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. 🚀
If you’re interested in learning more about the story and business behind Overnight Success, I was recently interviewed by media legend Simon Owens for his newsletter and podcast; feel free to check it out!
👀 Headlines 👀
🏦🚨🚨 Treasurer Jim Chalmers will soon release Labor's workaround for startups concerned about his capital gains tax changes, following sector alarm over last month's budget. (Capital Brief, Innovation Aus)
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Australia Summit on Thursday, Chalmers acknowledged that startups face specific challenges as Labor moves to remove the 50% CGT discount this month.
He confirmed he will "shortly" publish a policy position paper seeking feedback on the proposed approach, arguing he had been consulting founders since before the budget, given the sector's heavy reliance on the discount to attract talent.
According to my sources close to Canberra, the Parliament of Australia has been inundated with submissions on the proposed tax reform, with around 1,000 received. At the time of writing, 89 submissions have been made public and include the likes of Defender Ventures, the founders of Constantinople, FinTech Australia, the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. You can download and read them here.
In other budget news, around 800 applications to Australia's Economic Accelerator university research commercialisation program were discarded after a surprise $800 million budget cut. The cut cancelled the second 'Innovate' round (grants up to $5M) and third 'Ignite' round ($500,000), though 366 already-funded projects will continue. (Innovation Australia)
✌️Innovation Victoria, the new combined entity of Breakthrough Victoria and LaunchVic, was formally announced at the annual LaunchVic gala.
It was announced that the new entity will keep all current LaunchVic programs and grants running, with any returns from Breakthrough Victoria’s investments over the past several years being reinvested in the ecosystem.
🌏 Melbourne and Auckland VC Pacific Channel has acquired Singapore-based ENGIE Factory Asia-Pacific, the former corporate venture arm of energy group ENGIE, picking up stakes in seven early-stage climate tech ventures and extending its active early-stage model into Southeast Asia. (The Business Times)
The deal value and terms remain confidential, though an ACRA BizFile search shows EFAP's paid-up capital stood at S$37.8 million.
Pacific Channel had been investing in climate tech via EFAP since mid-2020 and frames the deal as a significant expansion of its climate-tech platform beyond Australia and New Zealand into South-east Asia.
The seven venture stakes acquired are Amplicity, Billion Bricks Homes, GetSolar, PHNXX, Polar Cold, Qatalyst, and Verta Bioenergy, spanning solar, cooling, climate markets, sustainable housing, bioenergy, and data centre efficiency.
Pacific Channel specialises in deep-tech and alternative investments, with 79 portfolio companies across NZ and Australia and 11 exits to date, including agri-tech player Regen and biosensor developer SciTOX.
Some Singapore-based EFAP staff will be retained, including former VP Tim van Vliet, who joins as principal and Southeast Asia region manager, with discussions on other team members expected to be finalised the following month.
🏚️ Canberra agtech Goterra, which used black soldier fly larvae to turn food waste into feed and fertiliser for clients including Melbourne Airport and the City of Sydney, has entered voluntary administration after failing to secure scale-up funding (SmartCompany)
The Canberra-based ag-tech startup, founded solely by Olympia Yarger, converts food waste into animal feed and fertiliser using "maggot robots" — shipping-container-sized units where black soldier fly larvae process leftover food 24/7.
The company says this wasn't a product or market failure — it ran out of runway while pursuing the investment needed to scale, despite having working technology, contracted customers, and operating licences. Administrators are aiming for a going concern sale.
Goterra previously raised a $1.2M seed in 2018 (Grok Ventures, Rampersand, Giant Leap, CAGES Foundation); an $8M round led by Tenacious Ventures in 2020; and $2.25M via OnMarket crowdfunding.
Clients included Melbourne Airport, City of Sydney, Woolworths, Hyatt Regency Darling Harbour, and Lendlease's Barangaroo precinct.
Yarger had described herself as Australia's "most loved, but least-funded founder." Goterra was reportedly $2.6M short of closing a $10M round (at a $55M valuation), with revenue scaling contingent on that capital. Climate Salad’s Mick Liubinskas took to LinkedIn to emphatically write about how climate startups have struggled to gain funding and how Australia needs to be better at betting on itself.
🐨 Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang has published a public response, titled “Setting the Record Straight: Our Commitment to Global Trust”, to what he describes as false allegations made on X by a board member of a competitor (Keith Rabois from Kholsa Ventures, who sits on the board of Ramp), claiming Chinese government access to sensitive data about Airwallex's U.S. customers.
