Robo-advisor Unhedged has raised $500,000 in a pre-seed round ahead of the release of the fintech’s investor app. The round was backed by Canadian venture capital firm Loyal VC, plus 18 individual investors, predominantly through founder Peter Bakker’s MBA network. The raise is being used to build the headcount, as well as enabling the team… Read more »
The recent crash of a Tesla car in the United States, in which two people died, has reignited debate about the capabilities and safety of today’s “self-driving” technologies. Tesla cars include an “autopilot” feature which monitors surrounding traffic and lane markings, and the company is currently rolling out a more advanced “full self-driving” system which… Read more »
Melbourne-based ESN Cleer says it’s now just months away from delivering a major medical breakthrough – the world’s first early risk detection screening test for heart disease – after raising $650,000 via crowd-funding site VentureCrowd. The raise was topped up by another $50,000 direct investment. The medtech startup has developed a simple saliva test that… Read more »
Agriculture and food tech accelerator SparkLabs Cultiv8 has selected 10 new startups for its 4th cohort. The global Sparklabs Group invests in early-stage companies and each startup will receive up to A$100,000 in seed funding. This year’s group includes a CSIRO project using seaweed in livestock feed to reduce their methane production, a consumer app… Read more »
Joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin (pronounced dodgy-coin by some sceptics), which has spawned a metaverse of additional puns during a 400% rise in value over the past week has finally come off the boil after hitting its 420 punchline in trade overnight. Social media users dubbed April 20 as #DogeDay, riffing on the drug subculture reference to… Read more »
Data analysis company Nuix, which posted stellar rises its share price, doubling on the opening day of trade following its IPO in December 2020, is in trouble with investors today after its latest earnings guidance revealed the company is set to miss some of its prospectus guidance by tens of millions of dollars. Shares in… Read more »
Brisbane software startup Octopus Deploy is close becoming a $1 billion company after its first funding round, taking a US$172.5 million (A$222m) from New York venture capital firm Insight Partners. The enterprise software business, which counts Microsoft, NASA, Xero and Disney among its 25,000 customers, has bootstrapped for a decade before taking on Insight with… Read more »
Yesterday at 9pm Australian Eastern standard time, the Ingenuity helicopter — which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February — took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, three metres above the surface and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge feat,… Read more »
Melbourne fintech Thrives, a banking, accounting, tax and lending platform for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), is putting together a customer advisory board (CAB) and plans to pay the people taking part in company shares in return for a 12-month commitment. CEO Michael Nuciforo said they looking for a range of business owners, who’ll meet monthly and… Read more »
ASX-listed Afterpay is contemplating a US listing as global sales for the third quarter of FY21 continue to boom. The buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) fintech (ASX:APT) beat market expectations, with underlying sales overall up 104% on 12 months ago, while underlying sales in the US and UK were up 167% and 246% respectively for Q3 FY21. Quarterly… Read more »
Australian tech giant Atlassian has opened its wallet to acquire ThinkTilt, the Brisbane startup behind the ProForma, a no-code/low-code form builder for Jira, for an undisclosed sum. The six-year-old venture has more than 700 companies as customers and helps them build the forms to manage workflows In a post announcing the acquisition, Atlassian’s head of… Read more »
Former Jobs for NSW boss Nicole Cook is taking on a key role in inspiring the next generation of female founders, signing on as the first CEO of SBE Australia, an accelerator for women-led businesses. The not-for-profit, which helps female entrepreneurs scale technology and life science-based businesses globally, counts Canva co-founder Mel Perkins among its… Read more »
China’s state-run anti-monopoly bureau has tightened its regulations on big tech players, as shown by its recent move against the country’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group. Alibaba was hit with a record antitrust fine of 18.2 billion yuan (more than A$3.6 billion) over the weekend for supposedly abusing its market dominance. The company, which operates… Read more »
Space tech incubator Moonshot has nearly trebled its planned investments in local space startups, backing 11 ventures, rather than the four it had planned for 2021. As Moonshot beds down its space tech accelerator and pre-accelerator programs, CEO Troy McCann said they were overwhelmed by the quality of the applicants. “We coordinated a whopping 225… Read more »
Meme joke cryptocurrency Dogecoin more than doubled in price in the last 24 hours, briefly hitting a high of US28c today, and currently sits around 80% up for the day Elon Musk’s favourite Twitter shout out has climbed nearly 300% for the week, putting it into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation for the… Read more »
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