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. 🚀
Next week I’ll be heading to Sydney for Techstar’s Demo The Future Demo day and then Perth for WestTech if you’re at either! Let me know, it would be great to say hi! 👋
👀 Headlines 👀
☹️ Victoria moves to dismantle LaunchVic as part of a cost-cutting overhaul, transferring grants/programs to Invest Victoria and shifting equity holdings to Breakthrough Victoria under the Silver review’s recommendations. (Innovation Aus)
The remit of LaunchVic will be folded into Invest Victoria, which will become the state’s single entry point for business programs, as the review labels current grant processes “confusing” and “duplicative,” prompting consolidation rather than cuts to startup investment funding.
The Allan Government rejects reducing funding but agrees to lower equity-risk exposure, even as the review calls for $350m in savings across industry support programs over four years.
LaunchVic’s future winds down after nearly a decade, despite a $40m budget boost last year. The decision to wind down LaunchVic has sparked community frustration. View Michael Batko’s (Startmate), Simon Thomsen’s (Startup Daily) and Murray Hurps (Startup Muster) posts.
According to LaunchVic’s reporting, Victoria's startup ecosystem just hit $143 billion in enterprise value, 26x what it was when LaunchVic 'launched'.
🧑💻 Robyn Denholm is stepping off the Tech Council of Australia board in February, ending a five-year run, as two new members join. (Startup Daily, Capital Brief)
This follows Denholm’s exit from her role as operating partner at Blackbird back in March.
TCA’s two former political directors are also out, with ex-NSW minister Victor Dominello and ex-Qld minister Kate Jones departing, replaced by former federal communications minister Paul Fletcher and former Victorian innovation minister Jaala Pulford.
Chair Scott Farquhar says the appointments reinforce TCA’s bipartisan strategy, arriving just weeks after CEO Damian Kassabgi announced he’ll leave in 2026.
TCA now begins the search for a member-elected director to replace Denholm, with Farquhar crediting her for strengthening the council and steering the sector through its formative years.
🥊 Airwallex CEO Jack Zhang publicly clashed with Silicon Valley heavyweight Keith Rabois after the Khosla Ventures partner alleged the Aussie-born fintech is a “Chinese backdoor” to sensitive US data. (AFR, Startup Daily)
Rabois, in a tweet storm, claims Airwallex’s China-based engineering and 20% Chinese ownership create legal obligations to assist CCP intelligence, arguing the startup is “a Chinese apparatus with a global façade”.
Zhang calls the accusations baseless and self-serving, challenging Rabois to produce evidence and insisting no US customer data is stored in or accessible from China under Airwallex’s global data-residency framework.
Rabois’ Khosla Ventures was an early investor in Stripe.
Airwallex, valued at $9.5B and generating $1B ARR, is under heightened scrutiny due to its Chinese investors, complex offshore structures, and key operations spanning Singapore, China, London and New Zealand.
As an aside, this reminded me of when the BOLT founder, Ryan Breslow, called out Stripe and Y-Combinator “The 'Mob Bosses' of Silicon Valley”.
🚀 Startmate CEO Michael Batko steps down after eight years, handing the reins to COO Phoebe Pincus, who has helped shape operations, fundraising, and community growth since joining in 2021. (SmartCompany)
Batko exits after helming Startmate into Australia’s most active seed investor, raising $50m+, backing 228 first-cheque companies, lifting revenue from $200k to $3m+, and delivering top-tier fund performance (2012 DPI 8.9x; 2013 6x; 2015 3x).
Cheque sizes and impact scaled dramatically under his tenure, with accelerator cheques increasing to $120k, follow-on funding up to $800k, and 54% of alumni raising an average $2.2m post-program.
Nearly half of Startmate’s investments now go to women-founded companies, a milestone Batko cites as one of his proudest achievements, alongside programs supporting 1,000+ women and 2,000+ students into startups.
Pincus steps in to lead Startmate’s next chapter, as Batko takes time off with family and pivots to coaching the CEO, while Startmate founder Niki Scevak credits him with “literally re-founding” the organisation.
💰 SecondQuarter Ventures launches Fund III to unlock a projected $4B liquidity gap as ANZ’s stretched exit timelines push founders, early investors and employees to seek faster pathways to realise equity. (Overnight Success, Wall Street Journal)
Liquidity demand has jumped 5x since Fund II, with SQV already securing early LP commitments to scale this fund beyond its previous $50M and $100M vehicles.
With stakes in Canva, Airwallex, ROKT and Fleet Space, the firm says delayed IPOs are fuelling a “human need” for secondary options, especially in a market where Aussie employees exercise equity at nearly double the US rate.
