Company
Every investor coverage indicates participated in a round Meta raised.
Companies Meta acquired or merged with, per published coverage. Buying a company is not investing in one: nothing here counts in the deals column.
| Name | Role | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Alexandr Wang | Forbes Australia, Rampersand, siliconrepublic.com | |
| Ben Sand | Founder | Folklore Ventures |
| Catherine Porter | Executive (former) | AFR Technology |
| Jay Parikh | Engineering Chief (former) | siliconrepublic.com |
| Joel Pobar | Senior Engineering Organisational Leader (former) | Ten13 (30 Jul 2024), Ten13 (28 Mar 2024) |
| Mark Zuckerberg | CEO (former) | Square Peg Capital portfolio, Square Peg Capital, TechCrunch Venture, SmartCompany, Startup Daily |
| Mike Schroepfer | Chief Technology Officer (former) | SmartCompany |
Stories naming Meta. Where several outlets covered the same round, they are bundled under whichever ran the fullest account.
Metal, co-founded by Loong Wang and Catherine Porter, completed a roughly $50 million seed round with Airwallex and its venture arm Capital 49 as joint leads, per new filings.
Weekly roundup reporting Australian startup funding rounds and government grants, a venture fund close, agreed acquisitions, an IPO pricing, a collapse, plus executive hires and AI policy developments.
Analysis tracing Oliver Curtis from an insider trading prison term to his central role in Firmus's planned $7.2 billion Australian sharemarket listing, with Blackstone and Nvidia among its existing backers.
Quarterly report from the Defender Global Fund flagging an 84.7% portfolio return, profits taken on SharonAI following its February Nasdaq uplisting, SharonAI's GPU collaboration with NVIDIA, and fresh investor subscriptions.
Defender's quarterly newsletter reports an exceptional quarter for its global fund, headlined by portfolio holding SharonAI, which surged after a February Nasdaq uplisting and an NVIDIA GPU deployment partnership.
Skalata Ventures unveils its October 2021 seed intake of 13 startups, among them Ardacious and Strength By Numbers, and notes alumnus Preezie recently secured a $5.5 million Series A.
An AFR managed-funds topic page: a star small-caps deputy goes solo with a new Sydney firm, Gigacomm buys rival DGtek, Google plans a multibillion-dollar domestic bond, plus fund manager and market stories.
Ten13 led Bower's A$2m pre-seed round for a voice-first AI assistant that helps scientists capture lab observations hands-free, founded by a four-person team with backgrounds at Microsoft, Google and Atlassian.
Also Startup Daily
Forbes Australia reports the workplace-safety unicorn's new name and its expanding insurance arm, with founder Luke Anear back as chief executive.
Ten13's post explains why it led Flyweel's pre-seed round with QIC, Antler and angel investors, backing a platform bringing real-time financial visibility and funding to advertising spend.
Property investment advisory Dashdot has entered voluntary liquidation after seven years, with co-founder and CEO Glenn McGrath citing economic conditions, federal budget tax reforms and rising Meta advertising costs; clients face losing upfront fees.
Rampersand's April newsletter: an essay on AI services startups, model releases from Anthropic and Meta, Firmus Technologies' $505 million raise, Dexibit's sale to accesso, plus portfolio jobs, events and market commentary.
Also Dealroom
Design company Canva has bought US marketing AI startup Mango.AI and UK animation platform Cavalry, its fifth acquisition in two years, adding their founders and a chief algorithms officer to its team.
Also Startup Daily·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Startup Daily·Startup Daily
Profile of ARIA Research, Robert Yearsley's audio-based AR startup for blind users, recalling a $2 million NSW Medical Device Fund grant among $11 million raised and targeting the NDIS market.
Startup Daily profiles Juxtabyte, a data governance startup founded by former CBA data governance lead Hugh Le, ahead of the Techstars Sydney 2025 cohort's Demo the Future event.
Makeup accessibility startup ByStorm Beauty took out Enterprising ME's 2025 Kickstarter Challenge in Canberra, receiving $30,000, while four fellow finalists' ventures were each granted $7,500.
Square Peg's half-year investor letter reviews its accelerating AI investing, portfolio companies' progress including several completed raises, listed fund returns, a new data hire, and ongoing fundraising for its 2025 vintage funds.
