gets nothing (AFR)
Capital Markets
The ASX is courting VC-backed tech companies in Australia, NZ, Singapore and the US for listings, pitching itself as the exit route for funds under pressure to return capital (Capital Brief)
DroneShield’s committed 2026 revenue has reached $251m, the bottom of its $250m to $270m guidance, and its next-generation RfRecon radio frequency detector has won a first order (BNA)
Echo IQ’s shares halved after the FDA refused to clear its EchoSolv HF heart failure software, two months after a $110m raise - the clearance Pro Medicus’s optional second $10m hinged on (Small Caps)
NextDC is raising $1.1b in subordinated convertible notes at a 1.25% to 1.75% coupon to fund its Australian build-out, five months after $750m of subordinated notes in April (BNA)
Partnerships & Deals
Acusensus has won its first Victorian government contract, a $1.7m two-year trial of two fixed speed cameras - finally adding its home state to NSW, Queensland, SA, WA and the ACT (BNA)
Apate.ai has partnered with US telco analytics vendor Mobileum to sell its scam-baiting AI agents to carriers worldwide, a week after its $11.4m (US$8.15m) seed round (ARN)
Coles will cut ties with Palantir - the US surveillance company named in a 2025 UN report on companies profiting from what it calls a genocide in Gaza - after an 85,000-signature GetUp campaign (The Age)
Commonwealth Bank has taken naming rights on a 24/7 finance news channel from LeadStory, the Australian-owned streaming news platform that says it reaches 16 million viewers a month (Mediaweek)
Firmus has signed OpenAI as anchor customer for two new AI data centres in Malaysia - its first officially named big customer - taking contracted capacity past 900MW, none of it in Australia (AFR)
Firmus has committed $416m (US$300m) as cornerstone customer on SUBCO’s APX East subsea cable, locking in 150 terabits per second of Australia-US capacity for 25 years from late 2028 (BNA)
FlexSysAI, an EnergyLab-backed Sydney startup, is testing with ResetData, CSIRO and UQ whether AI workloads can be cut 20% to 50% within seconds of a grid signal, letting data centres connect faster (BNA)
Gilmour Space and Hypersonix have partnered to offer hypersonic flight tests from Gilmour’s Bowen spaceport, pairing Gilmour’s rockets with Hypersonix’s scramjets for Australian and AUKUS defence customers (BNA)
Keeyu, the Sydney startup whose AI agents fix post-purchase delivery problems for online retailers, has signed Billabong - the brand that sponsored CEO Jevon Le Roux as a pro surfer in the 1990s (LinkedIn)
Nvidia says it will help partners including Firmus and Sharon AI build 2GW of AI data centre capacity in Australia by the end of 2027 - more than all existing data centres use today (AFR)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Airwallex is investing US$43m in the UAE over five years, expanding its Dubai office as it works toward full central bank licences it holds in-principle approval for (Australian FinTech)
Atlassian will start charging for AI use beyond included Rovo credits from 3 December - US1c a credit - after Rovo usage grew more than 50% quarter on quarter (AFR)
MooCoo Ventures has opened Angelmatic to its syndicate investors - a $10,000 commitment automatically split into ten $1,000 cheques across rules-screened early-stage deals, run with Brisbane Angels since 2019 (LinkedIn)
Canva is about to launch its own foundation image model, built by its 140-person research lab and pitched as on par with Google’s Nano Banana, as Google’s new Pics tool comes after its enterprise users (AFR)
Canva says enterprise use of its Docs and Sheets apps grew 83% and 59% year on year as it pushes into Microsoft and Google’s productivity turf; it counts 265 million users, 31 million paying (Forbes)
Diraq will install an eight-qubit silicon quantum computer inside Equinix’s Sydney data centre by October - the first quantum machine in an Australian commercial data centre, it says (Forbes)
Eucalyptus has retired its Pilot men’s health brand in Australia and relaunched it as Hims - the first big change since Hims & Hers bought Eucalyptus for $1.6b in February (AFR)
Isaacus, the Australian legal AI company, has unveiled Blackstone Graph, a knowledge graph linking laws, cases, regulators and people across jurisdictions and built for AI agents rather than human readers (LinkedIn)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
Airtree has won the vote to extend its 2014 first fund to July 2028, keeping its Canva stake - it will waive fees for a year and has 22 months to exit (AFR)
Beaten Zone, Steve Baxter’s Brisbane defence tech VC, has closed its debut fund at $26m, up from $20m a month earlier - Baxter is the largest investor with $6m (BNA)
