Over the Summer break, Startup Daily is republishing key stories from 2025. This opinion piece from editor Simon Thomsen first appeared in February amid news that the NSW that the NSW government and UFC fan premier Chris Minns, paid $16 million to the US cage fighting company to stage 3 events in Sydney at a… Read more »
Bondi is beautiful tonight. And not because of its beaches, its sunset, its people, its fun. It’s beautiful because you in your thousands, in your defiance, in your resistance and resolve, you have returned to these sands just seven days after a shocking crime, and have said to the terrorists, we are going nowhere. This… Read more »
The largest data centre in the southern hemisphere will be built in New South Wales after local provider CDC Data Centres’s proposal received approval. The NSW government last week approved the plan for a $3.1 billion hyperscale data centre at Marsden Park, about 36km north-west of the Sydney CBD. First announced in October last year,… Read more »
The NSW Government’s Investment Delivery Authority (IDA) has received 48 major investment proposals worth $136 billion in just 10 weeks since it opened the first round of expressions of interest. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey announced IDA in the June budget, setting aside $17.7 million to get it up and running to “cut through red tape” and… Read more »
Waymo is talking to local regulators about trialling the company’s self-driving taxis in Australia, as the autonomous vehicle company begins lobbying governments around the country. Owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, Waymo describes itself as the “world’s first autonomous ride-hailing service” and says its vehicles have completed 10 million driverless rides in five US cities,… Read more »
The NSW government has finally confirmed Stone & Chalk as operator of the relocated and rebranded Sydney Startup Hub at Tech Central with Fishburners as anchor partner. The move provides certainty for Fishburners, one of the city’s original startup coworking spaces, which was left marooned at the Startup Hub’s former Wynyard site after the government… Read more »
Bradfield, the site of the new Western Sydney airport, will become a manufacturing hub for space infrastructure such as satellites following a deal between the NSW government and local startup Space Machines Company. Space Machines Company will begin high-value manufacturing projects at the Advanced Manufacturing Readiness Facility’s (AMRF) this year, developing production capability to produce… Read more »
NSW has unveiled a new strategy for Sydney’s Tech Central, committing $5m to governance and investment attraction and confirming $38.5m in budget support to scale the precinct’s tech, research and housing mix.
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 »
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 »
Sydney Startup Hub shuts down today, after seven years, thanks to the NSW government. And right now it’s clear that when it comes to startups, the government couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, to use one of the more polite versions of the idiom. Another way of explaining it is that they’ve bombed the… Read more »
The NSW government has overhauled its MVP Ventures Program, introducing a competitive selection process. It is also launching a targeted funding stream for underrepresented founders, including women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, and regional entrepreneurs. The update follows weeks of uncertainty around the 2025–26 grant round, which was originally scheduled to open on July 1.… Read more »
The NSW government is spending $2.8 million in grants to install 549 new kerbside chargers for electric vehicles across 130 suburbs, between Newcastle and Wollongong over the 12 months. EV Kerbside Charging Grants were awarded to five companies: Charge Post, Connected Kerb, EVX, Plus ES and EF Asset Management, which will contribute a combined $2.2… Read more »
While Sydney as a tech ecosystem bemoans the looming ‘relocation’ of their Sydney Startup Hub, we here in Melbourne, even as a ‘4th Most Liveable City in the world’ aren’t even currently a good place to build a tech company, period. We don’t have a ‘home’ for startups. We don’t have a thriving scene. We… Read more »
Looking at the NSW Innovation Blueprint 2035, it’s disappointing to see how disconnected it is from the day-to-day realities of being an innovator. Just like magic beans – big on promises, but scant on mechanisms. Without knowing the responsible government executives, the funding, the timelines and specific actions, it’s very hard to believe it will… Read more »
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