G'day (and Bonjourno as I’m still in Italy!) 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 👀
🏛️ Startup investors and industry groups have hit back at the eligibility rules in Treasury's draft Innovative Business CGT Concession (IBCC), warning they could shut out more than half the companies in some VC portfolios, as consultation on the startup tax changes closed on Monday. (Capital Brief, InnovationAus, The Australian)
Treasury had already given ground after the first round of consultation, scrapping the $10 million lifetime cap, cutting the minimum holding period from five years to three and extending the 15-year eligibility window to all companies. The fight now is over which startups count as "innovative".
To qualify, a company must be Australian, unlisted, under 15 years old, have turnover below $50 million and keep at least half its staff and assets in Australia. It must also pass a "predominant activity test", meeting two of three conditions: more than 75 per cent of its assets, employees or income tied to innovative activity.
The Australian Investment Council estimates that the test, as drafted, would exclude more than half of the companies in some of the largest VC portfolios. It says a pre-revenue startup could spend $15,000 to $25,000 on lawyers and accountants each time it raises or issues employee equity just to confirm eligibility, or up to $115,000 across four rounds from seed to Series B/C in one climate tech example.
Side Stage Ventures GP Ben Grabiner says the government has been responsive but has created "a super complicated, bureaucratic definition of what an eligible startup is." Brandon Capital CEO Chris Nave says the 15-year age limit hits biotech hardest, as many companies only reach their final clinical studies at 10 to 15 years old, and wants eligibility based on activity rather than age.
The Tech Council of Australia lodged three submissions. On the IBCC, it wants the $50 million turnover ceiling doubled to $100 million, and the Australian staff and asset tests dropped, arguing they penalise companies that build offshore sales teams as they scale, and could knock out a seed-stage company with an offshore contract engineering team on day one. (Startup Daily, TCA submission)
💸 High-income earners have reportedly poured $36 billion into Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (ESVCLPs) since their introduction in 2007, and the May budget made the tax-free structure more generous for investors. (AFR)
ESVCLP investors pay no income tax or CGT on their share of the fund's returns and receive a tax offset of up to 10 per cent of the amount the fund invests.
From July 2027, the budget measures lift the asset cap on eligible investee companies from $50 million to $80 million, so funds can stay in their winners for longer, raise the ceiling on fully tax-exempt gains from $250 million to $420 million and lift the maximum ESVCLP fund size from $200 million to $270 million.
Shaw and Partners modelled the trade-off between VC investment and equity markets: a $250,000 commitment that grows to $1 million over a 10-year fund returns about 20.6 per cent a year after fees, tax-free, compared with about 16.3 per cent after tax for the same money in a Nasdaq ETF over the past decade. The catch: returns depend almost entirely on manager selection, capital is locked up for a decade or more, and, as Viola Private Wealth's Alex Thompson puts it, outside the funds that backed Canva, few ESVCLPs have returned enough to justify the lock-up.
✈️ Startup lawyers and investors say Australian founders are moving their parent companies to the US earlier, to avoid CGT bills. (SmartCompany)
📈 Firmus has set an $11 share price for its ASX float, valuing the AI infrastructure company at $43.7 billion ahead of a 23 October listing. (The Australian, AFR)
The bookbuild was pushed back after Firmus signed a new deal to supply Meta with computing capacity across South-East Asia, which is expected to lift its forecast EBIT of about US$5 billion in two years' time by around 15 per cent.
🏦 The RBA has lifted the cash rate 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent, its highest level since 2011. (RBA, SmartCompany)
The board pointed to higher energy prices from the broadening Middle East conflict, and to AI-related demand driving up global prices for technology goods, and said it will lift rates again if needed. Headline inflation rose to 4.0 per cent in August. (ABS)
For high-growth tech, higher rates raise the discount rate investors apply to earnings that are years away, which hits long-duration, loss-making companies hardest, and lifts the return that venture and private markets need to compete with cash and bonds. It was the same pressure that compressed tech multiples and slowed late-stage rounds through 2022. Founders raising capital in the next few quarters should expect sharper questions about burn and the path to profitability, even if AI deals continue to command premiums.
🏭 Australia lost 11,134 manufacturers in 2025-26, about one every 47 minutes and the most since the GFC, according to an analysis of ABS data by Conry Tech CEO Sam Ringwaldt. (InnovationAus)
Manufacturing grew just 0.2 per cent last financial year, the third-slowest among 19 industries, despite the government's $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia program.
Inside the builder renaissance. Is your startup playing to win?
AI is rewriting the startup playbook. Ship in weeks what used to take years. If a small team can build almost anything, the real question is what's worth building, and who gets there first.
Alex Kantrowitz, founder of Big Technology, and Vanta's SVP of Engineering share patterns before they're conventional wisdom.