Zhang founded Airwallex in Melbourne in 2015 with cofounders after running a Docklands coffee shop, which exposed them to how broken global payments were for small businesses. Airwallex now holds 85+ licenses globally, serves customers in 47 markets, operates as a licensed money transmitter in 45 U.S. states, and is a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, providing multi-currency accounts, global payments, card issuance, and spend management to 46,000 U.S. businesses.
On data security, Zhang states that U.S. customer data is stored in the U.S. and that staff based in China and Hong Kong cannot access it, with access restricted to authorised personnel under least-privilege controls, phishing-resistant MFA, and 24/7 monitoring.
Airwallex engaged Coalfire (a FedRAMP assessor) to independently evaluate its controls and Sullivan & Cromwell to advise on compliance, with Coalfire concluding the security program goes beyond minimum expectations.
Its Economic Advisory Council includes former SEC Enforcement Director Stephen Cutler, Morgan Ortagus, former Senator Roy Blunt, and former Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
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 ⚡
Dentroid raises $32M at a $265M valuation to take the needle out of the dentist's chair
Founders: Omar Zuaiter and Alaa Habeb
The needle is the most feared object in dentistry, and it has barely changed in more than a century. Local anaesthetic still means an injection into the gum, a wait for the numbness to set in, and hours of lingering effect that keep plenty of patients out of the chair altogether.
Dentroid, a Canberra medical robotics startup, has raised about $32 million at a $265 million valuation to replace that injection with light. The raise is anchored by a global development and commercialisation partnership with Septodont, the French manufacturer that is one of the largest makers of dental anaesthetics in the world, which has taken a global licence to Dentroid's flagship Nuralyte technology.
Nuralyte looks a little like an electric toothbrush, but in place of a brush head, it carries a series of photonic emitters tuned to specific wavelengths. Those wavelengths pass through tooth structure and bone to block nerve conduction, producing the same numbing effect as a needle and local anaesthetic without ever breaking the skin.
Founded about nine years ago by dentist-turned chief executive Omar Zuaiter and robotics engineer Alaa Habeb, Dentroid has run stage one and stage two clinical trials in partnership with the University of Maryland, the University of Queensland, Griffith University and the University of Sydney. The Septodont deal gives it a direct route into global distribution rather than a slog of standalone commercialisation.
Due Diligence: AFR, Business News Australia
Earlytrade raises $14.2M and moves to the US, with CGT in the rear-view mirror
Founders: Guy Saxelby and Piers Symons
Earlytrade, a construction fintech running a marketplace where general contractors and subcontractors trade working capital, has raised about A$14.2 million (US$10 million) to expand in the United States and build agentic AI into its payments product. The round was led by S3 Ventures and Brick & Mortar Ventures.
Founded in 2018 by Guy Saxelby and Piers Symons, Earlytrade lets subcontractors draw earlier access to payments while contractors put idle working capital to work, smoothing the squeeze that runs through the building sector. The platform has facilitated more than $2.5 billion in early payments over the past year across 132,000 subcontractors, with customers including Cleanaway, Lion and Coles Group.
The product is built around a simple idea: a supplier agrees to accept slightly less than the full invoice amount in exchange for being paid weeks earlier than the agreed terms.
The buyer determines which suppliers and invoices are eligible for early payment. Suppliers then review approved invoices and estimated payment dates in their Earlytrade portal and decide whether to offer a discount and at what rate to be paid early. Earlytrade evaluates those discount offers against the buyer's custom return goals and the dynamic discounting market, and accepts good offers automatically. The buyer then pays suppliers through their existing payment process, directly from their own accounts.
First, suppliers set their own discount offer rates rather than the buyer dictating terms — it's a bidding/market model, not a fixed fee. Second, the buyer pays from their own accounts with no change to their existing payment process.
Earlytrade is careful to distinguish this from financing — they explicitly state that it's not reverse factoring, vendor financing, or supply chain financing. No third-party lender or bank balance sheet is involved; the buyer's own cash funds the early payment.
Due Diligence: SmartCompany
Cetogenix nabs NZ $23M to turn sewage sludge into renewable gas
Founders: Dr Trevor Stuthridge, Dr Alexandra Stuthridge, Dr Daniel Gapes, Rob Lei
Rotorua-based Cetogenix has secured $23 million through one of the UK water sector's largest innovation programmes, setting up the 15-year-old deep-tech company for its biggest growth phase yet.
The funding, £9.24 million from UK regulator Ofwat's Water Innovation Fund, makes it one of the round's largest projects, and it'll put Cetogenix's tech at the centre of a major effort to overhaul how Britain treats wastewater and sewage sludge.
