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. 🚀
Sponsor shoutout:
I’m also still working with We Are Eight, a recruitment consultancy built specifically for founders, VCs and tech leaders who need to hire well from the jump. As well as helping to hire top tech talent, We Are Eight also offers startups and scaleups Fractional HR + P&C Support from the wonderful and highly talented Abbie Brice, who brings more than 15 years of transformative People and Culture expertise to Founders and their teams. More information below 👇
👀 Headlines 👀
🏛️ Victoria has named its successor to LaunchVic and Breakthrough Victoria: Innovation Victoria, pitched as a one-stop support agency for the state's innovation sector. (Statement from the Premier of Victoria)
The new branding is follow-through on the "New Co" footnote from last fortnight's Victorian budget. Innovation Victoria will absorb both LaunchVic's grant programs and Breakthrough Victoria's investment mandate into a single body, with a chair, board expected to be in place in the second half of 2026.
Breakthrough Victoria CEO Rod Bristow will lead the combined organisation, while LaunchVic's Kate Cornick has already departed for the Tech Council of Australia
John Brumby and Leigh Jasper are stepping down as inaugural chairs of Breakthrough Victoria and LaunchVic, respectively, after five and six years in their roles.
For founders in the mix with LaunchVic funding or grant programs, you can visit their FAQ for some answers; however, current grants will continue as planned.
🏛️ The federal government has paused new applications to its A$392 million Industry Growth Program, with the program "under review" while existing applications continue to be processed. (Startup Daily)
The Industry Growth Program provides an Advisory Service for startups and small and medium enterprises undertaking innovative commercialisation and/or growth projects within the priority areas of the Australian Government’s National Reconstruction Fund (NRF).
It is aligned with the priority areas for the National Reconstruction Fund, including resources, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, transport, medical science, renewables and low emissions technologies, and defence capability.
Once companies received advice, they could choose to apply for: grants of $50,000 to $250,000 to support early-stage commercialisation projects or grants of $100,000 to $5 million for commercialisation and growth projects.
👶👀 Heidi is increasing its parental leave to 26 weeks of paid leave for primary carers and 18 weeks for secondary carers, according to recently posted LinkedIn job ads.
Additionally, they offer a fertility support benefit of $10,000 AUD covering IVF, egg freezing or sperm freezing.
It’s hard to compare this to other scale-ups in Australia. Both Blinq and Lorikeet don't publish their parental leave policies live on job ads. Instant, the e-commerce scale-up doesn’t mention parental leave in their job ads, but does mention wellness stipends and daily team lunches.
💽 Sydney-based quantum computing firm Diraq is the only non-US company to sign a letter of intent under a US$2 billion CHIPS Act funding push, securing US$38 million to scale its silicon spin quantum computing technology. (InnovationAus)
PsiQuantum also received US$100 million under the same program, alongside IBM, D-Wave, Rigetti, and Infleqtion (backed by Breakthrough Victoria).
In the same week, PsiQuantum has abandoned its Brisbane Airport site after two years of no progress, relocating its planned quantum computing facility to Moreton Bay Central in Petrie (Still in Queensland), with a formal groundbreaking scheduled for next month.
The move was driven by energy and infrastructure requirements, with the facility and quantum computer — backed by $940 million in federal and Queensland government funding — still targeted for completion by the end of 2027. (InnovationAus)
🗣️ General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja, one of Canva's major backers, says the $60 billion design company has no need to go public, arguing private markets can support its full growth trajectory without the scrutiny facing listed software peers. (AFR)
Taneja is in Australia, courting superannuation funds, including AustralianSuper, Aware Super, HESTA, and Hostplus, to back General Catalyst's US AI-focused portfolio. General Catalyst has stakes in companies including Anthropic, Anduril and Stripe.
🎓 Icehouse Ventures has launched The Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind programme offering five New Zealand Year 12 students a fully funded scholarship to Crimson Global Academy.
The scholarship is valued at $30,000 and includes $10,000 in equity-free startup funding and a year of mentorship from founders, including Sharesies' Brooke Roberts, Halter's Craig Piggott, and Dawn Aerospace's Stefan and James Powell. Applications close 21 June.
AI broke your Third Party Risk Management program. Now what?
AI is added to your vendor stack faster than your risk program can track it. Data flowing to unapproved tools. Integrations no one scoped. Annual reviews that were already too slow before any of this started.
In this live webinar on May 19, GRC leaders from Vanta and Samsara will show you exactly where traditional TPRM breaks down in an AI-first world — and how one team rebuilt their program to actually keep up. Come for the wake-up call, stay for the playbook.
⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Ordermentum raises $55M to embed AI across hospitality supply chains
Founder: Adam Theobald
Ordermentum, a hospitality technology platform connecting suppliers and venues through a single ordering, payments, and reconciliation system, has raised $55 million in a round led by Five V Capital, following a global process run by Barrenjoey that attracted interest from both domestic and international investors.
The Sydney-based company has spent more than a decade building network density across both sides of the food and beverage market. Each transaction that flows through its platform contributes to a growing dataset. This dataset is now being used to embed AI directly into ordering, pricing, inventory, and payments workflows.
For a venue (cafe, restaurant, bar), instead of calling reps or filling out paper order forms, staff browse a catalogue of 1,000+ suppliers across 25 categories, coffee, produce, meat, packaging, dry goods, and place orders directly through the app. Orders are confirmed instantly; there's no credit-check process to onboard a new supplier; and all invoices and payments flow into a single reconciliation view that syncs with Xero, MYOB, or QuickBooks. The venue can also track spend, monitor costs against margins, and see full order history in one place.
For a supplier (bakery, roaster, distributor), instead of managing orders via phone, text, and spreadsheets, they get a digital storefront where venue customers can browse their catalogue and place orders 24/7. Payments process faster, new venue customers can be onboarded without friction, and they get data on which customers are at risk of churning, how products are performing, and where to focus sales efforts. It integrates with ERP and inventory tools like NetSuite, Cin7, and Unleashed.
The raise follows its acquisition of Foodbomb, and the new capital will fund further product expansion, AI deployment, and targeted acquisitions across the supply chain.
Due Diligence: AFR
August Robotics raises $30m Series B to accelerate buildout of autonomous construction robotics
Founder: Alex Wyatt
Australia's data centre buildout is colliding with a global construction labour squeeze, and the robotics platform aimed squarely at the bottleneck just topped up the tank.
August Robotics, the autonomous construction robotics business with hubs across Australia, the US, Asia and Europe, has raised A$42 million (US$30 million) in Series B funding led by Big Pi Ventures, with participation from existing backers Blackbird, Skip Capital, band Future Family Office, alongside incoming US construction specialist GS Futures.
Founded in 2017 by Alex Wyatt, August Robotics has built a modular platform that ingests project plans, localises robot fleets on-site, and autonomously executes high-precision drilling, marking, and rectification. Its newest product is an autonomous downward-drilling fleet built in partnership with Stanley Black & Decker's DEWALT, already deployed across hyperscale data centre builds in the US and Europe. The company's original robot, Lionel, has marked more than 300 million sq ft of exhibition floor space globally.
The operator uploads a CAD or CSV file of drilling points. That file defines every hole location, diameter and depth for the job. The robot pairs with a separate on-site guiding station. Think of the guiding station as a fixed reference point that the robot triangulates against. Similar to a Roomba in your house.
From there, it's autonomous. AI-powered path optimisation plans the fastest drilling sequence, the robot navigates the slab and executes hole-by-hole. It auto-detects which DEWALT bit is loaded, supports rebar-cutting carbide bits when the path hits steel, and runs AI-enhanced cameras to monitor hole quality and silica dust levels in real time, with automated dust extraction.
The capital will fund production scale-up across August's seven global hubs, including a new EMEA base in Athens and a Data and AI R&D centre in Melbourne.
Due Diligence: August Robotics press release.
InvestorHub locks in A$3M non-dilutive from Lighter Capital as direct-to-investor model picks up speed
Founders: Rod North and Ben Williamson
Investor relations has been one of the last corners of capital markets to digitise meaningfully. Listed companies still juggle CRMs that were never built for shareholders, communications stacks that were never designed for regulatory disclosure, and analytics platforms that stop at price action. The relationship with the retail share register, historically intermediated by brokers and registries, has effectively been outsourced.
InvestorHub, a Melbourne-based direct-to-investor (D2I) software platform for public companies, has secured A$3 million in non-dilutive debt financing from US-based growth lender Lighter Capital. The cheque arrives as InvestorHub crosses 200+ public-company customers across Australia and the UK, with the founders opting against an equity round at this stage in order to lean into pace rather than dilute around it.
The platform unifies investor engagement, content distribution and shareholder analytics into a single workflow. Listed companies can engage directly with their 500,000-plus retail shareholders, turn ASX and LSE regulatory announcements into interactive media, and run CRM-style workflows on top of the share register. The pitch is that retail shareholder relationships are increasingly something listed companies want to own themselves rather than rent through third parties.
