🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #173, 9th August 2026
$2.87b raised across 9 rounds, Atlassian shares up 35%, NRF exceeds it's $1.5b target having invested $1.7b in 25-26, Canva cuts revenue guidance from 30% to 20%
Four things caught my eye this week; Atlassian’s rebound quarter, Canva’s downgrade, the News Bargaining Incentive, and Firmus finally completing its raise.
Atlassian and Canva gave us opposite versions of the SaaSpocalypse. Atlassian booked its first quarterly operating profit in more than two years, with revenue up 28% to US$1.8b and cloud up 31%, and the shares jumped about 35% in after market trading. Mike Cannon-Brookes is buying up to $355m (US$250m) of Atlassian stock on market, the first time he has ever bought shares in his own company, and called AI the best thing to ever happen to Atlassian. Canva was the opposite. Their full year revenue growth guidance was cut from 30% to about 20%, after 38% last year. They called out halting the Canva AI 2.0 rollout as frontier model costs blew out and focused on stabilising costs. Add to that the AFR reporting MAU going flat at ~208 million. This week Atlassian showed they can make money with AI, whilst Canva is still investing before they can see a return. I’m still bullish on Canva, they have a lot room to grow and I’m confident they will figure out the AI economics, but a cut in revenue guidance is not the best news for investors ahead of an expected IPO.
The News Bargaining Incentive was finalised, with some meaningful late changes as Capital Brief reported the charge lands at 2.5% of Australian digital advertising revenue above $250m, the professional networking carve out that shielded LinkedIn is gone, deals with small publishers now earn a 200% offset, and platforms need six deals rather than four to fully avoid the charge. There’s a startup angle too - 5% of any funds raised go to a grants program for small publishers and startups. The whole scheme is designed so the charge never actually gets collected, because the offset makes doing deals cheaper than paying it - which makes it notable that Nine, which stands to be one of the bigger beneficiaries, says it feels “deeply misled” by the late changes and is warning about newsroom jobs. This is likely stemming from the incentives to pay smaller publishers as opposed to larger ones like Nine.
Then there’s Firmus. Last week I made the point that the raise hadn’t actually happened - approved and in progress, but not completed. This week we can finally say the funding round is complete. Firmus confirmed the $2.85b (US$2b) round, led by Coatue and Nvidia following on, with Blackstone coming in as a new investor and Jane Street participating, at the $15.5b valuation shareholders approved at the end of July. It’s the largest single round I’ve tracked - bigger than the ~$2.63b across 170+ rounds from the entire first half of this year combined. The money funds the Project Southgate rollout here at home and expansion into Asia Pacific, including the recently announced Indonesian build. What will be interesting to see is whether the ASX float follows now the private money has landed - and whether the rest of the year keeps sorting software companies into the ones getting paid for AI and the ones paying for it. This week we got one of each.
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Airtree has returned $69.9m on $27.5m invested in DroneDeploy, a 2.5 times multiple, after NYSE listed construction software company Procore Technologies acquired the drone mapping business for US$845m in cash (AFR)
Capital Markets
Mike Cannon-Brookes will buy up to US$250m ($355m) of Atlassian stock on market, his first purchase of shares in the company, after its first quarterly operating profit in more than two years sent the stock up 35% (AFR)
Atlassian posts 28% revenue growth to US$1.8b in Q4 FY26, with cloud up 31% and customers citing its AI-powered Teamwork Graph context layer as a top reason for expanding commitments (LinkedIn)
REA Group’s full year net profit rose 15% to $650m on revenue of $1.79b, after a post Budget rush of investor listings lifted fourth quarter buy listings 11%; a $111m REA India impairment cut reported profit to $552m (BNA)
Sharon AI says its ASX float prospectus is drafted and it is waiting for a window clear of material changes to file, as the neocloud lifts contracted capacity 60% to 212MW against a US$8.8b ($12.5b) contract book that includes a US$4.9b six year Nvidia deal (AFR)
Spacetalk, the Adelaide maker of GPS smartwatches for children and elderly users, has raised $10m at 7.5c a share to fund its shift to subscription revenue under new TPG Telecom and Vodafone Australia agreements; active mobile subscribers rose 18% to 60,600 (BNA)
Partnerships & Deals
Acusensus, the Melbourne road safety company whose camera trailers detect speeding and phone use, has won a Kentucky work zone speed enforcement agreement worth up to US$20m ($31m) to 2031, its third concurrent statewide US program; the initial order is US$2.1m ($3.3m) (BNA)
Tractor Ventures and Kashcade have formed an exclusive referral partnership to deploy more than $200m of debt to Australian technology founders in its first year, splitting growth loans and R&D tax incentive advances between them and co locating their Sydney teams (Startup Researcher)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Canva’s monthly active users were flat at 208 million in July against 206-207 million a year earlier, and an internal chart shown to Sydney staff shows they have been falling since a 2023-24 peak; Canva attributes the dip to education users and school holidays (AFR)
A 100kg solid rocket motor designed and built in Australia by the Defence Science and Technology Group with Thales has passed its first flight test at Southern Launch’s Koonibba range in South Australia, completing a full duration burn (InnovationAus)
Driva, the car finance broker, has settled over $1b in finance across Australia, New Zealand and the UK since its 2019 founding - now also offering personal loans and novated leases (LinkedIn)
