Two events in the past week mark a watershed for Australia’s electricity industry. The first, on Thursday, was Origin Energy’s surprise announcement that it intends to close the mammoth Eraring power station in the NSW Hunter region in 2025, seven years earlier than previously advised. Eraring is Australia’s largest coal-fired generator and supplies between a… Read more »
A $5 billion consortium bid for AGL Energy, led by Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes through his private venture capital firm Grok Venture, has been rejected by ASX-listed energy company as undervaluing the business. Cannon-Brookes, who last year committed to investing $1 billion through Grok on climate change startups over the next decade, teamed up with… Read more »
From walking the earth to scanning it from space, 24 Australian manufacturers have received grants from the federal government to help bring their ideas to reality. The latest round of 24 co-invested projects under the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre-managed Commercialisation Fund will see the local manufacturing industry contribute more $32.4 million in funding alongside the Federal… Read more »
The administrators of women-only rideshare business Shebah say the startup has been saved from collapse. The Melbourne startup Shebah was placed in voluntary administration last October, a victim of ongoing lockdowns during the Covid pandemic. Shebah founder Georgina McEncroe tried to find new investors to ride out the pandemic, especially after revenues plummeted 70% due… Read more »
Sydney NFT tech startup Immutable is partnering with NYSE-listed gaming giant GameStop to develop the world’s largest gaming marketplace for gamers to buy, sell and trade in-game assets. As part of the deal, the two companies are looking to launch a fund worth up to US$100 million for NFT gaming projects. GameStop will use the… Read more »
Tesla’s $60,000 entry level electric vehicle, the Model 3, accounted for 60% of all new EV sales in 2021. Figures released by the Electric Vehicle Council, which has exclusive access to the notoriously secret sales figures for Elon Musk’s EV brand, revel Tesla imported 12,094 Model 3 cars to Australia last year. Because Tesla sells… Read more »
From an idea conceived over a farm kitchen table to a $100 million business in seven years, Australian livestock management platform AgriWebb has been anything but an overnight success, says co-founder and Executive Chairman Justin Webb. Looking back on setting up AgriWebb with John Fargher and Kevin Baum in 2014, self-confessed “math geek” Justin Webb… Read more »
You might remember hearing a lot about green hydrogen last year, as global pressure mounted on Australia to take stronger action on climate change ahead of the COP26 Glasgow summit last November. The government predicts green hydrogen exports and domestic use could be worth up to A$50 billion within 30 years, helping the world achieve… Read more »
While new variants of Covid-19 gave the past year a Groundhog Day quality after the initial disruption of 2020. But despite the additional chaos, it was an another exciting year for the startup and tech sectors amid massive raises, the rise of more venture capital funds and plenty of mergers and acquisitions. On that front… Read more »
Mark Mattingley-Scott is a former 31-year IBM executive, who in September this year joined the Canberra-based quantum computing startup Quantum Brilliance. Germany-based Mattingley-Scott is general manager, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) for Quantum Brilliance, which plans to miniaturise quantum computers for desktop and mobile applications. It’s been a massive year for the quantum tech sector,… Read more »
Redbelly Blockchain, an Australian blockchain developed by the University of Sydney and CSIRO, has spun out as a commercial enterprise, Redbelly Network, in a joint venture with blockchain venture studio Block8. Redbelly, unveiled in 2018 as the world’s fastest blockchain, says it is now also significantly safer and more corruption-proof than other blockchains in commercial… Read more »
High school students from Victoria will this week watch on while a SpaceX rocket carries vials of bacteria to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of an experiment to learn more about growing yoghurt in space. Students were tasked with designing an experiment to improve astronaut health and wellbeing through Swinburne University’s Space Youth… Read more »
ANDHealth has revealed the five startups chosen to be a part in its Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) funded ANDHealth+ program. Australia’s only not-for-profit digital health commercialisation organisation is sharing a pool of $3.75 million in funding between the five ventures via the ANDHealth Digital Health Accelerator Fund. The five-month program also includes more than… Read more »
Aussie “GiveTech” startup Dataro has raised $2.5 million in a seed round to help charities improve their fundraising capacity. The raise was led by Basis Set Ventures, Black Sheep Capital, and Save The Children Dataro uses AI-driven technology to transform how charity fundraising works. Its machine learning algorithms analyse patterns in a charity’s entire history of… Read more »
UTS Director of Entrepreneurship Murray Hurps is shining more light on startup founders with the university’s startups program moving into new street front digs on one of the city’s busiest streets. UTS Startups Central is just a block from the new Tech Central at Sydney’s central train station. The glass shopfront was previously the Co-op… Read more »
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