3106 rounds · 1963 startups · 3603 investors
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Amount confirmed Amount is an estimate
Square Peg looks back on putting US$6 million into Airwallex's Series A+ alongside Tencent, Sequoia China, Gobi Partners and MasterCard, explaining why cross-border payment infrastructure needs fixing.
Square Peg's investment note explains its reasons for backing Deputy's US$81 million Series B with IVP, Openview and Equity Venture Partners, describing the workforce scheduling platform's growth, customers and team.
Square Peg's investment note explains its A$5.5m Series A backing of AgriDigital, a grain supply-chain platform, citing its blockchain first and a founding team with deep agriculture experience.
Square Peg Capital's investment note explaining why it led energy retailer Amber's seed round, covering Amber's wholesale-priced electricity model, its founders' backgrounds, and the case for pass-through renewable energy pricing.
Nine companies received Defence Innovation Hub contracts totalling $19 million to develop technologies for the Australian Defence Force, with RFTEQ winning the largest single award of $5.31 million.
Blackbird Ventures plans a ten-figure 2022 raise split across funds for Australian and Kiwi startups plus top-ups to winners. February 2022 was near-record for Australian startup funding, including Scalapay's $692 million Series B.
One-click checkout startup Fast, founded by Dominic Holland and Allison Barr Allen, is shutting down a year after a $131 million Series B backed by Stripe and Addition, amid weak revenue and fading investor appetite.
Also Startup Daily
Australian Vanadium completed a bankable feasibility study for its Western Australian vanadium project, which recently received a $49 million federal government grant, and will now seek project financing.
Icehouse Ventures has made a first NZ$5 million close toward a $20 million second ArcAngels fund for women-led startups, with Gattung, Rowsell and K1W1 among backers; its predecessor fund backed 31 ventures.
Linktree's co-founders have launched Side Stage Ventures, a collective investing in very young creative-tech companies; it has already backed several startups, and associate Ben Grabiner's music platform Platoon was bought by Apple.
Also Australian FinTech
Podcast interview with Annie Brox, founder of Western Australian agtech startup Origo farm, covering her path from Norway and telecoms into building IoT connectivity products for farmers, including two government grant wins backing the business.
GALE Pacific has received a $70,000 grant through the Innovative Manufacturing CRC's activate program for an eight-month fabric development project with Deakin University at its Carbon Nexus facility.
Zetaris has banked a $30 million raise at a valuation topping $110 million, with Exto Partners leading and several co-investors; the company earlier won Ingram Micro's 2019 Comet Competition, worth up to $1.5 million.
Also ARN (ARNnet)·ARN (ARNnet)
Square Peg marks small-business lender Prospa's stockmarket debut, recalling its 2017 investment and praising founders Greg and Beau for clarity, culture and resilience after a shelved float the year before.
NeuRizer appoints South Korea's DL E&C for carbon capture design at its South Australian coal-to-urea project and holds a urea offtake deal with Daelim; the piece also recalls an $18 million June capital raise.
Fractional investing platform DomaCom appoints Dr John Hewson chair, John Elkovich CEO and Angela Williams a director, while Arthur Naoumidis departs; the company also signals plans to relist on the ASX.
Chip startup milliBeam announces a $750,000 seed round from CSIRO's venture arm Main Sequence, funding its mmWave 5G beamforming technology and a planned Sydney research centre.
Property investor GI Partners has wrapped up the initial raise for its new fund backing technology and life science real estate, collecting $1.45 billion, surpassing expectations.
Australia's Defence Innovation Hub has granted ten companies defence contracts totalling $23 million, the largest being $5.88 million to A.W. Bell Machinery, in an announcement made by minister Melissa Price.
SafetyCulture has bought lone-worker safety app SHEQSY for $6 million, having backed it early; the article also recalls SafetyCulture's $99 million round, Series C, EdApp purchase and Unleash Live Series A.
PledgeMe's Australian crowdfunding arm, bought by Finley Capital Partners, rebrands as Microwd under new Head of Equity Crowdfunding Megan Owen to back female-led startups; past campaigns include Mungalli Creek Dairy and Food Connect Shed.
Seven Kimberley projects share $773,000 in Western Australian government regional development grants, with Marine Biomedical receiving $200,000 toward a laboratory making its pearl-derived bone substitute PearlBone.
Cloudera's APAC vice president Mark Micallef takes charge of Anaplan across Asia Pacific, succeeding Karen Clarke, who shifts to a Americas role, shortly after Thoma Bravo agreed to buy the software vendor.
Revolut brings on Charles Debonneuil, ex-Intrepid Group president and Lazada co-founder, to lead its Asia-Pacific growth push as regional general manager. The piece also recalls Lazada's 2016 sale to Alibaba.
