🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #166, 21st June 2026
$82.5m raised across 7 rounds, Expert360 is up for sale, Airwallex launches AgentOS, The Albanese government has proposed a startup CGT carveout
Spot something a little different? Welcome to the new look Haris’s Newsletter and This Week in Australian Startups.
Today makes it 166 editions and counting - when I first started I was writing regular essays and deep dives each week. As time went on and the responsibilities and realities life caught up with me, whether that’s been a new and demanding job or prioritising family, they become less regular and eventually stopped.
I’ve been working and tinkering on several behind the scenes projects over the past 6-12 months. One of those is launching a regular reports, capturing the insights across all the news and data I’ve been collected and manually curating each week.
The plan is to launch the first report next month which will be available to all subscribers, but subsequent reports will only be available to paid subscribers. This newsletter is a labour of love and passion, and as much as it may make sense a hill I’ll die on is not taking ad revenue for a multitude of reasons.
With the increased value that paid subscribers will receive I’ll also be revising the membership tiers but anyone who has already subscribed and believed in me and this newsletter early on I will grandfather your subscription for at least the first 12 months.
Would love to hear from you - what insight and data are you most interested in? What would you be willing to pay for that each month?
Happy reading!
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Expert360 is reportedly running a 100% sale process, with sale materials pitching the talent marketplace as profitable, EBITDA positive and generating $140m in annual revenue (AFR)
Finder, an Australian financial comparison platform, has acquired Mozo, a consumer finance comparison site, in an undisclosed deal to expand across home loans, credit cards, savings, insurance, utilities and banking (Australian FinTech)
PictureWealth, an Australian fintech wealth advice company, has merged with Capstone Financial Planning, a national AFSL licensee, in an undisclosed deal creating a group with about $22b in funds under advice (Australian FinTech)
Capital Markets
Racura Oncology, an ASX-listed clinical-stage biotech, has raised $34.3m through option conversions and placements to fully fund three RC220 cancer drug trials (BNA)
Sharon AI is reportedly letting investors from its US$103m pre-IPO convertible note round convert into equity at a steep discount ahead of a planned ASX listing and US$1b PIPE deal (AFR)
Sharon AI has announced US$1.6b in private placement financing and convertible notes to expand AI factories across Australia and Asia-Pacific (Businesswire)
Partnerships & Deals
Memphasys, a Sydney reproductive biotech, has signed a 12-month exclusive Monash IVF supply deal to deploy its Felix sperm selection system across 22 mainland Australian clinics (BNA)
Sharon AI has signed a six-year agreement with Nvidia to expand its Australian AI cloud infrastructure, including 72MW of new data centre capacity and up to 40,000 Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs (AFR)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Airwallex has launched AgentOS, a toolkit that lets AI agents manage finance workflows across Airwallex Business Accounts from Claude, Cursor and other agent environments (LinkedIn)
CrossCourtAI has launched HarperData - a dataset with 4m property records to help investors analyse Australian development approvals, supply and demand (LinkedIn)
Australian quantum computing startup Diraq has opened a Palo Alto office to deepen US semiconductor partnerships as it works toward commercial-scale quantum systems (LinkedIn)
Biotech ENA Respiratory has received US patent allowances for two TLR2 therapies, strengthening IP protection for its INNA-051 respiratory antiviral program (LinkedIn)
Gather, an Australian consumer wealth app, has crossed $1b in total wealth tracked on its platform (LinkedIn)
Heidi says its own clinical AI model has matched Anthropic’s Sonnet 4.6 on blinded clinician preference tests, as Heidi Evidence answers more than 300,000 questions a week (LinkedIn)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
Airtree has backed Odyssey’s US$310m Series B as the US AI startup builds world models that simulate reality beyond language models (LinkedIn)
