While vending machines offer convenience and ease for anyone with a few dollars and thirsty, the supply-chain logistics around them are staggering when you drill down into the environmental impact. Putting aside the transport emissions, less than 20% of the 891 billion-plus single-use plastic bottles are produced annually worldwide are ever recycled. A 2020 report… Read more »
ASX-listed WiseTech Global is back in acquisitive mode, snapping up Melbourne shipping container marketplace MatchBox Exchange. While the cost of the acquisition was not disclosed WiseTech (ASX:WTC) announced it had issued 445,769 new shares, worth around $27.6 million, “to the vendors to part-fund the consideration in relation to the acquisition of MatchBox Exchange”. MatchBox Exchange… Read more »
Early-stage venture capital firm Antler says it has commitments approaching A$60 million at the final close of its second Australian fund Investors in Australian Fund II include Canberra Airport billionaire Terry Snow’s Snow Foundation, Flight Centre co-founder Geoff Harris through his family office and pioneering Melbourne early-stage investor Roger Allen. Antler launched in Australia in… Read more »
Western Australian battery recycling startup, Renewable Metals has raised $8 million in Seed funding to address low levels of lithium battery materials recovery. The round was led the Investible’s Climate Tech Fund, with support from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) through Virescent Ventures, which tipped in $2.5 million, and US VC the Grantham Foundation… Read more »
Australian design platform Canva is seeking to address the fundamental concerns of the creator economy in the wake of the Hollywood writers strike by offering an artificial intelligence (AI) royalty program over the next three years as part of its new product release, AI design tool Magic Studio. Cofounder and CEO Melanie Perkins said the… Read more »
Australian authors have been caught up in a major controversy around the data used to train large language models after an investigation uncovered 183,000 pirated books were included in a commonly used dataset called Books3. Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan was among the Australian writers whose works were in the dataset that was reportedly… Read more »
The ongoing El Nino drought of startup funding in Australia has continued in the first quarter of the new financial year, with total funding down 42% on 12 months ago, and falling by 9% on the previous quarter according to new analysis from Cut Through Ventures. The September quarter saw A$739 million invested across 77… Read more »
The annual Spark Festival will return to Sydney from October 30, with Harry Godber and David Lillo-Trynes as co-CEOs of the week-long celebration of startups. The revitalised and revamped Spark Festival will bring startups across NSW together with leading investors, hubs, accelerators, universities and policymakers to showcase the strength and breadth of the state’s technology capability. … Read more »
A new angel investment syndicate is offering Australians the chance to back startups emerging from the new Techstars accelerator program in Sydney. The syndicate, led by Cut Through Angels, allows wholesale investors to back one or more of the Techstars Tech Central Sydney class of 2023 as they prepare to strut their stuff at Demo… Read more »
Dairy alternative startup Eden Brew has raised $24.4 million in a Series A as it prepares to bring its animal-free products, including milk and ice cream, to market. The two-year-old venture, created as a joint-venture by northern NSW dairy co-op Norco, CSIRO and its VC arm, Main Sequence Ventures, uses a fermentation process to brew… Read more »
A Queensland startup helping power up America with drones to roll out power line upgrades has raised $36 million in a Series A. The round for Infravision was led by US sustainability investor Energy Impact Partners (EIP), supported by Equinor Ventures and Edison International (EIX). Robotics engineer Cameron Van Der Berg and military veteran Chris Cox… Read more »
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are in dire straits. With the market in a severe downturn, it’s safe to assume the NFT bubble has well and truly burst. It was never clear why these digital collectables traded for such large amounts of money. Now they mostly do not. What’s behind their turn of fate? And is there… Read more »
Victoria startup agencyLaunchVic has once again opened expressions of interest for a third cohort of its pioneering 30X30 program to support potential tech unicorns scale up the operational side of their startups. The 30X30 program is a bespoke leadership program, tailored to support scaleup founders and their executive teams take their startups to the next… Read more »
Energy sector digital twin startup Neara has raised $15.25 million in an extension of last year’s $20 million Series B round. The round was led by South African VC Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers Ventures), a frequent Australian investor, which also backed crypto gaming unicorn Immutable. Existing backers Square Peg and Kim Jackson’s Skip Capital also… Read more »
Cicada Innovations has appointed Dr Katherine Woodthorpe as its new chair, the first woman to lead the board in the 23-year history of the Sydney-based deep tech incubator. The non-executive director (NED) replaces Andrew Rothery after nearly eight years in the role. Dr Woodthorpe has more than three decades of experience in commercialising technologies across a broad… Read more »
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