The fund is anchored by Hostplus, Aware Super, HESTA and the $337 billion Future Fund, with a far larger offshore component than any previous Blackbird vintage.

Its first investment is a $200 million cheque into Baseten, the US$13 billion San Francisco AI inference platform founded by Australians, split between Blackbird funds and co-investment from its limited partners.

Samantha Wong led the raise and said US backers “care about if you clear the performance bar, or the liquidity bar”, pointing to US$1.4 billion returned across half a dozen transactions.

About 25 per cent of the portfolio is now headquartered in the US, and 96 per cent of Blackbird's initial investments go in at pre-seed or seed.

Blackbird typically raises on a three-year cycle. It pulled in $28.2 million for its first fund in 2013 and $1.035 billion for fund five in 2022.

The $2 billion firm says the mandate has not changed. It still backs Australian and New Zealand founders wherever they build.

“We're putting boots on the ground in the US now so the diaspora stays connected to Australian capital, talent, and expertise,” partner Jackie Vullinghs said.

Kasbekar names Firmable, Gridsight and Askable as already established there, and Superpower, Monarch and Odyssey as starting in San Francisco from day one.

Startmate has restarted its San Francisco cohort trips and Galileo Ventures rotates its team between Melbourne, Sydney and SF. Blackbird declined to comment on whether it will follow.

Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton announced it on Thursday. Cohorts complete an eight-week Stone & Chalk accelerator covering technical, regulatory, security and operational requirements, with access to ANZ, CBA, NAB, Westpac and Cuscal. The National AI Centre is principal sponsor.

Maincode chief executive Dave Lemphers: “I don't know any credible startup today, who is going to spend eight weeks in an accelerator with Stone & Chalk in exchange for some intros to some of the slowest AI adopters in Australia.” He argues for salary-backed, debt-financed investment instead.

Trellis Data co-founder Michael Gately said an incubator-level program is too late for a ten-year-old company. What he needs is “a way for people like the CIO at Commonwealth Bank to look and see that there are viable local options with frontier capability outside of more expensive US models”.

Charlton counts more than 1,500 Australian AI companies. Expressions of interest close 24 September, with the program running from early October.

Queensland's David Crisafulli and the Northern Territory's Lia Finocchiaro both opposed the mandate ahead of Wednesday's meeting. Albanese said afterwards that both are different from states such as NSW because they have public ownership of power generation.

Bowen had threatened this month to draft laws forcing states and territories to comply with Labor's position of renewables firmed by gas.

The site is the former Gunns pulp mill at Long Reach. Approval carries 19 conditions, including a noise verification survey within 60 days of operations starting, an air quality assessment within 12 months, a public complaints register, and a 24-hour annual cap on running multiple backup generators at once.

The backup generator count was corrected during the assessment from 128 to 276. A petition against the project drew more than 5,800 signatures, largely over its location near the Tamar River.

Unlike NSW and South Australia, where state planning bodies review large data centre projects, Tasmania leaves them to local councils. George Town Council acknowledged that submissions raised questions about energy policy, AI, national security and Commonwealth regulation, but said many of those matters were “outside the scope” of its planning authority.

Firmus already has a $2.1 billion centre under construction at St Leonards near Launceston and a third proposal lodged at Wesley Vale. Together, the three would make it Tasmania's largest electricity user, ahead of Bell Bay Aluminium.

Firmus claims more than 380 jobs during construction and more than 115 permanent local roles. Representors have 14 days to appeal to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, and the state's parliamentary inquiry into AI data centres is taking submissions until 21 September.

Vollardian co-founder Arani Satgunaseelan accused KPMG of turning her firm's “Commercial Sprint” into HGV's “GTM Sprint”, eight months after Vollardian walked the team through its approach.

The makeup of the governance council was revealed on Monday at a NSW budget estimates hearing. The Sydney Local Health District and the state government are also represented, with each member holding a single seat.

Members had to make an undisclosed financial contribution to join, alongside the government's $5 million package for “catalysing Tech Central”. The group has met once and is working on a co-funding delivery model this year.

Innovation Victoria is the cornerstone investor, alongside Artesian Capital, US venture investor Brad Feld, Michael Donahue, New Zealand's Andy Hamilton and Lorne Capital's Nicola Kaldor.

The plan is to invest in 30 companies with initial cheques of $250,000 to $500,000, with about 40 per cent of the fund going to Victoria-domiciled founders as part of the Innovation Victoria agreement.

Fund I backed 25 companies over four years for an unaudited net TVPI of 1.8x, with Relevance AI, Andromeda, SyncTech and Tixel up more than tenfold within three years. The first investment from Fund II is in the brain interface startup Fluent BCI.

Founder Trevor Abromowitz lends to founders and employees through their investment trust or corporate entity, without taking equity, warrants or options. Senior funding comes from Eldium.

Loan-to-value ratios are kept under 20 per cent so a falling valuation does not trigger margin calls, with rates in the mid-to-low teens.

The idea came out of a late-2024 conversation between Diamond and Leibowitz, who wrote the first debt cheque into Zip without taking equity.

Rampart prefers companies with a recent raise or a clear line to one, where an external investor has set a price. It has grown by word of mouth and had largely operated in stealth until now.

The licence comes from FutureFeed, the CSIRO-established company that holds the global IP for Asparagopsis as a livestock feed ingredient, shown to cut ruminant methane by 80 per cent.

It follows the acquisition of Western Australia's first commercial-scale Asparagopsis hatchery and processing facility at 20 Mews Road in Fremantle.

The company has grown Asparagopsis at Cockburn Sound since 2023, from a 32-hectare farm at Derbal Nara to a proposed 160-hectare marine lease, and has raised $4 million in seed funding backed by a $4 million grant from the WA Government's Investment Attraction Fund.

The first two planned ocean farms are expected to produce up to 576 tonnes of Reef4Beef a year, enough to supply 25,000 head, with the Western Australian feedlot sector as the first customers.

Hosted by Beaten Zone Venture Partners, 7:30am to 7:00pm, with more than 200 attendees expected from Australia, the US and the UK.

Speakers include Major General Mick Ryan AM, Tyler Sweatt of Second Front Systems, Heather Richman of the US Defence Investor Network, Dr Michael Smart of Hypersonix Launch Systems and Dr William Crowe of HEO.

Register here: Use BZVOS for $200 off at checkout.

If you're a founder thinking about expanding into the US, this is the podcast for you. Sam and Leigh have both done it once before and are currently doing it again with their scale-ups, Cuttable and Firmable.

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