AI proptech platform Asseti takes home Scaleup of The Year at Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards 2025

Asseti, an AI-enabled infrastructure data analytics platform that’s transforming how commercial property is monitored and managed, was named Scaleup of The Year at the Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards 2025.

The Sydney-based proptech platform took out one of the top awards of the night for its innovative solution for optimising building and facility management.

The Scaleup of The Year award, sponsored by AWS Startups, recognises an all-round outstanding unlisted scaleup company that has demonstrated strong growth on a range of metrics, including revenue, customers and employment, as well as leadership in its market.

Judges chose Asseti from a stacked category including software delivery platform Buildkite, encryption platform Everlast Networks and autonomous drone and visual mapping leaders Emesent.

Founded by Aonghus Stevens, who first began selling drones at the age of 15, Asseti uses enterprise-grade drones to capture and create high-resolution 2D and 3D digital replicas of industrial assets and infrastructure for its clients to view from afar.

The platform’s AI engine analyses enormous amounts of visual data, including satellite, drone and CCTV, to deliver actionable insights to clients.

For companies that manage thousands of assets (including warehouses, plants, distribution centres and other industrial sites), this is a game-changer with measurable impact.

The data can help them overcome costly, reactive maintenance and extend the life of a building, prevent public safety hazards and optimise the uptime of global data centres. It also reduces environmental waste from avoidable repairs and rebuilds.

In May 2024, Asseti closed a $2.5 million seed round led by Tidal Ventures.

The company has been growing at 500% year-on-year since the raise, also winning over multiple Fortune 500 customers, beating well-funded competitors to the deals without a US team on the ground.

Keiran O’Neill, principal at Tidal, accepted the Scaleup of The Year award on Stevens’ behalf.

“There’s been a lot of hard work, particularly over the last 18 months since we’ve really started to scale out the team and the product,” O’Neill told Startup Daily on the night.

“And as a result, we just had really tremendous growth. I know Aonghus and the team who work on this day in and day out put a lot of effort into this. So to get some of this recognition is just great.”

Asseti has already won global contracts as they show enterprise customers how they can reduce risk and save millions in operational costs.

“We’ve had some really strong logo growth [which measures customer retention], and some really impressive logos and a lot of these in the US, which for an Australian business is really quite tough.

“And we’ve done all that from Australia… the result of that has been some amazing topline growth.

“It’s a great business model. It’s really efficient and there’s a really strong pathway to scale. So we’re super excited.”

While Stevens couldn’t be there to bask in the glory, O’Neill shares what he believes is the secret to Stevens’ success.

“I do speak to Aonghus a lot and I think the advice I would say he has taken on probably the most is that it really does come back to the customer,” he says.

“Listen to the customer and build what the customer needs, and not what you think they need.”

Going into the next year, Asseti is preparing for their Series A raise and continued growth in the US market as they win contracts against well-funded competitors.

“We’ve managed to get cut-through with these customers through Australia,” O’Neill says. “Some of that’s luck, some of that’s just relentless follow-ups. But once we do get to the table, we are winning and that’s mainly down to the product.”