You'll learn:
How teams turn AI demos into production tools
How to build an edge before capital or headcount catch up
Which fundamentals still hold as everything else moves
Can't attend live? Register anyway for the recording.
⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Hubble Network raises US$200M Series C to connect everyday Bluetooth chips to satellites
Founders: Alex Haro, Ben Wild
Hubble Network, the Seattle company that lets standard Bluetooth chips send data to satellites, has raised a US$200 million (A$285 million) Series C at a US$1.6 billion (A$2.3 billion) valuation.
The round was led by Smith Point Capital, the firm founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block, with Seraphim, Carthona Capital, Earthshot Ventures, Y Combinator and RPM Ventures also participating. It takes Hubble's total funding to US$300 million, a year after a US$70 million Series B.
Sydney's Carthona Capital has backed Hubble since its 2022 seed round, when it was valued at about US$20 million. Co-founder Alex Haro also co-founded ASX-listed Life360, where he remains a director, and Carthona partner James Synge was Life360's first investor. Hubble is the firm's third unicorn after Life360 and Ouster.
Hubble's network pairs six satellites in low Earth orbit with what it says are more than 100 million terrestrial gateways, so a device can be tracked almost anywhere using a Bluetooth chip that Hubble says adds less than 50 cents to its bill of materials, rather than a cellular or satellite modem. It has more than 500,000 active devices, counts Samsara and Texas Instruments among its partners, and is piloting pallet tracking with ASX-listed Brambles.
The funding goes into expanding the constellation to 60 satellites by 2030 and opening the network to all Bluetooth devices.
Skopos Bio raises $12M seed to take Peter Mac's radiopharmaceutical research to human trials
Founders: Professor Michael Hofman, Associate Professor Luc Furic, Associate Professor Mohammad Haskali
Skopos Bio, a Melbourne oncology startup spun out of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2024, has raised a $12 million (US$8.3 million) seed round to take its radiopharmaceutical research towards human trials.
The round came from Andrew Forrest's Tenmile, John Wylie's Tin Alley Ventures and Yosemite, the oncology-focused fund founded by Reed Jobs, son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Skopos is developing radioactive molecules that are injected into the bloodstream, find and bind to cancer cells, and deliver radiation directly to them while largely sparing healthy tissue. That allows for a more potent dose than conventional radiotherapy, which can't always distinguish cancer cells from healthy tissue.
Co-founder Michael Hofman, a nuclear medicine physician, led Peter Mac's LuPSMA and TheraP trials, work that helped pave the way for Novartis's prostate cancer drug Pluvicto. Skopos wants to take the approach to other hard-to-treat cancers, including ovarian, breast and blood cancers. Hofman is joined by Mohammad Haskali, Peter Mac's inaugural chief radiopharmaceutical scientist, and cancer biologist Luc Furic.
Due Diligence: AFR, SmartCompany, Drug Discovery World
Trendspek raises $6M to take its 3D infrastructure inspection platform into North America and Europe
Founders: Derek Feebrey, Fiona Church, Mitch Deam
Trendspek, the Sydney company that turns drone, robotics and handheld inspection data into 3D condition records of critical infrastructure, has raised $6 million.
The round was led by OIF Ventures. Trendspek was founded in 2019 by former Qantas pilots Derek Feebrey, Fiona Church and Mitch Deam, and last raised a $6.3 million Series A in December 2022.
Its platform draws on aviation maintenance, where every component has a documented service history. Engineers can flag defects, take measurements and add notes directly on a 3D model of a port, energy facility or telecommunications site, instead of sending crews back out. More than 860 organisations use it across 1,700-plus sites, including Chevron, Woodside Energy, NSW Ports, Vocus, Canada's Suncor Energy and the Port of Rotterdam, and revenue from critical infrastructure customers has grown by 165 per cent per year over the past three years.
The funds will go towards hiring, product development and customer support in North America and Europe, and towards training AI models on seven years of inspection data to flag likely problems and changes between inspections.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily, SmartCompany
RentBetter raises $5M from EVP to build AI tools for landlords who skip the agent
Founders: Jeremy Goldschmidt
RentBetter, the Sydney platform for landlords who manage their rentals without an agent, has raised $5 million from EVP.
Founder and CEO Jeremy Goldschmidt started RentBetter in 2016 as a side project while working at ANZ, after building the first version to manage his own investment property. The platform lets owners advertise a rental, screen applicants against tenancy databases, sign leases, coordinate repairs and track income and expenses, instead of paying an agent the typical 5 to 10 per cent of annual rent.
RentBetter says it is profitable and didn't need to raise, but wanted a partner with experience scaling software businesses. EVP partner Justin Lipman joins the board. The company had previously raised $3.2 million, including a $1.9 million Series A in January 2022.