Cetogenix's core technology is a platform called Ceto-Boost™, which uses a process called hydrothermal oxidation to precisely deconstruct and ultimately transform waste into useful products, such as renewable natural gas, renewable chemicals, and biomaterials. In plain terms, it applies water, heat and pressure to break down organic waste streams that are otherwise hard to process — sewage sludge being the headline example.
The team argues that humanity produces 100 billion tonnes of carbon-rich waste annually from sewage, food production, crop residues & animals, of which less than 2% is used or treated. So the product positions waste as an underused carbon feedstock rather than a disposal problem
The UK project unites water utilities Anglian, Severn Trent and Northumbrian, plus engineering giant AtkinsRéalis and Cranfield University researchers, running through 2029 to prove the tech at commercial scale.
Due Diligence: Caffeine
Silicon Quantum Computing lands another $40M to build out local manufacturing capability
Founders: Professor Michelle Simmons AC
The National Reconstruction Fund (NRF) has poured a further $40 million into Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), the Sydney scaleup building quantum chips with atomic precision, trebling the NRF's stake less than three months after an initial $20 million investment. The new capital is part of a larger round currently underway and is earmarked specifically for developing and expanding SQC's quantum chip manufacturing capability.
The fresh injection takes the NRF's total commitment to $60 million. Layered on top, the federal government separately holds roughly a one-third stake in SQC, having invested $40 million to date — including $25 million back in 2017. SQC last raised a $50 million Series A in 2023 at a $195 million valuation, backed by CBA, Telstra, UNSW, and the NSW Government. The NRF describes SQC as the only company globally capable of manufacturing quantum chips with atomic precision, as well as quantum-enhanced AI products for enterprise and government.
A UNSW spin-out founded in 2017 by former Australian of the Year and Tech Council director Professor Michelle Simmons, SQC builds quantum processing units (QPUs) for commercial-scale quantum systems. Its 100-strong Sydney team can design, produce and test new quantum chips in under a week.
The company offers two products: Watermelon, a quantum machine learning system, and Quantum Twins, a quantum simulator designed to accelerate molecular and materials discovery. Customers span energy, logistics, defence and telecommunications — Telstra among them.
The funding arrives as the federal government's $470 million investment in US rival PsiQuantum faces delays, after it relocated its build from Brisbane Airport to Moreton Bay — sharpening the contrast with SQC's home-grown, fast-iterating approach.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
🤝 M&A 🤝
🤝 Melbourne foodtech Fresho has acquired the UK food-supplier software business Nation Wilcox, becoming the UK's market-leading platform for food wholesalers, with a combined customer base of 400-plus and more than £2 billion in annual gross merchandise value. (The Grocer, PR Newswire)
Nation Wilcox Founder Andrew Nation joins Fresho's board as a significant shareholder.
Fresho was founded in Melbourne, Australia in 2015 by Huw Birrell and James Andronis. The original insight: most of the industry was still manually inputting orders on their computers, or relying on paper-based processes.
The platform replaces the emails, phone calls, texts, or faxes that chefs used to place orders with their suppliers, and its newer AI hook (OrderPilot) is about converting those messy inbound orders automatically — instead of employing overnight staff to manually process orders arriving via email, text, and voicemail.
It's now genuinely global: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, Ireland and the United States.
🚀 Wins 🚀
🚀 Startmate has secured an $8 million commitment from the Minderoo Foundation over four years ($2M each year) to help more women enter the startup ecosystem, access capital, and build high-growth businesses. (Smart Company)
The funding figures highlight a significant gender disparity: female-founded startups in Australia receive only 2% of VC funding, even though research indicates that women-led companies often outperform their male counterparts.
Startmate has demonstrated notable success in this area — since 2019, 43% of the companies it has supported have at least one female co-founder, greatly exceeding the industry average of 24%.
🤖 Andromeda Robotics has moved into a new 2,500-square-metre Melbourne facility, a 400% increase on its original South Melbourne warehouse, to scale production of its AI-powered companion robot Abi. (Smart Company)
Abi is a 120cm humanoid companion robot capable of speaking in 90 languages. It aims to reduce loneliness in aged care residents by recognising faces, displaying emotions, and recalling conversations.
This follows a $23 million funding round in September 2025. Founder and CEO Grace Brown described it as a new chapter for a company that began four years ago with a small team in a 500-square-meter space.
Today, Andromeda employs over 80 people, with a new warehouse that enhances production, testing, storage, deployment, and maintenance for a larger fleet. Currently, 22 Abi robots are in use at Victorian provider Mecwacare's residential homes, Australia's largest deployment. Additionally, Abi has expanded into the US through Eskaton in Northern California and is part of an independent study with UC Davis nursing researchers.