Blackbird was named VC firm of the year at the Australian Investment Council awards, with Brandon Capital winning for Myricx Bio, Airtree for HotDoc and OneVentures for diversity (LinkedIn)
Brandon Capital has deployed about $60m of the National Reconstruction Fund’s $150m commitment across 10 biotechs in a year - AdvanCell took $15.4m - the NRF’s only investment in a fund so far (Forbes)
Drumbeat, the Auckland PR platform from the venture studio behind Tracksuit, has raised NZ$2m ($1.64m) led by Icehouse Ventures with Australian marketers Adam Ferrier and Henry Innis among backers (Startup Daily)
ENA Respiratory, the Melbourne biotech developing a once-weekly antiviral nasal spray, has won a $2.98m Biointelect Venturer grant for a first trial of INNA-051 in asthma patients from early 2027 (Startup Daily)
Skalata Ventures has rebranded as Tall Order Ventures a month after Rohan Workman and Maxine Lee bought out Paul Little, relaunching as a first-cheque fund for AI-era founders with AI-run sourcing and diligence (Startup Daily)
Government, Policy & Regulation
The government has released draft legislation banning non-compete clauses for workers earning under $190,100, holding firm against business and tech pushback - removing a barrier to staff leaving to start companies (InnovationAus)
Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has launched a Financial Innovation Strategy that scraps the legislated fintech sandbox - used by just 19 fintechs in five years - for a flexible model run through ASIC’s relief powers (Capital Brief)
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has signed off on a House economics committee inquiry, chaired by Ed Husic, into why technology advances haven’t lifted Australia’s productivity (InnovationAus)
eSafety wants smart glasses to blur faces by default and show when they’re recording, while Rowland’s draft privacy laws add a right to erasure and an IDLock tool in myGov from 2027 (Startup Daily)
Chalmers has widened the startup CGT carve-out - no $10m lifetime cap, a three-year holding period and eligibility up to 15 years old - and given biotechs a 15-year R&D offset window (SmartCompany)
King River Capital predicts a ‘flood’ of super money into venture within two to three years if Treasury’s proposed VC-specific performance benchmark and ASIC’s fee disclosure review go ahead (Forbes)
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has ruled out an import ban on camera-equipped smart glasses, citing their value for vision-impaired users, as $90 Kmart versions spread (SmartCompany)
The NSW government will set up a $150m fund to co-invest in startups spun out of the state’s universities from July 2027 - if Labor wins the March election (Startup Daily)
Draft digital duty of care laws would let Australians opt out of social media algorithms and make platforms, apps and AI chatbots liable for harmful content, with fines above $100m (AFR)
Ecosystem & Hubs
ElectraLith, the Monash spinout whose electrochemical process extracts and refines battery-grade lithium in one step without water or chemicals, has won the Grand Prix at the World Materials Forum start-up challenge in Paris (EIN Presswire)
EVP has launched 40x, a three-day peer program for up to 40 revenue-generating ANZ software founders planning to raise within 12 months - applications close 15 September (Startup Daily)
Perth accelerator Plus Eight has moved nine startups, including TradieScribe and RecruitMate AI, into the second phase of its tenth cohort with the seed pool lifted to $1m after the Spinifex Foundation joined (Startup Researcher)
Spark, Sydney’s free grassroots startup festival, returns from 21 September with about 60 events across NSW and will launch the Spark Foundation, a charity to put founders in front of ministers and investors (Startup Daily)
North Australian SeaCulture, which grows seaweed in remote locations for uses including mine site rehabilitation, has won Croc Pitch 2026 in Darwin, with up to $1m of Paspalis venture capital on offer (ABC)
People Moves & Spotlights
DroneShield has hired former MYOB and Afterpay finance chief Rebecca Lowde as CFO from 2 November, replacing Carla Balanco after eight years (Capital Brief)
Robert Snow has joined Canberra’s Significant Ventures as a general partner, bringing investment banking M&A experience and uniting the Snow and Hindmarsh families behind Canberra ventures (LinkedIn)
Stake has added former Tech Council chief Damian Kassabgi to its board, but CEO Matt Leibowitz says a raise is ‘not on my horizon’ - it is now Australia’s third largest broker by customers (Capital Brief)
Swyftx has made Andrea Yuen permanent CEO and Cathryn Lyall permanent chair after both served as interims since April, with co-founder Alex Harper stepping back to executive director (Australian FinTech)
