🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #174, 16th August 2026

$61.2m raised across 10 rounds, Firmus Technologies acquires Benmax for $300m, Tabcorp acquired Betmakers for $283m in cash, me&u expands beyond QR code ordering, SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti

A lot of funding rounds this week but also plenty of headlines that caught my eye. Canva was not able to defend their US$42b valuation in the end, with both Blackbird and Airtree marking down their investments ~17% to a US$34.9b valuation reportedly putting an IPO on ice for now.

The South Australian government meanwhile had their cake and ate it too - both signing an MoU with OpenAI and calling for Australia’s first royal commission into AI. M&A continues to thrive - Firmus Technologies is acquiring their own supply chain, paying $300m for the Benmax businesses that manufacture their HyperCube modules just a week after their $2.85b fundraise finally completed. Consolidation also continues with Tabcorp paying $283m in cash for BetMakers - a 41% premium.

Evolution continues for startups in an AI world, although I think it would be naive to say it’s AI driving this alone. Startups will always look for ways to increase their TAM, but AI is certainly a driving force here. me&u is expanding beyond QR ordering into reservations in their first profitable year - this is really natural growth going deeper across the hospitality stack. SafetyCulture rebranded to Mitti, pivoting to AI operations and insurance - it’s been a busy period for them really finding their new identity with founder Luke Annear stepping back as CEO in January 2025 only to come back a year later in February this year, and now only 6 months later a new direction and name.

HealthTech continues to have its moment - the busiest sector in this week’s funding rounds (Atmo $12m, Kantoko $3.5m, ThinkMD.ai) and six biotechs receiving non-dilutive CUREator+ grants. The AFR also reported that Heidi Health is in talks to raise more than $100m at a $1b+ valuation.

A lot to think about, but Firmus’s acquisition of Benmax is certainly the one that is making me ponder the most - M&A has been all mostly about consolidation in a post ZIRP / SaaSpocolypse era where startups have not been able to grow into their valuations. This acquisition is about controlling your own destiny. Neoclouds are booming in Australia, and there’s only going to be more investment coming from abroad and at home.

News

M&A, IPOs & Exits

• Firmus Technologies, the AI factory developer, has agreed to acquire the fabrication, design and projects businesses of Benmax, the regional NSW manufacturer of its HyperCube modules, for $300m (techpartner.news)

• Novonesis, the Danish biosolutions group, has agreed to acquire the remaining stake in MicroBioGen, the Australian industrial-yeast biotech it first backed in 2013, for undisclosed consideration (Startup Researcher)

• Tabcorp, the ASX-listed wagering giant, has agreed to acquire BetMakers, the Melbourne B2B racing technology platform, for $283m in cash with an option for up to 25% in Tabcorp scrip; completion is targeted for Q3 FY27 (BNA)

Capital Markets

• Car Group posts a $407m adjusted FY26 profit on $1.25b revenue; Brazil’s Webmotors led growth at 19% (BNA)

• Seek posted a $371m FY26 loss after writedowns in the Seek Growth Fund, including its stake in Chinese job ads platform Zhaopin; CEO Ian Narev plans to sell more than $1b of the $2b venture fund’s investments in the near term (The Australian)

• A Crikey investigation found Vinyl Group, the ASX-listed media roll-up, has bought 14 youth culture mastheads including Pedestrian and Rolling Stone Australia and slashed their newsrooms - about 20 permanent editorial staff remain, with Pedestrian down to four journalists (Crikey)

Partnerships & Deals

• Constantinople, the Sydney startup that runs a bank’s entire technology and operations as a service, has completed its first migration of an established bank: MOVE Bank moved every customer, product and operation onto Constantinople’s platform in under a year and expects its cost-to-income ratio to fall more than 30% (LinkedIn)

• LoanOptions.ai, the AI loan-matching fintech, partners with Lendi Group to put asset finance inside Aussie’s national broker network - a 90-plus lender panel via its AILO widget (Australian FinTech)

• South Australia signs the first agreement between an Australian state government and an AI company - an MoU with OpenAI covering AI skills, local research and attracting investment (Capital Brief)

• Sharon AI says customers are asking for 20,000 GPUs at a time as capacity hits 212MW, four times its February level; CEO James Manning backs Andrew Forrest’s mooted 2GW green data centre in the Pilbara (The Australian)

Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion

• Adrenalen Group launches Adrenalen Media, an advertising network on in-venue screens during live sport in pubs and clubs; an exclusive deal with 400-venue network AllPour targets 100 venues in six months (AdNews)

• Airtasker launches a ChatGPT app and an MCP server for AI agents, letting users post, offer on and assign gigs without leaving the chat (SmartCompany)

• Brainfish, the Sydney AI customer support startup, launches Ballet - an agent that writes and runs the system integrations ops teams hand-build, with a simulation mode and per-workflow permission limits (LinkedIn)

• Hello Clever, the Sydney real-time payments fintech, says ARR has hit $70m - more than 4x in 12 months - with Japan accelerating and a US push under way (LinkedIn)

• me&u is expanding beyond QR code ordering into AI-powered reservations and venue management, including a voice AI that answers venues’ phone bookings - quadrupling its addressable market and pitting it against Amex’s and DoorDash’s booking platforms in its first profitable year (Forbes)

• Kit Willow’s startup Planet Price has built an AI agent that prices each garment’s environmental impact for EU rules due late 2027; it is in final testing with five brands, from a $20m boutique to an ASX-listed retailer, ahead of launch (AFR)

• Q-CTRL executes a 100-qubit Quantum Fourier Transform on IBM hardware - the largest on record, doubling the previous best (Q-CTRL)

• Qwilr, the Sydney proposal software company, launches its Smart Proposal Engine: sales proposals that assemble themselves from CRM and deal data under preset rules (LinkedIn)

• SafetyCulture rebrands as Mitti as founder Luke Anear pivots the $2.5b workplace safety unicorn into an AI-led operations platform and insurer with $200m in premiums written; AI now writes about 90% of its code and the company aims to be profitable by September (The Australian)

Venture Capital & Other Funding

• WA’s eighth Innovation Booster Grant round hands $1.27m to 26 early-stage startups, including sustainable indoor farms, an AI tool for Legal Aid and shipping-container housing for regional communities (Startup Daily)

• Six biotechs share $13.5m in non-dilutive CUREator+ grants: $2.5m each for Aleris Therapeutics, Frontier Inflammasome and Luma Bio, $2.13m for Navier Medical and about $1.95m each for Neurotologix and WeGuide (BNA)

• The Australian Business Growth Fund, the $540m government and big-bank backed SME investor, has doubled its maximum first cheque to $30m, lifted its per-company limit to $50m and can now take majority stakes; its latest investment is naval sustainment firm Griffin Industrial Group (SmartCompany)

• ASX-listed VC Bailador rides out the SaaSpocalypse in FY26 - portfolio revenue up 32% to $735m, PropHero marked up 69% while DASH fell 20%, and $25m was banked from its SiteMinder sell-down (Startup Daily)

• Canva’s valuation cut by more than $10b - Blackbird and Airtree mark it down 17% to US$34.9b and Canva’s own employee share price falls to US$31b, with Nasdaq float plans understood to be shelved (The Age)

• Heidi Health, the Melbourne medical AI scribe founded by former vascular surgeon Thomas Kelly, is in talks to raise more than $100m at a valuation above $1b; ARR has passed US$60m, up from US$1m in 2024 (AFR)

• Adelaide satellite IoT company Myriota plans a $75m raise at a targeted $350-500m valuation to expand its nanosatellite network, with an ASX listing eyed within three years (Startup Researcher)

• Perth space company Space Angel wins a $1.75m WA government grant to scope the state’s first spaceport, covering early-stage planning and the business case (InnovationAus)

• Sterling, the Auckland startup building an AI autopilot for finance teams’ invoice processing and month-end close, raises a $3.15m seed led by Blackbird (Startup Daily)

• Twynam, the Kahlbetzer family’s Australian investment office, has backed US-headquartered waste-to-fuel startup Forge Industries’ US$3.85m ($5.5m) seed round; Forge converts municipal waste into low-cost fuel for cement and steel makers, with its first plant planned outside Las Vegas (LinkedIn)

Government, Policy & Regulation

• Allegra Spender warns the $10m lifetime cap on the proposed startup CGT carve-out would deter Australia’s most active repeat investors; her Treasury submission urges a per-venture cap instead (SmartCompany)

• ASIC proposes letting companies advertise IPOs before a prospectus is lodged, bringing Australia into line with the UK and NZ as ASX listings decline (Startup Daily)

• Defence’s 2026 innovation strategy names the six technologies it will fund for a decade - long-range fires and hypersonics, high-energy lasers, autonomous systems, quantum, AI and undersea warfare (Murphy & Company)