The funding will go towards new hires and AI tools that automate tenant screening, tenancy paperwork, rent tracking and compliance. RentBetter estimates 600,000 to 700,000 Australian investment properties are already self-managed.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily, SmartCompany
Kura Dynamics raises NZ$4.65M pre-seed to steer hydrogen production underground
Founders: Dr Chris Oze, Peter Joynt
Kura Dynamics, a Christchurch startup building technology to control how hydrogen forms underground, has raised a NZ$4.65 million pre-seed round.
GD1 and Motion Capital co-led the round, with Outset Ventures, K1W1 and NZGCP also participating. GD1 general partner Aaron Small joins the board.
Kura was spun out of Aspiring Materials in January by geochemist Dr Chris Oze, who co-founded Aspiring Materials, and geological data specialist Peter Joynt, who spent more than a decade at Seequent. Geologic hydrogen forms naturally when water reacts with iron-rich rock underground. Rather than hunting for pockets that have already accumulated, Kura combines geochemistry, geological data and supercomputing to stimulate and steer the reaction, aiming to become the control layer that others use to produce hydrogen at scale.
The funding takes the company from lab validation towards field trials. Its investors have compared it to Seequent.
Due Diligence: GD1 investment notes, Motion Capital, Startup Researcher
R2Crete raises $750K pre-seed to turn waste concrete into new building materials
Founders: Dr Tuan Nguyen, Warren Overton, Professor Mahdi Miri Disfani
R2Crete, a University of Melbourne spinout that recycles waste concrete into clean aggregates and a cement replacement, has raised a $750,000 pre-seed round from the university's Genesis Pre-Seed Fund and Uniseed.
Australia produces an estimated 7 million tonnes of waste concrete a year, most of which ends up in landfill. R2Crete's patented process, developed by senior lecturer Dr Tuan Nguyen, turns it back into materials that can replace virgin sand, gravel and limestone. The company says it recovers up to 75 per cent of the cement with a 50 per cent cut in emissions, while matching the performance of conventional concrete.
The funding will build a pilot plant due to be finished by the end of this year, with field trials from early 2027, as R2Crete talks to prospective industry partners. It was previously supported by the university's Proof-of-Concept Fund and Australia's Economic Accelerator Ignite program.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
💸 New Fund, Who Dis? 💸
🌏 Adelaide VC Eastend Ventures has closed its debut fund at $30 million, with a $5 million cornerstone from Funds SA, to back early-stage B2B startups in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. (Startup Daily)
Founding partner Josh Garratt, who spent four years advising founders through the federal Entrepreneurs' Programme, and managing partner JD Sheard, who built and exited a technology services business, have already put more than $8 million into seven startups, including defence analytics company Priori Analytica, Jack App, Heatseeker and Nitrosend. More than 50 sophisticated investors and family offices from Australia, Singapore and the US also committed.
Eastend says it is South Australia's first ESVCLP and is targeting exits within about five years at valuations of $200 million to $500 million, rather than chasing unicorn outcomes.
🌱 Bevan and Jodie Slattery have launched Embarq, which offers grants of up to $25,000 with no equity or repayment requirements to Queensland founders under 30. (Luna)
The Slatterys are committing at least $5 million over five years, with up to $250,000 awarded each quarter. Bevan's companies include PIPE Networks, NextDC, Superloop and Megaport.
Idea-stage applicants are welcome; no ABN or co-founder required. The current round closes 31 October, with shortlisted founders pitching in early December and grants awarded in mid-December. Apply here.
🩺 Perth Biodesign program director Oliver Bazzani and healthtech operator Oliver Tweddell have launched Fleming, a syndicate on Ventari (previously Aussie Angels) that backs pre-seed and seed-stage healthtech companies. (SEEDS)
Fleming invests in digital health, medtech and clinical workflow automation, with selective Series A participation, pairing practising clinicians with operators who have scaled healthtech companies. No fund or cheque size has been disclosed.
Bazzani also sits on WA's Innovation Advisory Board and has been involved with Perth Angels.
🚀 Wins 🚀
🩻 Harrison.ai has quadrupled its contracted annual recurring revenue to $40 million in 18 months, after cutting 15 per cent of its workforce earlier this year to shift its focus from R&D to sales. (Forbes Australia)
The Sydney medical imaging AI company, founded by Aengus and Dimitry Tran in 2018, revealed for the first time that its $179 million Series C was struck at a $789 million valuation. More than 40 per cent of revenue now comes from the US, and it says it is on track to be profitable within two years.
Its AI reads X-rays and other scans and is used by more than 1,000 healthcare organisations in 25 countries. The restructure cut 34 roles in Australia in April, leaving just under 200 staff.
