🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #154, 22nd March 2026
$43.35m raised across 7 rounds,
News
M&A, IPOs & Exits
Canva plans to IPO next year: The Information (Capital Brief)
Nick Curtis seeks to sell $100m of Firmus shares ahead of IPO (AFR)
Flyttr, a biosecurity platform, has acquired RapidAIM, an Australian agtech startup building real-time pest monitoring sensors, for an undisclosed amount to strengthen its global biosecurity platform (Startup Researcher)
FinVolution Group, a global credit-tech company, has acquired Fundo, an Australian digital lending platform, for an undisclosed amount to enter the Australian market (Startup Researcher)
Partnerships & Deals
AirTrunk has struck deals with two energy infrastructure partners to develop a large scale Battery Energy Storage System (The Australian)
Product Launches, Milestones and Expansion
Blinq founder Jarrod Webb announces the launch of a free AI notetaker built for in-person meetings and networking events (LinkedIn)
CSIRO builds world’s first proven quantum battery (InnovationAus)
Telix Pharmaceuticals resubmits brain cancer imaging application to the FDA (Capital Brief)
Heidi Health is expanding to hardware, launching a clip-on microphone that allows doctors to record patient consultations without a phone or computer (The Australian)
Venture Capital & Other Funding
OIF Ventures exits Advanced Navigation, pushing Fund I distributions to 4.7x paid-in capital (LinkedIn)
Data centre start-up WinDC launches monster $176m Series A raise (AFR)
Government, Policy & Regulation
Robyn Denholm’s ‘comprehensive’ R&D review calls for overhaul of investment incentives (Capital Brief)
$20m CRC-P grants round for AI research opens (InnovationAus)
Fines loom for social media giants as kids give ban 100-day fail mark (AFR)
Ecosystem & Hubs
Quantum Australia delivers $56 million, a 4.5x return on public investment, and 78 industry research partnerships (StartUp ScaleUp)
People Moves & Spotlights
Employment Hero appoints James Keene as Asia Pacific MD as founder Ben Thompson chases global AI expansion (AFR)
Puji Fernando, former COO of LaunchVic and Australian GM for DoorDash, has joined Lyrebird Health as COO (LinkedIn)
Other News & Updates
Atlassian AI job losses just the beginning as start-ups look to cut (AFR)
Funding Rounds
Advanced Navigation, a defence navigation-sensor maker for military and space vehicles to deliver highly accurate positioning without GPS, has raised $158m in a Series C round from Airtree Ventures, Quadrant Private Equity and The National Reconstruction Fund (SmartCompany | AFR)
Deftbiotech, a biotech that is developing a novel, plant-derived topical drug to transform the treatment of persistent fungal nail infections, has raised $1m in a Pre-Seed round from Breakthrough Victoria and La Trobe Eagle Fund (Breakthrough Victoria | La Trobe)
MiAI Law, a legal tech platform that provides explainable AI legal research for lawyers to surface step-by-step reasoning, has raised $200k from Angel Investors (Startup Daily | ITBrief)
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 $8m in a Undisclosed round from Gates Foundation, Tenacious Ventures and AgriZeroNZ (Nbryo)
markup.one, an AI powered graphic design tool that generates campaign ready, fully editable visuals from text prompts in under a minute, has raised $710k ($500k USD) from Y Combinator (Adelaide Uni)