• NSW’s energy department is pushing Goodman Group, the ASX-listed industrial property giant, to underwrite new firmed renewables for its $5.5b, 500MW Project Atlas data centre in Western Sydney, warning the boom risks extending the life of coal plants (Forbes)

• Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young questions whether Labor’s 2.5% news bargaining levy is enough and wants AI companies that scrape journalists’ work captured by the scheme (Capital Brief)

• South Australia calls Australia’s first royal commission into AI - three commissioners begin 1 October and report by July 2027; Premier Peter Malinauskas wants OpenAI and Anthropic to take part, while AirTree co-founder Daniel Petre calls it ‘a colossal waste of money’ (AFR)

• X wins its Federal Court case against the eSafety Commissioner - because X is regulated as a social media service, the court ruled the separate messaging-services standard for harmful content cannot also be applied to it (Information Age)

Ecosystem & Hubs

• Beanstalk AgTech, the Australian agrifood advisory behind the Drought Venture Studio, launches Monsoon Ventures, a Singapore-based venture studio backed by Enterprise Singapore and Rabo Foundation (Monsoon Ventures)

Reports & Data

• Australia's tech workforce shrank for the first time - down 0.3% to 967,000 in 2025 - with AI-exposed sales and admin roles declining even as the sector's economic contribution grew 5% to $142b (Information Age)

Other News & Updates

• Canva is testing its own in-house AI models with a select customer group after pausing its AI 2.0 rollout; frontier-model costs threatened the freemium engine behind its US$4b ($5.7b) ARR (AFR)

• AirTree co-founder Daniel Petre: the SaaSpocalypse has killed the reliable mid-stage SaaS bet - 72% of US VC dollars now go to AI - and Australia needs specialist domain-focused funds, not generalists (Forbes)

• Employment Hero’s valuation has stalled: bids for Seek’s 18% stake, on the market through Goldman Sachs since February, only match the $2b KKR set a year ago - flat despite revenue growth of about 30% (AFR)

• An Australian’s AI agent - OpenClaw running Anthropic’s Claude - hacked his gym’s booking software unprompted, exploiting an API flaw and bumping another member off the waitlist, in the first known local case of an AI agent going rogue (ABC News)

Funding Rounds

• Alloy Robotics, a robotics data analytics platform, has raised $11.5m in a Seed round from Square Peg Capital, Blackbird Ventures, Airtree Ventures, Skip Capital and Angel Investors (Forbes | Alloy)

• 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 $2m in a Seed round from QIC (Beef Central | QIC)

• Fabulate, a data-driven influencer marketing platform for brands to run creator campaigns to prove ROI, focused on Asia-Pacific markets, has raised $4.5m from Centerstone Capital and Nightingale Partners (AdNews)

• Kantoko, a digital health platform that delivers online ADHD assessment and treatment for Australians to reduce wait times and costs, has raised $3.5m in a Seed round from Side Stage Ventures, Tenmile and Angel Investors (Startup Daily | Forbes)

• Farmbot, an agtech sensor and analytics platform that provides real-time soil and water telemetry for growers to optimise irrigation, has raised $22m in a Series B round from Lewis & Clark Partners, Fulcrum Global Capital, Builders VC, Level VC, Meat & Livestock Australia and Macdoch Ventures (Startup Daily)

• Sophiie AI, an AI operating system that runs day-to-day admin for trades and service businesses to reduce time spent on paperwork, has raised $5m in a Seed round from Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Gandel Invest, Antler Australia and Aussie Angels (AFR)

• Levercon AI, an AI operating system for credit funds to securely automate origination and monitoring workflows inside fund infrastructure, has raised $ in a Undisclosed round from Airtree Ventures (LinkedIn | Medium)

• Forward, a private credit origination platform that turns unstructured borrower info into fund-ready deals for funds to speed underwriting, has raised $708135 in a Undisclosed round from Y Combinator (LinkedIn)

• ThinkMD.ai, a healthtech clinical assessment platform that helps frontline health workers identify illness and next steps to improve patient care, has raised $ in a Undisclosed round from Verge HealthTech Fund, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures and Boehringer Ingelheim (LinkedIn)

• Atmo Biosciences, ingestible gas-sensing capsule to provide unique insights into gut health and microbiome function, has raised $12m from Angel Investors and Breakthrough Victoria (AFR)