SydneyAI startup Lorikeet has raised another US$9 million (A$14m), just four months after pocketing a $7.3 million Seed round. This time Blackbird led the round, joined by existing investors Square Peg and Kim Jackson’s Skip Capital. The raise values the business at $100 million. Lorikeet was founded in mid-2023 (originally as Optech) by US-based former… Read more »
Westpac hit the EFT button on $10 million for the online legal services scaleup Lawpath, and plans to entice business customers by offering them subscriptions to the legal compliance platform. The bank’s acting business and wealth boss Peter Herbert, said the exclusive partnership will give startups and small-to-medium sized businesses access to affordable legal services,… Read more »
A health app focused on tracking the menstrual cycle to deal with issues such as endometriosis has raised $1.7 million to launch an artificial intelligence (AI) health assistant for women. The round for Ovum was led by impact VC Giant Leap, supported by Antler, Victoria and Robyn Denholm’s Wollemi Capital, Nakatomi Venture Studio, LaunchVic’s female… Read more »
You can argue over the state of investment for women until the (100% female) cows come home – surprise, surprise, it was shit again in 2024 – but there’s other data in The State of Startup Funding Report 2024 that suggests all is not well in the state of venture capital. More than half (55%)… Read more »
Australian investors poured $4.106 billion into 477 private investments last year according to data analysed in Techboard’s Australian Startup Funding in Review – 2024. Techboard cofounder and CEO Peter van Bruchem said he focused on additional ASIC-sourced data last year, after publishing The Fintech Funding Project 2023 Report: Shedding Light on Investment into Australian Fintechs,… Read more »
Five Australian startups have scored $3.6 million in Moon to Mars supply chain capability grants as part of NASA’s ambitions to explore beyond the chunk of rock orbiting 384,400km from Earth. South Australian company entX scored $1 million to develop a radioisotope heater unit. The unit will help payloads withstand the extreme low temperatures on… Read more »
Diag-Nose.io, a Melbourne, biotechnology startup using artificial intelligence (AI) to help people breathe more easily, has raised $3.15 million in Seed funding. The round was led by state government investment fund Breakthrough Victoria, which chipped in $800,000. Other investors include Radar Ventures, Specialty Physician Associates, an international syndicate of physicians from leading hospitals including Houston… Read more »
An expat Australian scaleup using in-store advertising to bolster retail sales has raised US$25 million ($40m) in a Series B. The raise for 13-year-old Melbourne-founded, Dallas-based Qsic was led by UK investment firm Hedosophia. The platform, cofounded began as a music streaming service in pubs and clubs in 2012, and is now responsible for the… Read more »
Victorian startup agency LaunchVic is offering grants of up to $300,000 to venture capital funds and angel groups to set up in Victoria and back local startups. To qualify, they’re either just kicking off or “new to Victoria”, which means interstate VCs looking to put boots on the ground in the southeast can apply for… Read more »
New Zealand’s most active venture capital firm, Icehouse Ventures, has closed its second growth fund, with NZ$122 million (A$111m) in commitments to back later-stage scaleups. The record raise for Growth Fund II, closed at the end of 2024, and will be used to back up to 20 Kiwi tech scaleups, with several investments already made.… Read more »
MyGigsters, a fintech the helps gig economy workers track their income and spending to build financial security, has raised a $1.1 million Seed round. It leverages real-time data on earnings, expenses and work history, alongside advanced analytics, to provide hyper-personalised insights for people to improve their financial wellbeing. The fintech launched in 2022 with pre-Seed… Read more »
An independent review is underway into “lessons learned” from the process enabling a $940 million deal for US firm PsiQuantum to attempt to build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane, as well as how potential conflicts of interest were managed, newly tabled documents reveal. The documents, released to the Senate late last year,… Read more »
A Sydney startup pioneering the use of artificial intelligence to analyse medical scans to rapidly identify potential diseases such as cancer, even before clinicians spot them, has taken on $32 million from the federal government’s signature National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) as part of a planned $100 million+ Series C. Harrison.ai has trained generative AI… Read more »
Almost A$1 trillion (US$600 billion) was wiped off the value of artificial intelligence microchip maker Nvidia overnight on Monday, when a little-known Chinese startup, DeepSeek, threatened to upend the US tech market. While Nvidia suffered the biggest one-day loss in sharemarket history, other tech giants – Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon, who are investing heavily in… Read more »
Spoony, a social app designed to help neurodivergent, chronically ill, and disabled people, has raised $1 million in pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Antler, NDIS provider Melba Support and Trampoline, with support from former Mable COO Piroska Bisits-Bullen. Spoony emerged from the Antler program in mid-2024, cofounded by CEO Nicholas Carlton and CTO… Read more »
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