WiseTech has appointed former Seven West Media chief Jeff Howard as CFO from 28 September, ending nearly two years with Caroline Pham as interim (Capital Brief)
Reports & Data
Fintechs raised $1.73b in FY26, up 137%, but 56% went to Airwallex - without it the sector grew 5% and deal count hit a seven-year low, according to Triple Bubble and Cut Through Venture (Startup Daily)
Oxford Economics expects Australian data centre investment to reach $60b by 2030, from $20b this year, adding $78b to the economy and 80,000 to 100,000 jobs a year (SmartCompany)
Modelling for Transgrid puts NSW data centre peak demand at 3.5GW by 2035, double AEMO’s forecast, as EnergyAustralia pitches Yallourn’s site for 2GW of data centres when the coal plant closes (The Australian)
Other News & Updates
AMSL Aero, the Sydney hydrogen-electric VTOL aircraft maker backed by Hostplus and Telstra Super, is up for sale after a $30m raise fell over - headcount is down from about 70 to six (Capital Brief)
Bupa is redirecting 77% of its Doctors on Demand telehealth referrals to Hola Health, the Perth startup it part-owns - a $6m revenue hit for ASX-listed Vitura, which has sent Bupa a breach notice (BNA)
Canva has been hiring senior US staff to rehearse earnings calls, manage analysts and prepare guidance - the plumbing of a public company - though it says there’s nothing new on IPO timing (Capital Brief)
Firmus is leaning on Asia ahead of its float as Australian builds lag - its Melbourne service for a hyperscaler believed to be Meta only started last month and Launceston has slipped (AFR)
Harrison.ai has laid off Australian staff and launched a US teleradiology practice paying radiologists to read scans with its AI, a year after the National Reconstruction Fund put in $32m to keep it in Australia (ABC News)
Funding Rounds
31st August to 6th September - $72.8m across 5 rounds
Apate.AI, a cyber-intelligence platform that deploys conversational AI bots for banks, telcos and crypto exchanges to disrupt scams, has raised $11.37m (US $8.1.5m) in a Seed round from Lobby Capital, OIF Ventures, Investible, Concept Ventures and Baobab Ventures (Startup Daily | Wall Street Journal)
Gridsight, an AI platform that helps electricity network operators monitor and manage distributed energy resources, has raised $36.26m (US $26m) in a Series B round from Insight Partners, Galvanize, AirTree Ventures, Energy Transition Ventures and Aera VC (Capital Brief | AFR | LinkedIn)
Pearler, an investing platform for everyday Australian investors to invest in ASX and US shares and ETFs to build long-term wealth, has raised $16m in a Series A round from Portage Ventures, Altered Capital, No Brand, Partners Horizon Fund and Angel Investors (AFR)
GonGlobal, a MedTech inhaled IVF therapy that delivers ovarian stimulation hormones for fertility patients to avoid injections, has raised $1.2m from Innovation Victoria and RMIT University (Startup Daily | Innovation Victoria)
Future Maintenance Technologies, an autonomous robotics inspection platform that scans rolling stock for rail operators to reduce maintenance downtime, has raised $8m from Queensland Investment Corporation, Next Wave Partners and Taronga Group (Next Wave Partners)
7th September to 13th September - $41.5m across 7 rounds
Jet Zero Australia, a developer of SAF and renewable diesel projects for airlines to cut emissions and strengthen domestic fuel security, has raised $30m from Qantas, Airbus and POSCO INTERNATIONAL (Jet Zero Australia | Australian Manufacturing)
Tanda, a workforce management and payroll platform for Australian employers to manage rostering and ensure award-compliant pay, has raised and Undisclosed amount from Thoma Bravo (PR Newswire)
Dela, a payments and shipping platform for peer-to-peer secondhand buyers and sellers to secure payments via escrow until delivery is confirmed, has raised $1m (Startup Daily)
Metacognition, a robotics operating system that adds memory reasoning and safety controls for people to train and control robots using natural language, has raised $10m in a Pre-Seed round from Main Sequence (Capital Brief | Forbes)
Hello Clever, a payments platform that gives marketplaces and platforms each merchant their own account to accept and settle local instant payments, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Variant and Angel Investors (Hello Clever | Variant)
Hyperion Systems, an autonomous 3D-printed surface vessel for defence and maritime security teams to deploy rapidly from sovereign manufacturing, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Melt Ventures (LinkedIn)
GoTroppo, an ISP that sells no-contract NBN plans for Australian households to pay weekly or monthly for unlimited internet, has raised $500k (SmartCompany)