G’day and welcome to your weekly edition of Overnight Success - your download on all the important things that have happened in the Aussie startup ecosystem. 🚀
👀 Headlines 👀
🤝 Swiss pharma giant Novartis is acquiring early-stage cancer biotech Myricx for more than $2 billion, delivering a major windfall to founding investor Brandon Capital and its super fund backers. (AFR, Biotech Dispatch)
The deal includes US$1.1bn ($1.6bn) cash upfront, plus up to US$400m in milestone payments — one of the largest sums ever paid for a pre-clinical biotech. Brandon Capital (Australia's biggest life science fund) and its LP backers include Hostplus, HESTA, Aware Super, CSL and QIC.
Brandon was a founding seed investor in 2019, backing the London-based university spin-out that had early research ties to Melbourne's Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Myricx develops antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), or "biological missiles," that deliver chemo directly to tumours while sparing healthy tissue, a field that is one of oncology's fastest-growing.
🏭 Southern Cross AI, a Sydney AI infrastructure and inference provider backed by Ellerston Capital, is moving toward an August ASX float, with brokers Canaccord Genuity and boutique adviser Henslow running the bookbuild after a June IPO mandate, seeking about A$40 million. (AFR)
Southern Cross AI operates its own sovereign AI inference node in Sydney , with its core service being inference. e.g. running trained AI models to generate outputs/predictions, plus the underlying infrastructure to support that.
It targets Australian enterprises and governments, with a focus on regulated sectors like financial services, healthcare and the public sector, clients who often need data kept onshore and tightly governed.
The core product is a token-based inference API. So the user can send prompts, Southern Cross AI runs open-weight models and charges per token. It's pitched as a drop-in replacement for OpenAI/Anthropic ("compatible in just two lines"), so developers point their existing code at api.scx.ai and swap models.
The company is raising $40 million at 30¢ a share, which will give it a $75 million market cap on listing.
🤑 In slightly larger Australian AI news, Firmus has landed a US$720 million Nvidia cheque, and a $750M Blackstone cheque as its A$2.9 billion raise sets up a November listing
Firmus Technologies is now worth around $15.5 billion after raising money this week. This has made Nick Curtis, the father of billionaire co-founder Oliver Curtis, a paper billionaire for the first time.
💾 Sydney quantum startup Diraq, which builds quantum processors using silicon "quantum dot" qubits, says it has cracked a key scaling challenge, with new research showing its manufacturing process can be extended to a chip array four times larger without any loss of performance. (Innovation Aus)
The findings, published in Nature Communications, demonstrate eight-qubit operations (arranged as four individually controlled pairs) using the same fabrication strategy that Diraq used with the Belgian semiconductor manufacturer imec.
Critically, scaling up did not demand larger machines, more sensors or greater wiring and thermal load, meaning a future utility-scale Diraq computer would occupy no bigger a footprint than its current eight-qubit device.
The milestone comes less than a year after Diraq pushed two-qubit error rates below the 1 per cent threshold needed for large-scale quantum computing, and it now underpins a roadmap targeting hundreds of qubits next, thousands by 2029, and more than a million by 2031, with a first commercial machine slated for 2029.
Founder and chief executive Professor Andrew Dzurak, a long-time advocate of silicon-based architecture as the fastest path to scale, said "this is what an industrial pathway to quantum computing looks like".
Diraq's momentum is backed by serious international validation, having secured $53 million under the US CHIPS and Science Act as the only quantum company headquartered outside the US to sign a letter of intent, and standing as one of just two Australian firms to advance to the second stage of a major US utility-scale benchmarking program.
🥹 Ag-tech startup Goterra has entered liquidation after a hoped-for sale collapsed, with administrators finding no buyer for the loss-making food-waste business despite 22 interested parties. (SmartCompany)
The business uses black soldier fly larvae to turn organic waste into animal feed and fertiliser. Revenue at Goterra was growing, but operating losses reached $11.74 million in FY25, and creditor claims totalled $11.2 million. Customers included Melbourne Airport, Woolworths and the City of Sydney.
If you’re ready to make the bet on expanding to global markets as your next growth lever, you’re probably starting to map out what go-to-market, operations or compliance will look like as you tackle the US or European markets.
This checklist from Vanta is a guide on how to validate demand, build a repeatable GTM engine and meet global compliance requirements early, so you can build trust with customers and unlock new deals from day one.
Use it to spot gaps, reduce risk and nail your expansion to global markets.
⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
LendUs lands on a $5M Seed round to share broker incentives with the end user on their home loans
Founder: Dean Mendelowitz
Most Australians still get a home loan by going through a broker who represents them, asks for paperwork, and then comes back with options, taking a commission on success.
LendUs, a Sydney embedded finance fintech, wants partners to bake that process straight into their own apps, and it has raised $5 million in Seed funding to do it, in an oversubscribed round led by Carthona Capital alongside a handful of family offices.
The platform lets partners offer white-labelled or branded home loan broking, using data analytics, Open Banking and AI to compare more than 30 lenders. Users can complete most of the application in minutes with a dedicated advisor and earn cashback or rewards on settlement. Revenue is then returned to partners rather than being spent on direct-to-consumer marketing.
