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. 🚀
We’re now well into 2026, with a big week of news: conference shutdowns, growth companies taking legal action against media companies, and 8x liquidity preferences coming home to roost. Hope you enjoy this week’s recap!
I’d like to make a special shout-out to this week’s sponsor, Vanta, which is hosting its first live webinar this week on the 22nd of January. Join here to learn how to automate your compliance and focus on growth!
👀 Headlines 👀
🐨 Australian startup exits hit US$3.5 billion in 2025, marking the strongest year for dealmaking since the pandemic-era tech boom, with exit values up 62% across 56 transactions, according to PitchBook. (AFR)
The biggest exits for Aussie startups last year were Accel-KKR’s US$500 million acquisition of Phocas Software and United H2’s US$400 million purchase of electric bus supplier GoZero.
The year was capped off with a late-year wave of venture-backed IPOs, including Carma, Sea Forest and Epiminder, which has seen a revival of Australia’s otherwise dormant public markets.
Investors say tech valuations have now normalised after the 2023 correction, but expectations of a flood of ASX listings remain muted, with larger companies (like Canva) likely to target Nasdaq instead.
Dealmakers are touting that AI is expected to drive the next wave of M&A, with incumbents buying startups to stay competitive and concentrating deal activity on AI-adjacent companies.
The other slight fly in the ointment is the new merger rules for Aussie M&A, which could dampen foreign buyer appetite in 2026.
💳 Airwallex is demanding critical media coverage be removed as it prepares for a potential multi-billion-dollar IPO in 2026. (AFR)
The payments unicorn has hired Sydney law firm Mark O’Brien Legal to threaten legal action against Nine, publisher of the AFR and SMH. Lawyers argue that nine articles published over five years rely on leaked internal documents and represent a breach of confidence. Airwallex wants the stories permanently deleted, the documents returned or destroyed, and Nine’s CEO to sign a statutory declaration.
The company says the leaks came from a former employee bound by confidentiality and claims the reporting has caused commercial harm.
The move comes amid heightened scrutiny over Airwallex’s links to China, with backing from Tencent and HongShan Capital and domicile in the Cayman Islands.
📦 Parcel delivery platform, Sendle, has been wound down following the collapse of the 3-way merger into FAST Group that was to combine Sendle, FirstMile and ACI Logistix into a global e-commerce shipping platform. (AFR, Startup Daily)
Federation Asset Management has accused US logistics firm ACI Logistix of misrepresenting its finances during due diligence ahead of its merger with Australian parcel startup Sendle — a deal that has now collapsed, forcing Sendle to cease operations this week.
The merger, completed just five months ago, created FAST Group, combining Sendle, Utah-based FirstMile and California-based ACI Logistix into a global e-commerce shipping platform spanning the US, Australia, Canada, India and the Philippines.
Federation says it was told ACI Logistix was financially sound, but alleges the company was not current on its financial obligations at the time of the merger, contrary to representations made during the investment process.
The Federation underwrote additional capital into Sendle on the basis that the merger would be accretive, later injecting $12 million post-merger, replacing the CFO and appointing a restructuring specialist.
The FAST Group board voted to wind down the business on Saturday after ACI alleges ACI Logistix’s unpaid obligations strained supplier relationships and disrupted operations.
Federation has frozen redemptions on its $100 million Alternative Investments Fund II, which had nearly two-thirds of its capital tied up in FAST Group.
Federation has backed Sendle since 2018 alongside Touch Ventures, Rampersand and King River Capital, and shocked the market in 2025 with a controversial $16 million raise featuring an aggressive liquidation preference that was reportedly eight times. Mighty Partners MD, Kal Jamshidi, wrote specifically on the liquidation preferences here. Jamshidi said, “For context, 1x is standard. Later rounds might stretch to 1.5x or 2x. In very rare cases you see 3x. An 8x preference is almost unheard of. Not making a comment on the deal, but an 8x preference is effectively a cap table reset. Employee equity is usually underwater and existing holders sit behind a very large stack unless there is a major turnaround.”
❌ SXSW Sydney has been cancelled after Destination NSW pulled funding, following a dispute with US owner Penske Media Corporation over its refusal to discount the festival’s licensing fee. Which is somewhat ironic, after the festival tried to charge this publication a $5,000 licensing fee to host a coffee catch-up after mentioning SXSW in the event description. (Capital Brief)
The NSW government reportedly paid $12 million for a five-year SXSW Sydney licence, but withdrew support after a review, with the decision made before organisers publicly announced the shutdown.
The funding cut was driven primarily by Penske’s refusal to offer a fee discount, despite organisers blaming “prevailing market conditions” and a tougher global environment for major events. Launched as SXSW’s first international expansion, the Sydney edition was pitched as a landmark moment for Australia’s startup and tech sector — but never fully found its identity.