SQV reports top-quartile performance from Funds I and II, which are underpinning the next raise, with more returns expected as portfolio companies approach potential IPO windows.
🤖 In AI news, Australian start-ups are now picking and choosing between AI giants as model quality becomes fiercely contested, with founders saying Google’s Gemini 3, Anthropic’s Claude and even Chinese models like DeepSeek, Kimi and Qwen often outperform OpenAI for specialised tasks.
VCs describe the model race as “brutal”, with reports that Sam Altman has declared a “code red” internally as OpenAI works to regain technical leadership after lagging rivals on reasoning and coding benchmarks.
Founders say locking into one provider is no longer viable, with multi-model architectures becoming standard as performance now “passes back and forth” between platforms with each new release.
OpenAI has launched a full-scale charm offensive in Australia, offering free credits to VC portfolios (January Capital, NextGen Ventures, Boab AI, Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, Capital and Airtree). and ramping distribution following the opening of its Sydney office, as competition intensifies and frontier innovation slows. (AFR)
Model selection is increasingly about domain-specific quality rather than brand. According to the 2025 Startup Muster report, Anthropic and Google saw significant increases in utilisation, rising to 34% and 20% of startups, up from 9% and 6% last year. OpenAI remained the leading provider at 67%. 25% of startups using AI reported hosting some of their AI in Australia, with minimal utilisation of models developed outside America (about 1% using Deepseek, Qwen and Mistral).
Against this competitive backdrop, OpenAI deepens its Australian presence, partnering with NextDC to anchor a $7.6B hyperscale AI campus and GPU supercluster at the proposed S7 site in Sydney. (Capital Brief)
NextDC’s S7 build could deliver up to 650MW of capacity, with OpenAI as the initial offtaker, de-risking the capital stack and supporting mission-critical workloads across government, enterprise and research.
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⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Bodd lands $15M at $110M valuation for 3D body scanning tool for uniforms, retail and wellness
Founders: Rob Fisher and David McLaughlin
3D body-scanning startup Bodd has raised a $15 million round to accelerate global expansion, lifting its valuation to $110 million. Led by US strategic investor Blue Sky Capital and backed by Ellerston Capital and existing investors, chairman Tim Allison, director Peter Leonard, Swans director John Gerahty and his family office Liangrove Group, commodities trader Ken Loughnan and fashion retailers Nick and Candice Hirons. The round exceeded its original $10 million target due to strong investor demand.
Founded in 2016 by Rob Fisher and David McLaughlin, Bodd’s platform captures a full-body “passport” in 60 seconds, streamlining sizing for organisations with large uniform or equipment needs. Its customers already include United Airlines, Brooks Brothers, Portwest, Australian Defence Apparel and the NZ Defence Force. The company will now open offices in the US, UK and the Middle East, and grow its team from 15 to 40.
Bodd is also moving into healthtech, planning deployments in Australian pharmacies from 2026 to support the rising demand for GLP-1 weight-loss treatment pathways using longitudinal body-shape data.
CEO Rob Fisher said investor appetite validates Bodd’s thesis that high-fidelity body data is becoming mission-critical across defence, aviation, retail and healthcare. As AI increasingly drives operational decisions, Bodd argues that its precision data enables far more accurate model training for real-world applications.
Due Diligence: Startup Daily
Hachiko raises $2.5M Seed to optimise industrial battery energy storage systems (BESS)
Founders: Rakhesh Martyn
Hachiko, a Sydney-based optimisation platform for industrial battery energy storage systems (BESS), has raised a $2.5 million Seed round led by Archangel Ventures, with backing from Twynam, Investible, Motion Capital, Electrifi Ventures and Wattle Hill Capital. The startup will use the capital to expand its technical and go-to-market teams and deepen its portfolio-management capabilities.
As commercial and industrial (C&I) battery projects accelerate, more than $4.5 billion has been earmarked for deployment over the past three years. Hachiko is positioning itself as the software layer every asset will need. Its platform claims to double portfolio viability and lift revenues by more than 75% across multiple energy markets by giving operators more granular control, flexibility and intelligence.
Founder and CEO Rakhesh Martyn, who’s been involved in building ~4GW of utility-scale batteries since 2017, says the next decade’s proposed 120GW build-out is impossible without faster-moving C&I assets and the software to match. With battery capex down ~85% in the last decade and investor appetite surging, he argues the segment is hitting escape velocity.