Funds will be deployed against tech infrastructure to support customer scale, with continued go-to-market focus on the Australian and UK markets where InvestorHub has built its initial base.
Due Diligence: Press Release
As well as helping to hire top tech talent, We Are Eight also offers startups and scaleups Fractional HR + P&C Support from the wonderful and highly talented Abbie Brice, who brings more than 15 years of transformative People and Culture expertise to Founders and their teams.
Abbie helps growing companies build the people foundations they need: leadership development, employment compliance, organisational change management, but without the full-time overhead.
Abbie has guided companies like Envato, RedBubble, REA, Carsales, Rosterfy, Tactiq, Medigrowth, Packsmith, PlayHQ, and Stile Education through exactly these challenges, helping them build:
Strategic people foundations that scale with growth
Leadership capability that drives high performance
Compliant HR frameworks across jurisdictions
Culture that becomes a competitive advantage
Abbie offers a free HR/P&C Discovery call for any Founders who are keen to get a sense of where they're at and what they need to think about/action before they start scaling. You can check out her pitch deck here.
🤝 M&A 🤝
🤝 New Zealand-based EnergyTech Factor has been acquired by ASX-listed Gentrack for up to NZ$34.9 million, two years after launching. (GenTrack Announcement, NZ Herald)
Factor is a Wellington-based SaaS platform that provides forecasting and pricing tools for energy utilities. It replaces manual spreadsheet-based pricing models with an API-first engine that can handle complex energy contracts — including dynamic EV tariffs, battery optimisation, power purchase agreements, and embedded networks — across multi-site portfolios. It integrates with CRMs, meter data managers, and billing systems, and connects with Salesforce Energy & Utilities Cloud.
The structure is NZ$24 million upfront plus a NZ$10 million earnout tied to future growth targets. For Gentrack, the deal deepens its utility software footprint in demand-side energy data. For the Factor founders, Jessica Venning-Bryan (CEO) and Simon Pohlen, it's a solid, quick exit.
Prior to the acquisition, the company had raised $3 million in seed funding.
🚀 Wins 🚀
⛓️ Sydney crypto fintech Block Earner has been granted an Australian Credit Licence by ASIC, becoming one of the first crypto-backed lenders to formally hold the licence in Australia.
The ACL formalises Block Earner's position in regulated crypto-backed lending - a notable progression for a company that has been operating in a contested regulatory grey zone for several years.
🌱 South Australian space radar startup AICRAFT and Brisbane hydrogen-electric aircraft maker Stralis Aircraft have landed state grants this week. (InnovationAus)
Adelaide-based space tech firm AICRAFT has secured support from South Australia's Manufacturing Growth Accelerator program to develop a lightweight AI-enabled radar system capable of beaming live Earth imagery from microsatellites.
The company will partner with Flinders University's Factory of the Future to deploy its Pulsar Pro edge computing system and Leoflect Spaceborne SAR technology on 100 kg-class satellites, with a space demonstration planned for mid-2027.
Brisbane-based hydrogen-electric aircraft startup Stralis Aircraft has secured a fresh grant for its work to commercialise the 15-seat B1900D-HE (expected 2027) and 50-seat SA-1-HE (expected 2030) regional aircraft. You can check out their aircraft here.
🌏 👩🌾 Six UK agritech startups are heading to New Zealand in June and October 2026 under the Innovate UK Global Incubator Programme, partnering with NZ accelerator Sprout Agritech for field visits, industry introductions, and pilots. The UK startups are keen to meet local investors, too.
Cleobury Project Management — converts agricultural waste like slurry into nutrient-standardised fertiliser powders
Galebreaker — AI-optimised automated ventilation and sensing for livestock housing
GyroPlant — reusable plant-support systems replacing single-use growing media in hydroponic setups
HiFe Plants — developing non-GM high-iron pea varieties for functional food ingredients
Polysolar — lightweight, flexible solar PV designed for polytunnels and protected cropping
x10NI — digital-twin and MRV platform tracking carbon and nutrient flows across livestock supply chains
📆 Notice Board 📆
💄 L'Oréal has opened applications for the 2026 Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Program, offering ANZ startups a fully funded commercial pilot with one of L'Oréal's 40 global brands plus a year-long mentorship.
Local delivery partners are Stone & Chalk and HEC Paris Incubation & Acceleration Center. Applications close 3 July 2026. ANZ finals in September, apply here.
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)
I’ve embedded the tweet with the video below, but I found this a really simple explanation of how AI-enabled engineering teams are using Claude within their workflows and how they’ve enabled anyone on the team, not just the engineers, to prototype features and ideas.
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will