The event drew criticism over complex ticketing, high prices and an unclear positioning between consumer festival and corporate trade conference.
Attendance softened after its debut, with organisers comping passes to fill rooms and unofficial side events often eclipsing the main programme, particularly in the tech/innovation bubble.
🫡 Culture Amp co-founder and CEO Didier Elzinga is stepping down after 16 years at the helm of the people-management software unicorn, transitioning to executive chairman. (AFR, Capital Brief)
Caroline Rawlinson, formerly CFO and COO at Culture Amp and ex-MYOB executive, will take over as chief executive. She joined from KKR-owned MYOB, where she also served as COO and has worked at Culture Amp for the previous 15 months..
Culture Amp is backed by Blackbird, Hostplus, and Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, and was last valued at US$1.5 billion. Nick Crocker, Blackbird partner who invested in their first fundraise, wrote this of the transition.
The company reported 11% revenue growth to US$177 million in the year to June 30, while cutting its loss from US$35.7 million to US$24.4 million.
The platform is doubling down on AI-powered tools, including coaching products to help managers assess performance and deliver feedback.
The move continues a broader changing of the guard across Australian tech, following recent CEO exits at Atlassian, SafetyCulture, Deputy and Pet Circle.
🚗 Driverless cars may hit Australian streets sooner than you think with Waymo is accelerating plans to launch a robotaxi service in Sydney as early as 2026, with Alphabet’s driverless unit already searching for office space and engaging with state and federal governments. (AFR)
The Google-owned company has held talks with Chinese auto giant Geely — owner of Volvo, Polestar and Zeekr — about electric vehicles for its Australian fleet, following its existing US partnership with Zeekr.
Waymo has appointed Andrew Cox, a former senior Liberal Party staffer, to lobby governments in NSW, Victoria and Canberra to allow driverless vehicle testing.
The move puts Waymo in a global race with Tesla and Amazon’s Zoox to roll out robotaxis in major cities, with Waymo already operating commercial services across five US states.
While discussions are underway with the NSW government, neither Waymo nor Tesla has yet lodged a formal application to begin autonomous vehicle testing in Australia.
Australia still lacks a national autonomous vehicle safety framework, forcing companies to navigate state-by-state approval regimes, with NSW considered more permissive than Victoria.
Waymo currently runs more than 25,000 commercial robotaxis in the US, delivering around 450,000 paid rides per week.
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⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
estateXchange lands $12.5M to digitise the deceased estate administration process
Founders: Sarah Poole and Marielle Yeoh
Former NAB and PEXA executives have raised $12.5 million for Sydney-based estateXchange, a digital platform to modernise one of financial services’ most manual and fragmented processes: deceased estate administration.
The round was backed by Macquarie Capital, OIF Ventures and Paul Little’s family office, with angel investors Carol Schwartz AO and Christine Christian AO also participating. It marks the company’s first external capital raise.
Founded in 2023 by longtime friends Sarah Poole and Marielle Yeoh, estateXchange is replacing today’s paper-heavy, institution-by-institution workflow with a secure online workspace that connects professional estate representatives, including lawyers, accountants and trustees, directly with banks, super funds, share registries, insurers and telcos.
Today, representatives must submit the same documents separately to every institution where the deceased held an asset — a slow, error-prone process that is vulnerable to fraud. A 2025 Deloitte Access Economics report estimates the average person has 37 assets or service-provider accounts, compounding delays and complexity.
Poole previously led NAB’s Deceased Estate Services and its digital transformation program, while Yeoh was one of PEXA’s longest-serving executives, helping scale the company from startup to a $3 billion ASX-listed business.
estateXchange operates on a pay-per-transaction model, with no subscriptions or joining fees. Investors say the platform sets a new benchmark for how institutions handle estate and death-benefit claims, an area recently under scrutiny from regulators, including ASIC and the Banking Code Compliance Committee.
Due Diligence: AFR, Startup Daily
SPEC Toolbox raises $3M Pre-Series A to systemise the construction process
Founder: Adam Jones
Construction tech startup SPEC Toolbox has raised $3 million in a Pre-Series A round as it scales its platform globally and broadens its push into sustainable building products.
The round was co-led by Black Nova and Investible and included the syndicate Exhort Ventures, with funds earmarked to accelerate international adoption, expand product categories and deepen the platform’s technical infrastructure. The raise follows a rebrand from CLT Toolbox, reflecting the company’s move beyond cross-laminated timber into a wider set of engineered and manufactured construction products.
Founded in 2022 by structural engineer Adam Jones, SPEC Toolbox automates complex engineering calculations and bridges the technical gap between product suppliers and designers, a bottleneck that has long slowed the uptake of innovative and sustainable building materials.
The platform now supports eight product categories and connects suppliers with a growing global network of engineers and designers. Since its 2023 seed round, the company has expanded into Europe, the UK and North America, signed up more than 6,000 users and listed over 35 product suppliers.