Due diligence: Startup Daily
Cor raises $2M pre-seed for an AI video agent that can coach users for software onboarding
Founders: Mantas Aleksiejevas and Luke Hodkinson
Melbourne-based Cor has raised a $2 million pre-seed round to scale Obi, its generative video AI agent that acts as an interactive coach for software onboarding and education. Led by Rampersand, with Archangel, Skalata and Black Sheep Capital participating, the round backs Cor’s push to solve a widening industry problem: how to teach customers to use your product and retain them. According to Cor, companies spend $300–400 billion on software R&D annually, yet 80% of features go unused.
Unlike text-only chatbots, Obi joins users via live video, watches their screens, and provides real-time verbal guidance, effectively acting like an on-demand customer success manager. Co-founder Mantas Aleksiejevas says existing AI tools “can’t maintain context long enough” to guide users through complex workflows, leaving most customers without proper onboarding. Obi aims to deliver “white-glove” experiences to the long tail, typically 85% of users who never receive hands-on support.
Cor claims that its interactive agent, Obi, is 80–90% cheaper than a human CSM. Early adopters like Sophiie AI and Canibuild say Obi already handles hundreds of onboarding sessions monthly. The company will use the fresh capital to scale sales, growth and operations as it targets hyperscaling software teams struggling to keep customer onboarding aligned with rapid product development.
Due diligence: Overnight Success, Business News Australia
Inaam raises $500k pre-seed to launch impact investment platform
Founders: Arjun Agarwal
Melbourne-based impact investing platform Inaam has raised a $500,000 pre-seed round to launch its platform aimed at helping young people invest responsibly and measure the real-world impact of their money.
The round was backed by Startupbootcamp’s Sustainable Fintech Fund, Hatcher+ VC, and angel investors, including Startmate mentors, ASX50 executives, prominent women investors and several family offices.
Founded by Arjun Agarwal, Inaam offers custom micro-portfolios from $10/month, embedding financial literacy and allowing users to track tangible outcomes such as trees planted, renewable energy generated, or carbon avoided. Agarwal says building a regulated investment fund was the biggest barrier to entry and a milestone rarely achieved.
Agarwal’s motivation is deeply personal: after his father lost his entire fortune due to poor financial management, Agarwal set out to build a transparent, values-led investment platform that prevents others from facing the same fate.
Inaam positions itself as an antidote to ESG greenwashing, applying a three-part framework, financial soundness, impact contribution and leadership integrity, and excluding companies like Tesla that fail its supply-chain and governance screens.
The app is designed to feel more like Duolingo than a brokerage, targeting 18–30-year-olds with gamified explainers and daily financial literacy prompts. The 13-person team is now expanding as Inaam gears up for its next round and broader market launch.
Due Diligence: SmartCompany
Detail Earth snags $1.5M to capture ultra-high resolution imagery of Australia and SE Asia
Founders: Thomas Tadrowski, Amir Farhand, and late co-founder Brett Johnson.
Detail Earth, a Perth startup built by a whos-who of Australia’s geospatial veterans, has raised $1.5 million to take on the $6 billion global mapping market with ultra-high-resolution aerial imagery and an AI-driven distribution engine.
The seed round was led by FundWA, with private investors from Australia and Southeast Asia backing what founder Amir Farhand has coined the emerging “map mafia” a team with prior wins across Nearmap, Aerometrex, Soar and mining tech. Nearmap founder Stuart Nixon has also joined as an adviser.
The company sees its biggest opportunity in Southeast Asia, where cities like Manila lack the resolution and mapping frequency available in markets such as Sydney. Detail Earth is building transportable camera pods that attach to Cessna 172s, allowing the aircraft to fly below cloud level and capture extremely high-resolution imagery. The plan is to map major cities in Australia and Asia three times a year, with Perth to be captured before Christmas, ahead of launch. The aerial photos have a resolution down to 5 cm pixel resolution
Distribution is where the team believes previous ventures fell short. Detail Earth will lean on Farhand’s existing platform, Soar, a “YouTube for maps” with thousands of contributors, to push imagery to global audiences, enhanced by newly built agentic AI. The startup will use a freemium model, releasing lower-resolution maps for free while paywalling premium data and AI-powered tools.
Due Diligence: Capital Brief
Recovr raises $1M seed round to help retain gym members
Founders: Nick Hunter and Josh Oliver
Recovr, an Adelaide-based retention intelligence platform using AI to stop gym members from quietly drifting away, has raised $1 million to accelerate global expansion and prepare for a 2026 US launch. JWW Capital led the round and follows a period of strong growth in Australia, with a 322% increase in gyms using the platform over the last 6 months and the company's recently announced collaboration with STRONG Pilates.
Recovr’s platform uses behavioural signals, subtle changes in attendance patterns, class preferences or engagement to predict when a member is at risk of dropping off. The system then automates personalised communication so gyms can intervene early, rather than waiting for booking platforms to flag cancellations after the fact.