DiviPay has hired former Citi banker Damon Hauenstein as CFO, citing rapid growth, over 1,500 paying customers and a successful funding round earlier this year.
Funding.com.au has completed a $37.5 million debt and equity raise, with a fund managed by MA Financial Group becoming its first institutional debt investor and anchor backer EVP increasing its equity stake.
Also Techboard
Crunchbase's monthly tracker shows 34 firms newly valued at $1 billion-plus in March 2022, fewer than prior months; Australians Linktree and Immutable joined, Getir and Blockchain.com became decacorns, and Fair and Blinkit were acquired.
SafetyCulture buys safety app SHEQSY for $6 million. The piece also recalls its EdApp takeover, seed backing of SHEQSY, and an $8 million Series A in Unleash Live.
Case study on how CSIRO's bioinformatics teams independently validated the cancer-target findings of Amaroq Therapeutics, a New Zealand biotech whose $14m seed round was funded by the Brandon Capital-managed MRCF and others.
New Zealand cancer biotech Amaroq Therapeutics had its lncRNA drug targets independently validated by CSIRO, according to this profile, which also recalls its $14 million seed round and support from Callaghan Innovation.
Canberra approved a $1.25bn loan to Iluka Resources under its Critical Minerals Facility, funding the nation's first fully integrated rare earths refinery at Eneabba, WA; Export Finance Australia will administer the debt.
The federal government announced a $41 million defence contract for NSW engineering group Varley, part of a wider deployable infrastructure investment; the piece also notes $784 million in recent manufacturing grants.
Australia's grape and wine industry body received a federal grant to boost wine exports, its second such award, while a Wine Australia-led consortium secured separate funding for a supply-chain data platform.
US activewear brand Vuori plans its first international expansion into Australia and other markets, after raising $400 million from SoftBank's Vision Fund in October 2021 at a $4 billion valuation.
Lumir Ventures announces it joined Scopio Labs' Series C round, led by an undisclosed strategic partner with several other investors, funding the diagnostic imaging company's global expansion.
US investor Tim Draper has led a pre-seed round in Australian drone reforestation startup Lord of the Trees, raising US$1.25 million (A$1.67 million) at a A$7 million valuation.
Also AgFunderNews
Alberts announces its investment in Pivot Professional Learning, whose survey platform measures student and teacher wellbeing so schools can intervene early on youth mental health.
Pharmacy supply-chain marketplace Directo has raised a $2.3 million seed round led by Investible to scale its platform connecting hundreds of Australian pharmacies with suppliers and wholesalers.
Also Techboard
Tidal Ventures reflects on its investment in Hone, an agtech startup using spectroscopy for crop data, and how Grant McCarthy and Wendell Keuneman helped the founding team focus on its market.
Blackbird profiles Lucy Mort, co-founder and CEO of creator monetisation app Sunroom, covering its origins, her Hinge background, and the seed round's majority-female investor base.
Profile of Subundl, a SaaS platform co-founded by Jess Wright and Jamie Turner letting eCommerce retailers build customised subscription models, after Antler backed the startup at pre-seed stage.
Aura Group announces Calvin Ng's appointment as a director of portfolio company BNK Banking, then analyses Ray Dalio's work on shifting world orders and whether Bitcoin could become a global reserve currency.
Lendi Group has appointed Antoinette Tyrrell, formerly of Westpac, Coca-Cola, Vodafone and Retirement Essentials, as its Head of Brand to lead marketing following the 2021 Aussie-Lendi merger.
ABS data shows Australians consuming more plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, alongside recent capital raises by alternative protein startups and large government grants for a South Australian legume protein project.
Also SmartCompany·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing·Startup Daily·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing
Wrap-up of conference sessions in Darwin on consumer data, ESG lending and provenance trends for cattle businesses, noting US virtual-fencing startup Vence securing corporate backing from Shell and Merck.
Manufacturing roundup: 3D Metalforge raises funds via placement, Recce Pharmaceuticals lands an R&D tax rebate, CoDeAc unveils a nuclear detection solution, A2EP plans a webinar, and Varley Rafael advances local missile production.
Wisr has appointed Marley Spoon marketing chief Kate Whitney as a non-executive director from April 2022, following Cathryn Lyall's January appointment and lifting female board representation to 40%.
GrainCorp announces a government-funded 4.4 million dollar plant-protein research partnership with CSIRO and v2food, aiming to build local processing of canola, soy, fava bean and chickpea proteins, with the project due to finish in 2023.
Profile of Reach Alternative Investments, which opens institutional-grade private equity funds to sophisticated investors; covers its founding via Antler, an education partnership and recent advisory board and executive hires.
Payment technology firm DataMesh Group has raised $12 million in a pre-Series A round, with NAB Ventures joining as a new investor alongside continued backing from Australian merchants including Peregrine Group's chairman.