Millibeam, the fabless chip designer behind Australian 5G millimetre wave semiconductors, has launched an in house counter drone device that jams radio frequency control links, aiming at the cost and scale limits of existing systems (InnovationAus)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
ElectraLith secures over $2.9m ARENA grant toward its $7.3m Kwinana WA pilot of R-Box, an electrified tech that turns lithium mining waste into battery-grade lithium using less water and fewer chemicals (Direct)
The National Reconstruction Fund ended 2025-26 with $1.7b invested against a $1.5b target, helped by two undisclosed loans struck on the final day of the financial year, and plans to deploy a further $2.7b over the next 12 months (InnovationAus)
OneQode, a sovereign AI infrastructure operator running carrier grade telecommunications through to GPU clouds, is seeking about $50m at a circa $250m valuation via Shaw and Partners; its AMD partnership includes a revenue backstop of more than US$145m (AFR)
Government, Policy & Regulation
Federal laws will override states that approve large data centres powered by fossil fuels, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen says, enforcing a national framework requiring new data centre load to be matched by new green generation (InnovationAus)
Labor finalises the News Bargaining Incentive at 2.5% of Australian digital advertising revenue above $250m, scraps the professional networking carve out that shielded LinkedIn, and lifts the offset threshold to six publisher deals; 5% of funds raised will seed a grants program for small publishers and startups (Capital Brief)
Victoria has become the second state to appoint an artificial intelligence minister, with Anthony Carbines taking the portfolio and the restored digital economy brief in Premier Ben Carroll’s first frontbench (InnovationAus)
Ecosystem & Hubs
The WA government will spend $2m from its $40m innovation fund on a four year commercialisation hub, run by an outsourced operator and focused on intellectual property management and scale up support (InnovationAus)
Baidam, the First Nations owned cyber security and IT provider, and UNSW Sydney will jointly fund two perpetual scholarships a year for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in STEM degrees (ARN)
Catalysr, the migrant and refugee founder accelerator, will run the Victorian government backed Victoria-India Market Makers program, taking up to 10 Indian-Australian founders to Mumbai and Bangalore in November to open market channels (Startup Daily)
Contactile, the UNSW spinout whose tactile sensors let robot grippers measure force, slip and friction so they can handle delicate objects, has won ARM Hub’s Propel-AIR sprint and a Boston residency at MassRobotics; Melbourne’s SpatioTemporal was runner up (InnovationAus)
EnergyLab has selected 10 startups for its 2026 Climate Solutions Accelerator, funded by a $1.64m ARENA grant - the program’s first all-hardware cohort, spanning EV charging, critical minerals processing and industrial decarbonisation (Australian Renewable Energy Agency)
ProcurePro, the construction procurement software company, has won the Queensland final of the Startup World Cup, sending Tim Rogers to San Francisco in November to compete for a US$1m ($1.4m) investment prize (Startup Daily)
Reports & Data
Canva was the world’s second most visited AI platform in the year to April with 10.5 billion visits, behind ChatGPT’s 64.7 billion and ahead of Gemini, DeepSeek and Claude, according to analytics firm OneLittleWeb (SmartCompany)
Other News & Updates
Canva has cut full year revenue growth guidance from 30% to about 20%, after 38% last year, having halted the Canva AI 2.0 rollout when frontier model costs blew out; it has since cut cost per AI task by nearly 90% using in house models and delayed products by up to six months (AFR)
Matt Berriman has ended his eight year antitrust fight with Google after the US Ninth Circuit rejected Unlockd’s appeal; the lock screen advertising startup had raised over $60m and was preparing an ASX listing when Google banned it from the Play Store in 2018 (SmartCompany)
Funding Rounds
Zabidou, an AI inspection system that detects surface defects on industrial production lines for manufacturers to prevent faulty shipments, has raised $3.5m in a Seed round from Black Nova, Main Sequence and Antler Australia (Forbes)
StrongRoom AI, which makes software for pharmacies to help patients adhere to their medication regime, has raised $2m from Angel Investors (AFR)
EngageRM, a sports and entertainment CRM platform for teams, leagues and venues to centralise fan data and boost engagement, has raised an Undisclosed amount from Salter Brothers (AFR | Salter Brothers)
BioScout, which automates agricultural disease detection, has raised $6.75m in a Seed round from Demea Sustainable Investment, Astanor, GrainInnovate, GrainCorp Ventures, Hort Innovation Venture Fund, Artesian and Division Q (AgFunderNews)
Vexev, a MedTech autonomous ultrasound platform that maps vascular access for dialysis clinics to let clinic staff capture reliable scans, has raised $8.6m from Blackbird Ventures, Neotribe Ventures, Startmate, Horizon, TreeArc Investment Group, TEN13, Bioshore Ventures and Alumni Ventures (Vexev | Capital Brief)
Enrola, an AI sales platform that engages leads by SMS within seconds to qualify and convert them for consumer-facing businesses, has raised $2.1m a Seed round from Purpose Ventures, Antler Australia, Afterwork Ventures and Skalata (Startup Daily)
Firmus Technologies, who builds renewable-powered, liquid-cooled “AI factories” to deliver efficient and sovereign AI compute across Australia and Southeast Asia., has raised $2.84b (USD $2b) from Coatue Management, NVIDIA, Blackstone and Jane Street (Capital Brief | AFR)
Rampart, a subscription business-news publication producing investigative commentary for Australian investors and executives to inform decisions, has raised $2.3m from Angel Investors (AFR)
Eudaemon Technologies, a MedTech hydrogel condom developer, has raised $3.75m from Swinburne Ventures and Angel Investors