Ketim Technologies has been awarded a $250k Australian Government commercialisation grant to develop its diagnostic device for postpartum depression (LinkedIn)
Square Peg has co-led Limitless Labs’ US$20m Series A alongside DTCP, backing its AI agent for automating CNC programming in precision manufacturing (LinkedIn)
Scaleup Mediafund, Australia’s dedicated media-for-equity fund, has launched a $25m fourth fund to give startups advertising inventory from News Corp, Foxtel, NOVA, oOh!media and REA in exchange for equity (BNA)
Government, Policy & Regulation
The Albanese government has proposed a startup CGT carveout to preserve the 50% discount for eligible innovative-business shareholders, but sector groups are pushing for broader eligibility and R&D tax changes (Capital Brief)
Ecosystem & Hubs
LaunchVic has backed HEX, MLAI and Stone & Chalk to deliver VICTOR:AI, an 8-week pre-accelerator for 26 Victorian AI-native startup teams (Direct)
LaunchVic has announced $3.5m for pre-accelerator programs delivered by Boab, Boson Ventures, Cicada, CoLabs, HEX, Illume, Jumpstart, MedTech Actuator and RMIT to help Victorian founders test ideas and move towards commercialisation (LinkedIn)
The WA government has awarded West Tech Fest a $1.1m grant to extend the startup showcase to 2029 and shift its focus from Perth to Fremantle (InnovationAus)
People Moves & Spotlights
Anthropic appoints former Atlassian exec David Masters as ANZ head of policy (Capital Brief)
Reports & Data
Equity Clear, a non-profit working to close the gender investment gap in Australian startup funding, has released “Show Us the Data: From Anecdote to Evidence”, a report on gender diversity across Australia’s startup investment pipeline (LinkedIn)
Side Stage Ventures has released the “Australia Venture & Startup Report 2026”, a report benchmarking a decade of Australian startup and venture performance against global peers (LinkedIn)
Other News & Updates
Canva’s first seed investor Bill Tai has reportedly told investors that AI IPO mania and weak software stock performance could complicate Canva’s path to IPO, while revealing the company rejected multiple Adobe acquisition approaches (Capital Brief)
Dashdot’s preliminary liquidation report shows the collapsed property buyer’s agency owed more than $16.5m, including $10.6m to 695 customers (SmartCompany)
Digital Agriculture Services, a Melbourne agri-fintech tracking rural land and agricultural data, says more than $21b worth of NSW and Victorian farmland sits in zones favourable for regional data centre development (BNA)
Metigy founder David Fairfull has been jailed for nine years after misleading investors out of $39m and diverting $7.7m to buy luxury homes (The Age)
Zepto has been named FinTech Organisation of the Year at the 2026 Finnies Awards, with Hello Clever, Remitly, Otivo and RedOwl among the major winners (Australian FinTech)
Funding Rounds
Sonder, an employee wellbeing platform, has raised an Undisclosed amount from IAG Firemark Ventures (Public)
New Energy Transport, an electric trucking service that carries freight across Australia for small businesses to cut supply-chain emissions, has raised $5m from Jekara Group and Angel Investors (Startup Daily)
Flyweel, an advertising fintech platform that reconciles ad spend with revenue for businesses that grow with ads to access campaign-backed capital, has raised $2,4m in a Pre-Seed round from Ten13, Antler Australia, QIC and Angel Investors (Startup Daily)
Emergence Quantum, a graphene materials and devices company for chipmakers and quantum firms to accelerate quantum computing development, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Serendipity Capital (AFR)
Everlab, the preventative health service of the future, has raised $65m in a Series A round from Airtree Ventures, Plural, Left Lane Capital, b2venture and Angel Investors (SmartCompany | Capital Brief | Wall Street Journal)
SavvyWise, an AI platform that speeds Australian tax research for accountants and bookkeepers to cut time on compliance work, has raised $156k in a Crowdfunding round (BNA)
EarnOS, a decentralised consumer discovery and engagement platform that redefines advertising through verifiable, privacy-preserving targeting, has raised $8.56m ($6m USD) in a Pre-Series A round from 1kx, Coinbase, Escape Velocity (EV3), Circle Ventures, Finality Capital and Social Graph Ventures (LinkedIn | Business Insider)