🩺 Heidi has launched Heidi II, extending its AI scribe into agents that complete the admin around a patient visit, from referrals and chart prep to arranging follow-ups. (PR Newswire, AFR)
Clinicians ask for a task in plain language and an agent plans and carries it out across practice systems for them to review, or runs it on a schedule as a routine for a whole practice. Clinical decisions stay with the clinician. Heidi says it now supports 2.8 million patient visits a week and surfaces around 10 million follow-up tasks a week. It began rolling out to Australian clinicians on 29 September and isn't yet available in the UK or Europe.
🤑 Aussie Raisins 🤑
🩺 Sydney healthcare AI infrastructure startup Big Picture Medical is raising $10 million at a valuation of about $100 million, and has hired a US investment bank to find a strategic partner. (AFR)
Founded in 2015 by Dr Tom McKinnon, the company makes AI-generated patient data from one practice usable at another, even when clinics use different AI tools such as Heidi and Lyrebird. Customers include Johnson & Johnson and NHS trusts, and University Hospitals Birmingham is a shareholder.
Riverbend Investments, the family office of former White Energy CEO John Atkinson, has tipped in and is running the round, which is targeting family offices and VCs and aims to close in early November.
🚀 Baseten, the San Francisco AI inference company co-founded by Australians Tuhin Srivastava and Philip Howes, is raising US$2 billion to US$2.5 billion at a US$26 billion (A$37 billion) valuation, double its June price. (AFR)
The round is expected to be led by Sands Capital and follows a partnership that lets OpenAI's business customers route tasks to open-weight models running on Baseten's infrastructure. The founders hope to close it by mid-October.
It would be a big result for Blackbird, which first invested in January at a US$5 billion valuation and wrote its largest-ever cheque, A$200 million, into the US$1.5 billion June round (at a US$13 billion valuation). Matthew Dellavedova's Athletic Ventures and funds managed by Roc Partners are also investors.
💰 M&A 💰
⚡ Ampol has agreed to buy EV fast-charging network Evie Networks for $225 million, a win for principal shareholder Trevor St Baker. (Startup Daily, Capital Brief)
Founded in 2017 by Paul Fox and Rodger Whitby, Evie adds more than 1,030 charging bays to Ampol's AmpCharge, bringing the combined network to about 1,425 bays across more than 400 sites. St Baker's Energy Innovation Fund is the largest shareholder, having put in more than $100 million, and ARENA committed $15 million in 2019.
The deal is debt-funded and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2027, subject to ACCC clearance. Ampol is targeting $30 million in annualised EBITDA from the combined business within three years.
🔎 People Moves 🔍️
👤 Neara has hired former Adobe VP and head of product Ian Wang as chief product officer, with co-founder Karamvir Singh moving to chief strategy officer. (Capital Brief, Startup Daily)
Wang led the global Adobe Express team and moved back to Sydney 18 months ago. He says Neara is seeing more applications from Australians overseas looking to come home, and it has hired engineers from Meta, AWS and Coinbase.
Neara, valued at about $1.1 billion after a $90 million Series D led by TCV in February, has more than doubled its headcount in a year and is building its own AI models as it expands beyond electricity networks into other critical infrastructure.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🚀 Startmate's Summer '27 accelerator applications close at 11:59pm AEDT on Sunday 1 November.
Startmate invests $120,000 at acceptance, at a $1.5 million post-money valuation for founders who haven't raised, or on the terms of your last round if you've raised $250,000 or more. The 14-week program runs from 1 February to 7 May 2027, mostly remote with three in-person weeks, and offers go out in mid-December. Apply here.
🎥 Build Australia is recruiting paid Creator Fellows in Sydney for a 6-month term to shoot, edit, and present video stories about Australians building things. Applications close Sunday 25 October.
Fellows are paid $85,000 per annum pro rata, plus super, and work from a shared creative space in Alexandria. To apply, email a five-minute video introducing yourself to [email protected]. Details here.
🎓 Wade Institute's Showcase Pitch Night is on Wednesday 28 October in Parkville, as University of Melbourne Master of Entrepreneurship teams pitch for feedback and a shot at seed funding.
Judges are Tractor Ventures co-founder and CEO Jodi Imam, Lord of the Fries co-founder Amanda Walker and Professor Colin McLeod. Doors open at 5:30pm for a 6pm start at Wade Institute, Ormond College, 49 College Crescent. Register here.
🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)
Will's Pick: NOISE.FYI, Edition 1 - A new online Aussie tech magazine by Harry Steer, Natasha Gillezeau and Mivin Mathew.
Super excited to see this go live this week after hearing about the project and seeing all the work the team have put into it. Really refreshing content about Australian tech and startups, created with so much care and attention.
I implore you to check it out! Edition one includes a feature on CLUTCH Glue, a piece on third spaces and an "ANZ Startup Eras Tour" comparing startups to Taylor Swift albums.
Have we missed something? Got some feedback? We love emails, so send one over!
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will