Founded by 26-year-old data scientist Dean Mendelowitz, who left Zip Co two years ago to build it. After a $400 million exit, Brad Lindenberg, the co-founder of QuadPay, who sold the buy-now, pay-later player to Zip Co in 2020, has resurfaced as chairperson and founding shareholder.
Ten months in, LendUs has around 10,000 users, eight Sydney-based brokers (targeting 20 within six months), and expects to write $50 million in loans and refinances monthly. Next up: a push into data analytics and AI, plus new distribution partners.
Due Diligence: AFR, Startup Daily
Medlo & Doccy secured an uncapped SAFE note for their locum marketplace and telehealth solutions
Founders: Louis Sisk, Jordi Hermoso, Archer Hume
Medlo, a Melbourne-based workforce platform for Australian doctors, and its sister product, the telehealth platform Doccy, have raised funding from Startmate on an uncapped SAFE note. The funding amount is undisclosed.
The uncapped structure hands the pricing decision to a future priced round, a term that typically signals investor conviction and founder leverage rather than a settled valuation, and is a rather rare, but not unheard-of, move.
An ageing population and a shrinking GP workforce have pushed access to the edge. Patients wait days for simple issues, and many no longer have a regular GP, while the clinicians meant to see them lose their days to admin. Credentialing a doctor into a new hospital can take weeks; telehealth, meanwhile, has drifted toward transactional, one-off consults that generate churn rather than continuity of care.
Medlo is a product focused on the doctor supply side of that system, ensuring clinicians turn up where they are needed. It handles the full end-to-end lifecycle of locum work, including doctor credentialing, rostering and shifts, and an intelligent search and alerts layer that matches doctors to open hospital shifts across every Australian state. The final layer is payroll and compliance: timesheet-to-payment is handled in-house, with same-day pay supported and document storage secured behind two-factor authentication.
On top of that workforce layer is Doccy, Medlo's consumer-facing telehealth service and sister product. Doccy employs an AI-driven hybrid care approach: an AI voice agent handles a structured pre-consultation to gather patient history, followed by an AHPRA-registered doctor who reviews, verifies, and issues the final decision. This process results in a medical certificate, referral, or prescription, with a GP summary automatically completing the cycle. Prices for certificates start at $12.90. Usually, patients spend about eight minutes speaking, while doctors spend roughly ninety seconds.
Since launching in late 2024, Medlo has grown into one of the largest doctor networks in the country, reporting more than 130 hospital partnerships and hundreds of doctors onboarded. Doccy, built in a matter of weeks, now cites more than 500 verified doctors and over 100,000 patients treated, and has earned a 4.58 out of 5 rating from its first cohort of patient reviews.
Due Diligence: Louis’ LinkedIn post
Wildfire Energy lands $5.15M to convert household rubbish into sustainable aviation fuel.
Founders: Dennis Doucet, Greg Perkins and Grant Bollaert.
Australia imports more than 90 per cent of its jet fuel, a vulnerability laid bare by the recent Middle East conflict. One Brisbane startup wants to close that gap with the contents of your waste bin.
Wildfire Energy, a climate tech firm founded in 2016 that converts unsorted household waste into gas for refining into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), has raised $5.15 million AUD. The round pairs a $2 million injection from Climate Tech Partners, an aviation "sidecar" co-funded by Qantas and Airbus, with another $3.15 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Its edge, per co-founder and CTO Dennis Doucet, is that its process needs no sorting, pre-treatment or clean feedstock. The capital funds for Wildfire's first commercial plant in Brisbane, built as a modular unit, will then be licensed to larger developers. Wildfire is currently operating a pilot plant.
SAF currently meets under 1 per cent of global aviation demand at roughly three times the cost of conventional fuel. You can subscribe to investor updates for Wildfire Energy here.
Due Diligence: The Australian, Startup Daily
Gridcog charges with $12.5M Series A to kill the spreadsheet in Renewable Energy Modelling
Founders: Fabian Le Gay Brereton and Pete Tickler
Gridcog, an energy modelling platform based in Sydney that helps developers and businesses simulate complex renewable projects spanning solar, wind, battery storage and flexible demand, has raised $12.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A. The round was led by ABB Electrification Ventures, with participation from Axpo Ventures, DNV Ventures and Verbund Ventures. It follows a $6.4 million raise in 2024.
Founded by Fabian Le Gay Brereton and Pete Tickler, Gridcog replaces slow, error-prone spreadsheet modelling with transparent simulations that cover generation, grid constraints, tariffs, market participation, and project finances.
They target four distinct buyer segments, each with its own tailored pitch: large-scale asset developers (utility-scale solar, wind, battery), e-mobility fleet and EV charging operators, consultants modelling projects for clients, and energy majors' internal analysis teams. Named customers span all four — Shell, TotalEnergies, AGL, FRV, ACEN, EY, PwC, Connected Energy, GoldenPeaks Capital, NewVolt and Volta Energy Group.
