Lab-grown animal proteins startup Vow Foods will serve its cell-based meat in a restaurant in Singapore next week. Its first product is a parfait (a buttery, silken pate made from livers), using cultivated Japanese quail cells, served as part of a A$290 dinner at Mori restaurant at the Mandala Club over the next fortnight. The… Read more »
Monogramed luxury fashion startup The Daily Edited (tde.) is back in voluntary administration, just 15 months after the brand was sold to former Myer boss Bernie Brookes. Marquee Retail Group (MRG), which scored tde.’s flagship store in Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building, when it bought the 10-year-old business in December 2022, handed the books to administrators… Read more »
Australian disability tech accelerator Remarkable has backed a US med tech startup reducing urinary tract infection (UTI) risks in a US$6 million (A$9.1m) Seed raise. The round for New York medtech startup Aurie, was led by existing investor Lakehouse Ventures. Founded in 2018, Aurie has developed a reusable, no-touch, intermittent catheter system used by people… Read more »
Australian universities are creating extraordinary startups founded by students that are changing the world. Think tech giant Atlassian – cofounders Mike and Scott met at UNSW – to more recent successes such as gaming platform Immutable, diagnosis medtech Harrison.ai, and drone deep tech venture Propeller Aero. Now students are taking charge of the investment side… Read more »
The QBE Foundation has given Indigenous-led investor First Australians Capital (FAC) a $500,000 to provide Seed funding for Indigenous startups. The grant will form part of a seed capital pool established by FAC to fund startups and early-stage businesses run by Indigenous Australians. FAC is an Indigenous-led organisation focused on business advisory services coupled with… Read more »
Rayn Ong is the Taylor Swift of Australian venture capital. The Archangel Ventures partner has made more than 100 investments. A Startmate mentor, Blackbird limited partner and poker shark, Ong works with angel investors and venture fund mangers to co-invest in 1st and 2nd rounds for early stage tech startups. His fans, known as Ongies,… Read more »
Here’s an astonishing figure. While a third of Australian households have solar power, making us the world leader on adoption, just 1% of those panels are locally made, even thought we invented the technology. So the federal government is hoping to transform the coal mining Hunter Valley region, north of Sydney, into a solar manufacturing… Read more »
Sydney startup Diraq appears to have cracked one of the many challenges facing the future success of quantum computing – an absolute zero operating temperature Diraq has demonstrated its spin-based quantum processors operating at temperatures 20 times warmer than previously demonstrated while maintaining stability and high accuracy, with the results published in a peer-reviewed study in… Read more »
When Finder shed around 60 roles last month – 17% of its workforce – turns out one of them was the comparison site’s Australia CEO, Chris Ellis. SmartCompany’s Tegan Jones revealed Ellis was among the company’s cost savings, pointing out he’s disappeared from Finder’s leadership page and will leave the business at the end of… Read more »
Design software platform Canva is fattening up for its public listing in 2026, acquiring UK professional graphic design and photo editing software business Affinity for an undisclosed sum. It’s believed to be the biggest outlay yet by Canva in a string of merger and acquisition deals in recent years, including fellow British data startup Flourish in… Read more »
Investments in tech companies such as Fiverr, Vend, Property Guru and Canva have already returned $1.12 billion to Square Peg’s early backers, the VC has revealed as it gears to raise a sixth fund worth US$500m (A$840m). The exits across 14 portfolio companies have spanned mergers and acquisitions, secondary market share sales and public floats… Read more »
The company behind fan engagement social media brand Basketball Forever has raised $6 million in a Series A. The round for Forever Network was led by Yolo Investments, with support from Three Kings Capital, Folklore Ventures and Astralis Capital. Forever Network will use the capital to expand into the US in the second half of… Read more »
University students are increasingly turning to entrepreneurship, with student-founded startups raising more than $1.2 billion since 2012. And now that investment is set to escalate dramatically with the launch of Australia’s first student-run venture capital fund. NextGen Ventures, which launches this week, has taken a deep dive into the data around VC and student founders,… Read more »
Government-backed investment fund Breakthrough Victoria has defended itself against critics wanting it abolished saying it wants to “fundamentally reshape the innovation landscape”. The $2 billion VC fund, launched in 2021, and chaired by former Labor premier John Brumby, has been subject to a sustained media campaign for it to be dismantled, led by Adir Shiffman,… Read more »
Employee experience platform Culture Amp is acquiring a Serbian people analytics startup to broaden its capabilities The cost of the deal with Orgnostic, founded in Belgrade in 2019, was not disclosed. The analytics platform combines fragmented HR data to give leadership teams rapid insights into how their workforce is tracking. That data will be plugged… Read more »
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