The consulting marketplace raised over $30.1 million, with only Series C or C1 preference shareholders receiving any payout. This is due to the preference stack, where later investors negotiated the right to be repaid ahead of everyone else in a sale. At $16 million against more than $30 million raised, the money runs out before it reaches ordinary shareholders.

Sale documents show Airtree will get 35.85% of its entry price across its two funds, Rampersand 16.90% across three vehicles, with Hyper Capital Startups (11.14%), Perennial (8.02%), and UniSuper (4.88%) also involved. (Capital Brief)

Loudon-Harris holds only ordinary shares, through her vehicle Rosa Gully Capital, and is listed in the documents as receiving 0.00 per cent. She co-founded Expert360 in 2013 with Emily Yue, both ex-Bain. Loudon-Harris wrote about the acquisition on LinkedIn here.

It is the second wipeout of the week for early investors. Grow Inc, the superannuation administration software company founded in 2017 by Josh Wilson and Matthew Keeley, has agreed to a takeover by MUFG Pension & Market Services. The price is reportedly $78 million, which is down from a $250 million valuation as recently as last year. A shareholder letter states that Series D, C, B, and A holders "will not be entitled to and receive any cash consideration". The same letter puts Grow's burn at $3 million a month and its full-year loss at $34 million. (AFR)

The special resolution passed with approval, representing more than 75 per cent of committed capital. The fund now has a hard end date of 15 July 2028. Airtree has agreed to waive its management fees for twelve months from 15 July 2027. The deed had previously charged 2.5 per cent of total funds annually.

The report is from Triple Bubble and Cut Through Venture. Funding is up 137 per cent on FY25’s $730 million, and fintech was 23 per cent of all Australian startup capital for the year.

Airwallex’s Series G ($498 million at an $8 billion valuation, December 2025) and Series H ($460 million at about $16 billion, June 2026) total $958 million. The top ten deals accounted for 91 per cent of fintech capital and the top three accounted for 62 per cent.

The report covered 53 disclosed rounds, the lowest in the seven-year dataset and down from 156 at the FY22 peak. Series B+ fell to six rounds against a peak of 29 in FY22, and the seed-to-Series A gap widened to 6.3x from 2.75x. Median seed cheques fell 43 per cent to $2.3 million.

General manager of listings James Posnett says the exchange has "a healthy pipeline of tech companies" weighing a float, and is working directly with VC funds across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the US.

The ASX argues that listings help deliver DPI to their LPs and recycle capital back into the private markets.

Neither a target size nor a first-close target has been disclosed. The fund is open only to qualified wholesale investors, and the firm points to a horizon longer than ten years - perhaps they’ve been taking notes from Airtree…

The CSIRO-founded deep tech firm is now above $1 billion in AUM: Fund 1 at $240 million as the CSIRO Innovation Fund, Fund 2 at $310 million by its own accounting, and Fund 3 at $450 million from its 2023 first close. Fund 3 LPs include Hostplus, LGT Crestone, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, NGS Super, Australian Ethical, Daiwa and the Grantham Foundation.

Funds 1 and 2 are fully deployed across 51 companies. The portfolio includes Australian DeepTech names such as Q-CTRL, Advanced Navigation, Samsara Eco, Loam Bio, Diraq and Endua.

Each startup received $100,000, plus access to Airwallex’s network across 100+ countries and immersion trips through its Melbourne, Singapore and San Francisco offices. It is funded through Airwallex Impact under the company’s Pledge 1% commitment.

The cohort includes the following startups: AXIOMS (networks of AI agents), Blank Robotics (modular robots in grocery retail), Dreamscale Labs (cloud inference for real-time robotics), Forward (AI-structured private credit deals), Geospan (road hazard detection), Kronus (safety-critical software for satellites and aircraft), Polarbear AI (study tools and ATAR estimates for VCE students), SeatFinder (premium airline seats at economy prices), Superstat (elite performance metrics from video) and SyncPay (payment records that travel with the payment).

The Melbourne no-added-sugar confectionery brand was founded in 2020 and already sells through more than 7,000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, including Woolworths, Coles and Chemist Warehouse. Its lollies use prebiotic fibre rather than sugar alcohols.

According to reports, Funday has had $100 million in sales over the past 12 months. The five SKUs going in are Fruity Kangaroos, Fruity Koalas, Classic Aussie Mix, Peaches & Cream and Strawberry & Cream. 🐸

The money is administered by ARENA. The Perth company makes iron electrochemically, converting ore to high-purity iron in molten salts at roughly 400 to 450 degrees, well below conventional ironmaking, powered by renewable electricity rather than coal. The current Perth facility runs at 10kg a day.

The Melbourne company is a 2022 Monash University spinout founded by immunologist Dr Eliana Marino, who won this year's $100,000 Excellence in Innovation Award at the Diabetes Australia Grand Innovation Challenge.

Its lead candidate, IBT-100, is a gut-targeted oral metabolite therapy that delivers metabolites to the colon to retrain the immune system to avoid attacking insulin-producing cells, without the immunosuppression associated with antibody approaches.

An initial study in 18 adults with established type 1 diabetes, with six weeks of treatment plus twelve weeks of follow-up, found the therapy safe and well-tolerated, with biological changes in line with expectations. It was not designed to show disease reversal. A Phase 1b/2a trial in children is planned for late 2027.

The $5 million funds clinical development and regulatory readiness ahead of a planned $25 million Series A and, eventually, an ASX listing.

The On Accelerate program is three months long and free for participants, and CSIRO values it at more than $150,000 per team. No equity taken and no interest in the IP. E.g. all IP stays with the team or its sponsoring institute.

Teams of three to six, with at least one researcher from an Australian university or publicly funded research organisation, or a PhD student or graduate from the last 24 months. All members must be based in Australia for the duration. Apply here.

Now in its eleventh year, with about 60 events on the program and roughly 5,000 people expected. The main venue is UTS Startups at 3 Broadway, Ultimo, with partner venues including UNSW, the University of Sydney, Stone & Chalk, Newcastle, Parramatta, the Western Sydney Aerotropolis and iAccelerate in the Illawarra.

Most events need registration through the links on the festival site.

An entertaining and approachable, albeit imo dramatised, replaying of the recent three agentic swarms that were AI-generated and eventually culminated in hacking another company, Hugging Face.

👔 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Overnight Success, Will Richards

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