The core pain is that energy analysts model complex projects in "big, messy spreadsheets" that are slow, error-prone, and break down as teams grow. Gridcog replaces those with transparent, fast simulation software that handles the physical and commercial complexity — multiple markets, sites, and assets at once
The capital funds further technology development and the expansion of Gridcog's product, customer and commercial teams across Australia, the UK and Europe — a signal the company is chasing the energy transition wherever the modelling problem exists.
Due Diligence: Capital Brief
🚀 Wins 🚀
🚀 The Western Australian government has committed an additional $6.5 million over four years to the local space sector in its recent state budget, deepening its bet on space as a pillar of economic diversification. (Startup Daily)
The largest share, $4 million, goes to AROSE (Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth), the Perth-based, industry-led not-for-profit consortium working to position WA as a world leader in remote operations across earth and space, with projects spanning bushfire detection, agriculture and defence.
A further $2.5 million backs Curtin University's Binar Space Program, which designs, builds and operates small satellites and has launched four Binar satellites since 2021, with another three due to reach orbit later this year.
Binar doubles as a talent pipeline, training high school students through to post-graduates in satellite design, manufacture and operation.
🏅 Two-person Sydney startup Bound, maker of the Looplock food packaging closure system, has won a product design award at the Red Dot Awards in Essen, Germany, with the jury praising its airtight reseal for food and coffee bags. (SmartCompany)
Inspired by the rolltop dry bags used in outdoor gear, Looplock is a thin polymer band that fits around open packaging and can be reset in hot water for reuse; Bound sells it in Australia and the US and plans a European launch this year, one of 15 Australian-designed products to earn Red Dot honours in 2026.
Other companies that took home some honours include Blackmagic for several camera designs, the Micro-X Rover for its mobile X-ray system, and the roto farm for its maintenance-free indoor mini farm!
🧑🤝🧑 Hello Clever, the Sydney-based real-time payments fintech (founded in 2021 by Caroline Tran and Gavin Nguyen) has hired the former Bolt President and CEO to drive global growth and build what it calls the industry's first AI-powered, agent-first consumer-payments experience — capitalising on newly matured US real-time payment rails like FedNow and The Clearing House's RTP network.
At Bolt, Justin Grooms grew the North American shopper network from 5 million to 85 million+ accounts and landed enterprise deals with brands including Deckers, Revolve and Klarna. The appointment caps a strong year in which Hello Clever won three 2026 Finnies awards, including Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year for Tran.
💭 Opinion 💭
🔫 Don’t build a defence startup in Queensland by Ross Newman, founder of Astute Systems.
I stumbled upon this article by Ross about his journey as a defence tech founder building in QLD. It was an interesting view into a sector that gets little mainstream startup coverage.
Ross praises the federal support he’s received from Austrade and Team Defence Australia for funding international exhibition opportunities (such as Eurosatory in Paris), calling the federal pathways excellent and well-resourced.
Despite Queensland naming defence a priority sector, he argues state backing is weak, inconsistent, and skewed toward established players. His evidence includes a SIDF grant process that took over eight months to reject his application, and symbolic but not genuine support. Plus, the defunding of The Precinct, a Fortitude Valley startup hub.
It’s all to be taken with a grain of salt, as it’s a single experience, but enlightening nonetheless. His LinkedIn post sharing the article sparked a lively debate, too.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🤝 In Great Company, a conversation series hosted by a friend of the newsletter, Jess Walker, kicks off its event series on 28 July with a founder breakfast featuring Alexey Mitko, who was Canva employee 23, the operator who scaled Koala from $10M to $100M, and co-founder of the recently $1.6B-acquired Eucalyptus.
The breakfast is on Monday, 28 July from 7:30 am–9:30 am at the Pillars, Sydney CBD, with a light breakfast provided. The content is for seed-to-scaleup founders and investors. Register here.
📣 Edition opened its 2026 Female Founder Grant: A$15,000 in brand, product strategy, market research, and pitch support for one woman building a high-growth tech company in Australia or New Zealand. Applications close 27 July.
🌱 South Australian founders with a product in market and early traction have a new path to investment readiness. ThincSeed is a 13-week program built for ventures that already have a working product, real customers or users, and early traction.
Selected founders work with facilitators, mentors and investors to strengthen commercial foundations and prepare for future fundraising conversations. Applications close Friday, 7 August 2026, 11:59 pm Adelaide time. 👉 Apply here
🌍 Google for Startups Accelerator is now for all of ANZ, having opened applications to New Zealand AI and ML startups for the first time.
The equity-free 10-week program includes a Sydney-based bootcamp for around 10 to 15 seed-to-Series A companies. Application closes July 19. More information here.
🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)
Will’s Pick: Accelerate AI On Demand - Innovation Showcase | Canva presented by Commbank Business
This video literally has 39 views, and it’s a month old, but it’s the best summation I’ve seen of how Canva is with their numbers, revenue and their AI thesis. It was recorded at CommBank's AI Summit in June this year. Canva apparently has 265M+ monthly active users, with 31M paid users across pro, business and enterprise accounts. And over $4B in ARR. And according to the graphs they included in the presentation, those numbers are still going up!
Towards the back half of the video, CJ Jones, the Head of Design, Gen AI at Canva, shares some product updates, Canva Labs, and how Canva is building with AI.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will