Australia’s largest startup festival, Spark, returns October 27 to November 2 this year, marking a decade of helping the NSW startup sector connect and learn. More than 4,000 people annually take part in Spark Festival week, which kicked off in 2016, connecting founders, investors, universities and others through hundreds of events in Sydney and now… Read more »
Australia could bury its head in the sand while AI disrupts education and existing human capital – or Australia can enhance AI’s potential benefits by lifting the skills and preparedness of Australian workers and students. Australia could squander the enormous benefits of adopting early – or it can embrace AI to help advance the government’s… Read more »
Australia’s first foundational legal AI startup Isaacus, which is building sovereign legal AI models and tools for legal tech companies, has raised $700,000 in pre-Seed funding. The round was co-led Aura Ventures and Galileo Ventures and will be used to bring Isaacus to market with significant customer traction already underway. Isaacus has developed a massive, proprietary… Read more »
Two startups from LaunchVic’s recent CivVic Labs accelerator program have banked $35,000 each to develop their ideas further. The program saw WoolGrow Australia and CForge each receive $35,000 to help bring their circular agriculture solutions to market. The decision follows a pitch featuring all 10 startups, which each one receiving $15,000 in equity-free funding, in… Read more »
Tesla is expected to soon turn on its “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” (FSD) mode in Australia and New Zealand. Is a future of driverless cars upon us? Not exactly – it’s essentially more advanced driver assistance. Legally, Tesla drivers using this mode must be ready to take control and pay attention at all times. Calling it… Read more »
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is going all-in on generative AI after signing a deal with OpenAI to roll out its ChatGPT Edu platform to staff. It’s OpenAI’s biggest roll out in Australia as the US tech unicorn prepares to ramp up its presence in the region. UNSW has signed up for 10,000… Read more »
Round three of the South Australia Space Collaboration and Innovation Fund will open next Tuesday, September 23, with two projects awarded up to $150,000 each This round is focused on real-world applications of space-derived data to solve pressing challenges on Earth. Funding will support innovative projects that demonstrate clear commercial potential in areas such as: … Read more »
Firmus Technologies has become the latest Australian-founded startup to reach unicorn status, after the data centre infrastructure business raised $330 million in a round backed by US chip giant Nvidia. Local investor Ellerston Capital has also backed the Singapore-based company, founded by Australian entrepreneurs Oliver Curtis, Tim Rosenfield and Jonathan Levee in 2019. The company… Read more »
An AI-powered 3D printing startup creating custom healthcare products has raised $5.8 million in a Series A. H3D emerged from Swinburne University in 2018, its initial investor alongside Starfish Ventures. Cofounder and CTO Dr Philip Kinsella developed fully-automated design technology at Swinburne. It’s made the startup a global leader in the hearing sector, producing hearing… Read more »
It often takes an incoming government a full electoral term to figure out which bits of policy it should never have thrown out. But on an unseasonably warm September Monday in Sydney, the Minns government wasn’t about to repeat that habit. In a full-throated sales pitch as to why it wants both the local and… Read more »
When Atlassian announced it was buying a browser company for $1 billion, most people shook their heads. A software company famous for Jira and Confluence, suddenly deciding it needs to own the browser? It sounds insane. But here’s the thing: this is exactly the kind of craziness Australia’s tech sector needs. Why buying a browser… Read more »
Equity Clear, the data transparency initiative created by Scale Investors, Giant Leap and Alberts, has secured sponsorship from Investment NSW to develop a national standard for investor diversity reporting. Equity Clear has also partnered with the UNSW Centre for Social Impact to add rigour to the process, and appointed founder and gender equity advocate Noga… Read more »
The start of spring appears to be a fruitful time for startup funding, with 19 blossoming Australian and New Zealand startups sharing in new funding deals this week. Keep reading to learn more about Andromeda, Starboard Maritime Intelligence, Freckle, Marloo, X-Hemp, Harvest B, Wable and Techstars’ latest cohort. Andromeda Robotics: $23 million Robotics startup Andromeda… Read more »
Victorian government-backed venture fund Breakthrough Victoria has lured another NSW startup across the border, investing $2 million in proteins manufacturer Harvest B as part of a $3.5 million pre-Series A. The round was led by Mandalay Venture Partners, supported by Breakthrough Victoria, Alberts Impact Ventures, the Investible Climate Tech Fund, and Investible Club. In January,… Read more »
This week on Startup 360, we talk to two founders who presented at Cicada x Tech23. Engineer Nick Hazell is back with his second climate tech startup, Algenie, having previously raised $120 million for his plant-based meat startup v2food. Also on the couch is Ana Belgun from CSIRO-developed digital twin pioneer Terria. They were among… Read more »
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