🧑🔬 CSIRO held the ON Translate 2026 showcase this week. This year's cohort spans 46 researchers from nine universities and research institutions, with IP originating from six of them. Collectively, the cohort has reached more than $25.8 million in grant funding and capital investment.
ON alumni have created 165 new companies, secured over $393 million in commercialisation grants and raised over $521 million in investment capital since the program launched as a pilot in 2015.
The 10 teams from this cohort include:
🌱 Air2Energy (UTS): A bolt-on electrochemical system that captures CO₂ from gas boiler exhaust and converts it directly into clean electricity fed back into the building. Preparing a pilot retrofit on existing Sydney gas boilers.
🦵 Axcelda (University of Melbourne): Repairs damaged cartilage in a single surgical procedure using a handheld bioprinter, stem cells and a proprietary biomaterial scaffold — aiming to stop osteoarthritis before it starts. Built on 10+ years of research.
👵 CareWindow (Flinders University / ARIIA spinout): A zero-touch digital care platform enabling family connection and wellbeing monitoring without fine motor skills or digital literacy. Has secured recurring-revenue sales including a top-tier aged/home care provider, and is preparing its next raise.
🧠 Chromos Laboratories (University of Melbourne): A scalable alternative to animal models for neurological drug discovery, via an imaging platform capturing electrical activity in the human brain. Advancing its IP licence and progressing toward investor due diligence.
🔬 DeepDerm / DermAI (University of Melbourne): An AI-powered handheld imaging platform that detects skin cancer at the point of care, improving access for rural and underserved communities. Running a clinic pilot and in talks with Genesis Pre-Seed Fund and Google.
⚡ Energy Diversions (University of Newcastle): Converts decommissioned mine voids into long-duration energy storage assets, turning rehabilitation liabilities into revenue-generating clean energy infrastructure — with a model showing energy capital cost below $100/kWh at scale. Preparing for a capital raise.
🧬 Geney Bio (UNSW): A cell and gene therapy manufacturing platform reducing cost, complexity and variability, focused on CAR-T and autologous cell therapy workflows. Has secured pilot trials and progressed IP commercialisation with UNSW.
💧 Hydro Harvester (University of Newcastle): Extracts water from air to deliver clean, affordable water in low-humidity remote regions without relying on existing liquid sources. Secured a customer agreement to pilot a demonstration unit on site.
💊 PredicTx Health (University of Melbourne): Precision oncology technology that personalises chemotherapy using routine imaging and body composition analysis. Achieved ISO 13485 certification, progressed CE submission, and secured collaborations with Alibaba Health and Cognis.
🔋 Verdant-ion (CSIRO): Converts seed oils into lower-cost synthetic graphite for the energy transition. Expanding engagement with partners and investors across Japan, Korea and the US.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🗺️ Applications for the 2026 Melbourne Accelerator Program, run through the University of Melbourne, close on 14 June (tomorrow!!)
This year, AI is embedded across the program, and every MAP team gets a Claude Teams account to accelerate their learning, produce work beyond their capacity, and pressure-test assumptions. That is on top of $20,000 in equity-free funding, weekly workshops and coaching, a dedicated workspace at Melbourne Connect, and access to Entrepreneurs in Residence, mentors and the wider MEC ecosystem.
You must be affiliated with the University of Melbourne, building social impact ventures, or a team tackling challenges connected to the climate crisis. Apply here.
🙌 Have you ever used your startup tech skills for charity yet? tekFoundation helps smaller Aussie charities build lasting digital capability by connecting them with skilled volunteers and trusted partners.
Long-time newsletter reader Joni Fleischer has put out a call for volunteers skilled in everything from websites and AI to marketing and data. tekFoundation places the right mix of resourcing, community and practical help so charities can keep up with the pace of tech. It has supported more than 60 charities over the past three years. If you want to get involved or volunteer your skills, sign up at tekFoundation.
🛠️ Blackbird has opened its Foundry Fellowship, a remote program for technical builders weighing up whether to start a company.
It is aimed at engineers, mathematicians, researchers, and technical operators across Australia and New Zealand who are interested in startups and frontier tech. Nominations and EOI’s can be made here.
Would you like to promote an event or an opportunity? Enquire about a Notice Board promotion by replying to this email.
🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)
Will’s Pick: Interesting things I’ve found on Our World in Data, which makes really pretty data infographics and reports.
Australia was producing plenty of AI patents in 2021, not far off the US.
Driverless cars are coming sooner than we think
Globally, electric cars are a growing % of new cars sold! Last year, 11% of new cars sold in Australia were fully electric.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will