This Week in Australian Startups #75, 7th July 2024

If you’re in Sydney, I’ll be at The Startup Palette Show this Thursday 11th July at the Sydney Startup Hub where Preethi Mohan (founder of NiceTo) will be doing a live podcast with Jacki Vullinghs (Partner at Airtree) and Kim Randle (founder of Fair Supply).

There’s plenty of great podcasts now in Australia focusing on local content, but it’s very cool to see an in person event with both investor and founder talking about their experiences with each other.

There’ll be Q&A at the end as well - going to be a great even, you can register here.

Top News

• Australian govt partners with AWS and ASD in Top Secret cloud deal (ARN | Startup Daily)
• Australia’s big banks, which made a $32.5 billion profit last year, are whingeing about the cost of the Consumer Data Right (Startup Daily)
• ASX-listed online retailer Booktopia hits voluntary administration (Startup Daily)
• Kogan, QBD on the scene at collapsed Booktopia (AFR)
• The audit office is investigating an 11x blowout in legal costs on the federal government’s $466 million PsiQuantum deal (Startup Daily)
• Cicada Innovations reveals the startups starring at Tech 23 (Startup Daily)
• Origin has purchased a 20% stake in Climatech Zero, an energy management startup (Startup Daily)
• Alibaba to cease data centre operations in India and Australia (ARN)
• Motorola Solutions has acquired Noggin, an Australian company that offers cloud-based business continuity planning and critical event management (CEM) software (ARN | BNA)
• UQ Ventures ilab Accelerator launches second annual cohort (BNA)
• Logistics software scale-up Shippit expands into NZ (BNA)
• Canva buys Europe HQ building and two more London properties (BNA)
• How Kim Teo (co-founder of Mr Yum) pulled off a mega-merger with her start-up’s biggest rival me&u (AFR)
• Growth PE firm Whiteoak has acquired NDIS software provider Datanova (AFR)
• The Federal Government to ban abusive users of dating apps Tinder, Grindr and others (The Australian)
• Private equity in the firing line as VCs push back on aggressive deal terms (Capital Brief)
• NAB Ventures is scouting for new investments as the bank VC model evolves (Capital Brief)
• QBE uses geospatial technology and AI to support the claims response to severe weather events (Lynn Thompson)
• Blackbird has opened applications for its Foundry program - an 8 week program for researchers to help build frontier-tech startups (Michael Tolo)
• Jethro Cohen has been promoted to Principal at Square Peg (Square Peg)

Funding Rounds

• Gelomics, a biotech whose technology eliminates the need for animal testing in pharmaceutical drug development, has raised a $2.2M pre-Seed round (Startup Daily | BNA)
• Redactive AI, a developer compliance platform, has raised a $11.5M Seed round (SmartCompany | AFR | Axios)
• Dash Technology, a financial advice and investment management platform for advisors and institutions, has raised $22M (Startup Daily | BNA)
• Mentwell, a gift card giving platform and directory for mental health and wellness services, has raised $229K in an equity crowdfunding campaign (Birchal | Startup Daily)
• Marketboomer, a procurement marketplace for hotels, has raised $4.9M led by Salter Brothers Tech Fund (Startup Daily)
• Profit Peak, a platform that integrates 1st part advertising data for eCommerce operators, has raised an undisclosed amount from Black Sheep Capital (Black Sheep Capital)
• ReciMe, an app which helps people organise, share and shop their recipes, has raised a $1.5M Seed round from heavyweight Angels including Marissa Mayer and Deb Liu (Startup Daily | SmartCompany)
• Antler has invested $225K each in Authentified, Enrola, Braiv, Dark Patterns Lab, Communiti Labs, Pactify, Enaxiom (Startup Daily)
• Millibeam, a semiconductor startup designing chipsets that take advantage of “mmWave” 5G, has raised $6M from Breakthrough Victoria and Main Sequence (Capital Brief | Startup Daily)
• Airtasker, the online services marketplace, has raised $5M in an equity-for-media deal from ARN Media (Startup Daily | BNA | Airtasker)
• Sendle, the parcel delivery startup, has raised $16M ($11M USD) at a down round (AFR)
• Caresquare, which uses AI to revolutionise invoice management for NDIS plan managers, has raised a $300K Seed round from Ace Ventures (AFR)
• Sable Rubber Technologies, which converts recycled rubber tyres into products that can be used to create more tyres, has raised $2M from a convertible note ahead of a planned IPO on the ASX (AFR)