SPEC Toolbox previously raised around $2.5 million, including a $1.5 million seed round led by Archangel Ventures and a $1 million bridge round backed by Black Nova and Investible.
Due Diligence: Business News Australia
Dam Secure snags $6.1M to build AI native security platform for AI-generated code
Founders: Patrick Collins and Simon Harloff
AI security platform Dam Secure has raised $6.1 million in an oversubscribed seed round as enterprises race to deploy AI-generated code and grapple with a new wave of application security risks.
The round was led by Washington DC-based cybersecurity and AI investor Paladin Capital Group, with backing from Secure Code Warrior CEO Pieter Danhieux, RecordPoint CEO Anthony Woodward, Innovation Bay founder Phaedon Stough and Tyro Payments chief product officer Steen Andersson. Paladin managing director Mourad Yesayan will join the board.
Founded by former Zip Co and Secure Code Warrior executives Patrick Collins and Simon Harloff, Dam Secure is building an AI-native application security platform designed to catch “logic gaps” — flaws where code technically works but fails basic security expectations. The company says these issues are increasingly common as developers rely on AI coding assistants, and are often missed by traditional scanners that look for known vulnerability patterns.
Instead, Dam Secure lets organisations define security requirements in plain English and automatically enforces those rules across large codebases during development. The platform builds a proprietary “Security Knowledge Graph” for each system, mapping data flows and logic paths to reason about how code behaves in context.
Dam Secure supports Java, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, Python and Go, and acts as a security layer around tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude and Cursor.
The startup is currently running private deployments with six major technology companies and says early results show false positives below 10%. The funding will be used to expand its Australian R&D team and establish a US-based sales and marketing operation ahead of a broader commercial launch in 2026.
Due Diligence: SmartCompany
Hapana lifts with $7.25M raise to expand AI-powered software for fitness brands
Founder: Jarron Aizen
Global gym software platform Hapana has raised $7.25 million as it doubles down on international expansion and rolls out a new generation of AI-powered tools for fitness brands. The round was led by veteran Sydney asset manager Microequities, with follow-on investment from OIF Ventures. OIF previously backed Hapana’s $17 million raise in 2024 alongside ASX-listed Bailador Technologies.
Bailador told shareholders it revalued its stake in Hapana by $2 million (17%) in December following the latest raise, after a $3.9 million (50%) valuation write-up in June 2025. The total uplift in carrying value across calendar year 2025 was 76% on a $7.7 million investment.
Founded in 2014 by Jarron Aizen, Hapana provides a white-label CRM platform used by gyms and fitness studios globally to manage memberships, payments, retention and loyalty.
Aizen said the fresh capital will fund the next generation of the platform, including AI-powered tools, while supporting global team expansion and growth across key international markets.
Investors say Hapana is delivering strong revenue growth, solid unit economics and continued international momentum, signing major customers across global markets as it positions itself as an essential technology partner for multi-site fitness brands with global ambitions.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
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🥳 Wins 🥳
🎪 What replaces SXSW Sydney? UNSW’s David Burt put’s $100K up to build something better.
SXSW Sydney is gone… but the demand was real. Venues were full, and for a few days, Sydney felt like a global hub for creativity, tech and startups. The problem wasn’t the audience; it was ambition and taste.
Burt argues we need a new platform. Not a SXSW clone, but a sharper, braver event built for the intersection of creativity, technology and entrepreneurship.
Do you want to contribute? Reply to his post here.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🚜 The future of farming is here: evokeAG. 2026 lands in Melbourne (17–18 Feb) Asia-Pacific’s biggest agrifood innovation event is back with bold keynotes, uncomfortable conversations and live tech — including a remote driverless tractor demo from Ornata.
Big-name speakers from across ag, tech and VC, including Halter founder Craig Piggott, Astanor Ventures’ Harry Briggs and SwarmFarm CEO Andrew Bate.
50+ startups and scaleups from 8 countries showcasing everything from autonomous machinery and insect protein to soil intelligence and circular agtech.
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 💁 Notes on AI Apps in 2026 by Anish Acharya from A16z
Anish writes that the biggest shift to understand is that execution is no longer the hard part. Code is cheap, shipping is fast. The real challenge is deciding what to build. Product taste, insight and direction are quickly becoming more valuable than raw engineering speed.
Anish goes on to argue that the big opportunity isn’t just in models — it’s in AI apps. Highly specialised, domain-specific products with deep workflows, multi-model orchestration and rich feature sets are where real businesses will be built. The idea that models will simply swallow the apps layer is already proving wrong.
I also agree with this final point. Outside our bubble, most people still don’t realise how powerful AI already is. There’s untapped demand for tools that let everyday people build and create for themselves.
Have we missed something? Got some feedback? We love emails, so send one over!
👔 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Overnight Success, Will Richards
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will