The company is led by Nick Hunter and Josh Oliver, two operators who have lived the retention problem firsthand. Hunter owns REVL Unley and is closely connected to the KX Pilates franchise network, while Oliver previously served as CTO of F45, overseeing technology deployment across thousands of studios globally. He has now joined Recovr as a co-founder. Recovr was also a participant in the Hyper accelerator during its early stages.
The startup expects to triple ARR in the next year and says many of the brands it already supports operate in the US, setting the stage for its international push.
Due Diligence: Press Release
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🥳 Wins 🥳
Founder Institute ANZ has unveiled eight startups in its Spring cohort, giving founders access to a global support network, post-program assistance and an equity-sharing model that’s helped FI alumni raise more than $1.9B worldwide. The local chapter, led by Benjamin Chong and Paul Krajewski, runs a four-month online accelerator for pre-seed founders. (Startup Daily)
🚑 Chattrly: AI patient-intelligence platform generating real-time, cited insights from electronic health records to help clinicians move faster and safer.
🏭 Net Advantage Business Solutions is Building Delivery Foundry, a tool that identifies operational waste so teams spend more time on high-value work.
🛣️ Dolanto is building software for boards and executives in infrastructure sectors to assess compliance and exposure with a single click instantly.
👨👩👧 Eden & Esther A network of family-friendly co-work / co-care spaces designed to reduce parental burnout and support productive work with on-site childcare.
📚 Economics for Kids Books, games and workshops teaching economic and financial literacy to help kids build confident, informed decision-making skills.
🤝 EngageNow is an AI-powered B2B marketplace matching companies with the right professional service providers.
🤖 Spacium Limited is a conversational app offering an ecosystem of agentic AI assistants to help manage households or small businesses.
🧒 AreaSpec is a platform that matches employer rosters to childcare availability, enabling the deployment of home-based educators within 4–8 weeks for flexible, 24/7 care.
🌳 Unyoked signs a 10-year deal with Forestry England to deploy off-grid cabins across UK public woodlands. (SmartCompany)
Partnership follows years of pitching and a public tender win, giving Unyoked access to the UK’s largest landowner and unlocking high-quality forest-bathing locations. The startup spent the past year on biodiversity surveys and site assessments, aligning its low-impact cabin model with strict environmental constraints.
Despite global expansion momentum — backed by a $28m raise in 2023 — Unyoked rejects “growth at all costs,” prioritising profitability and responsible scaling.
Demand has broadened since the pandemic as companies use nature retreats to combat burnout; Unyoked cites growing corporate wellness adoption.
From its UK beachhead, Unyoked is eyeing Europe and Asia, with Japan a standout thanks to forest bathing culture and booming outdoor recreation trends.
📈 Epiminder listed on the ASX at a $290m market cap, raising $125m to fund the US launch of its implantable epilepsy-monitoring system, GO Minder, in the first half of 2026. (SmartCompany)
Shares opened at $1.50 and traded down to $1.34 on day one. Major shareholder Cochlear holds a 36% stake in the company.
The Melbourne medtech has developed a sub-scalp EEG implant that continuously monitors seizures, a major upgrade over diaries and limited hospital monitoring. Epiminder’s device, manufactured by Cochlear, received FDA approval in April for drug-resistant epilepsy, with a planned US price of US$25,000.
Founded by neurologist Mark Cook, alongside the Bionics Institute, University of Melbourne, St Vincent’s Hospital and Cochlear, the company traces its origin to Cook’s early efforts to understand his father’s poorly controlled epilepsy.
📆 Notice Board 📆
🌏 Demo the Future, Techstars Tech Central Sydney Accelerator Demo Day is this Monday! And is bringing 2,500+ founders, investors, and innovators together for one epic night.
🚀 See 12 bold startups take the stage, Mon, 8 Dec 2025 | 6–8 pm | Darling Harbour Theatre, ICC Sydney 👉 Register now
LaunchVic is running a confidential 10-minute survey to understand what support local founders need next — with all responses anonymised.
If you’re a Victorian founder, share your experience before 17 December to help shape the ecosystem’s future. Take the Founder Survey.
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 💁 The Next Chapter: Relevancy and Reinvention - Bruce Buchanan, CEO and Co-Founder, Rokt (Spotify Podcast)
Rokt has been growing 40% YoY for 13 years, and is planning on IPO in the near future. This is a great interview where Bruce talks about how they’ve established a culture of building and of accepting failure.
Bruce also challenges how corporates manage their people, arguing that OKRs and normal forms of management push people to work on their weaknesses, rather than lean on their superpowers.
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