A Sydney-based online customer support platform using AI to answer questions has raised $3.85 million. The raise for Brainfish was led by Peak XV (the renamed Sequoia Capital India), with support from Macdoch Ventures, Black Sheep Capital, MadPaws CEO Justus Hammer and US and Australian angel investors. It’s the second round for the business in… Read more »
An eight-year-old Sydney-based Airbnb property management platform has raised $10 million as it looks to grow through a merger and acquisition startegy. Hometime, founded in 2016 in Perth, previously raised around $12.7 million in debt and equity in 2019 from the likes of NAB Ventures, One Ventures, and AS1 Capital. The latest cash injection comes… Read more »
State government-backed investment fund Breakthrough Victoria is backing US stratospheric exploration company World View with $37 million to entice it to Melbourne. The strategic investment will see World View establish its Indo-Pacific headquarters in the capital, as well as building an advanced manufacturing facility in Victoria, creating up to 200 jobs in engineering, mission control… Read more »
Fintech Kashcade has raised an additional $1 million from existing investor Prandium Capital and several high net worths, alongside a $22 million warehouse facility funded by asset-backed lending specialist Rixon Capital. The digital lender offers startup founders non-dilutive capital and will use the debt warehouse to expand into the R&D lending space, so companies can… Read more »
Sydney startup Xefco will ramp up its Victorian presence after raising $10.5 million in a Seed extension. The round was CSIRO-backed VC fund Main Sequence Ventures, with support from Virescent Ventures for the government-backed Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which chipped in $2.5 million, plus existing shareholders Investible and Voyagers Climate-Tech Fund in Xefco’s Seed investment round.… Read more »
Outdoor advertising startup Doohly has raised $500,000 in a pre-Seed round. The raise was backed by Melbourne VC Skalata along with Archangel Ventures, with the funding earmarked to expand Doohly’s digital-out-of-home (DOOH) offering. The startup is an end-to-end programmatic ecosystem for DOOH advertising, combining an independent content management system (CMS) with native integrations to a programmatic… Read more »
A Melbourne construction supply chains startup has raised $2.9 million in a Series A as it looks to expand into China. The round for Matrak was led by Singapore-based G&M Capital alongside Sydney VC Our Innovation Fund, former Aconex chairman Simon Yencken and others. Matrak was cofounded by Shane and Brett Hodgkins in 2018 with… Read more »
An AI-powered research and insights discovery platform for research papers has raised $750,000 in a pre-Seed round. The raise for Outread was backed by the Techstars Accelerator and Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, as well as Google VP of finance Fiona Bones. The research and insights platform was founded in 2023 by siblings Janhvi and… Read more »
A legal tech startup cofounded by two lawyers has raised $1 million in pre-Seed funding, backed by LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson fund for female founders. Deeligence, founded by Elena Tsalanidis and Justin Hansky, is using artificial intelligence to tackle legal due diligence. They conceived the idea for the startup after realising that most law firms are still… Read more »
Logistics scheduling software startup Veyor Digital has raised $2.75 million in a pre-Series A with its eyes on US market expansion. The round was led by Sydney VC Investible via its Early Stage Fund 2 alongside members of its Club Investible syndicate and other angel investors, as well as Aconex cofounders Leigh Jasper and Rob… Read more »
Victorian solar generation and thermal storage company RayGen has kicked off a Series D raise with $20 million from Breakthrough Victoria alongside a US$20 million (A$31m) follow-on investment from NYSE-listed SLB, as part of plans to expand offshore. RayGen uses proprietary photovoltaic solar modules that generate nearly 2,000 times more power than traditional photovoltaic systems… Read more »
Melbourne startup WorkRex has raised $220,000 from early stage VC Skalata for its all-in-one customer marketing platform for small business. Cofounders Jing Chen, Lance Qian, and Myron Liu – an optometrist, ex-McKinsey consultant, and software engineer respectively – developed the platform after a deep dive into how small-to-medium-sized are struggling to keep up with growing… Read more »
A New Zealand startup offering to train 1000 students in the entry-level AWS certification for free has raised $2.3 million in pre-Seed funding The round for NextWork was led by Kiwi VC GD1 with support from Blackbird, Icehouse, Phase One Ventures and the founders of Eucalyptus. The Wellington-based online education startup has set out to… Read more »
Food distribution startup Prep has raised $200,000 from Melbourne VC Skalata to connect major food retailers, corporates and restaurants with emerging food brands. Prep enables food producers and brands to efficiently scale B2B distribution – anywhere – for a low margin. The platform integrates with a producer’s existing ordering systems, and is five times more… Read more »
US climate tech investor Sophie Purdom has made her first international investment via her New York VC fund Planeteer Capital, leading a $5.3 million Seed round. Purdom visited Sydney late last year as a keynote speaker at Climate Salad‘s Climate Tech Festival, which featured more than 50 Australian climate tech startups. The one she’s picked… Read more »
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