In its half-year letter, Square Peg explains how it picks AI founders, reports several portfolio companies' recent raises, flags a data engineering hire, and says fundraising for its next funds is well advanced.
Also Tech Funding News - Australia·Forbes Australia·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Startup Daily·Startup Daily
Weekly roundup detailing five Australian startups' raises: a PR platform's Series B, a biotech's post-stealth funding, a defence tech round, a pre-seed voice-AI raise, and a crowdfunding campaign.
Also Startup Daily
Meliora, Clive Dickens' advisory firm, has started backing AI companies alongside a student-focused venture fund that is closing in on its fundraising target.
Also Forbes Australia
EVP sets out its reasoning for backing splose, an AI-native practice management platform for allied health clinics, citing NDIS-driven admin burdens, customer traction and a planned UK expansion alongside Australia and New Zealand.
Aura Group's blog post explains how DeepSeek's R1 reaches near-frontier AI results with far less computing power and why its cheaper, self-correcting methods threaten today's AI incumbents.
Global Sisters' Sister Pitch event with Dentsu steered $1m-plus to a dozen Australian ventures led by women; GTAB Parfum, Soni Health and Chocolate On Purpose were standouts, and Google.org funded a 2023 pilot.
TEN13's investor letter celebrates passing $100 million deployed, plus fresh backing for iion and Switchboard, team promotions, AutoGrab's overseas growth and NZ-arm sale, and the Mr Yum–Me&U merger.
Folklore Ventures Q&A with Strong Compute founder Ben Sand covering its enterprise AI compute offering, community events, grant programs, hiring and his take on how AI market assumptions have shifted.
Forbes Australia profiles Canva's enterprise relaunch after a demo with COO Cliff Obrecht, covering new sales, marketing and HR tools; Airtree's co-founder recalls the firm's early backing of the company.
Weekly roundup of nine Australian startups that together raised over $233 million, led by Hysata's $172 million Series B, with rounds also for V2 Digital, AgriWebb, Disco, Genero, Brainfish, Kite Therapy, Nucanon and Maslow.
SmartCompany's AI column profiles Ovum AI, a Melbourne women's health startup preparing its pilot, which has backing from Wollemi Capital and Nakatomi and plans a crowdfunding round; briefs on other AI news follow.
Weekly roundup detailing funding rounds by five Australian and New Zealand startups: a diversity analytics platform, a thermal energy storage maker, a carbon accounting service, an activated carbon producer, and legal communications software.
Square Peg profiles its Global Tech Fund, a listed-markets strategy applying its venture investing approach to early-stage public tech companies, and outlines its team, edge, and focus on fintech, software and AI.
Also Square Peg Capital
Defender's quarterly investor letter reports its global fund's Q1 2024 performance and public-market moves, and revisits its Series A backing of Lyka Pet Food, an Australian fresh pet food maker building a Victorian facility.
Also Defender AM portfolio·Shearwater Capital portfolio·Business News Australia
Defender's fund letter reports a 2% quarterly return, discusses listed trades including a semiconductor ETF position, and revisits its Series A investment in Australian pet-food maker Lyka Pet Food.
TEN13 announces Joel Pobar, an Anthropic engineering leader formerly at Meta, as its first Venture Partner, reinforcing the firm's AI investing focus; its early bets include Rockfish Data, Arintra and Qsic.
OIF Ventures' year in review: full Eftsure exit, Opportunity Fund close, Visory, DataMasque and Nullify backed, follow-ons at Inspace and Dataweavers, new team members and portfolio milestones.
Also OIF Ventures portfolio·OIF Ventures portfolio·OIF Ventures portfolio
Seven Australian startups together banked over $90 million in the past seven days across venue software, hydrogen aviation, social media, craft brewing, plastics alternatives, aged-care robotics and accountant training.
Also Startup Daily·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Forbes Australia
Sydney HR-and-payroll firm Employment Hero announced a TCV-led Series F reaching unicorn valuation; the profile covers its products, remote workforce and global ambitions, citing rival raises.
Linktree launches a feature letting creators embed their Threads profile and posts on their Linktree pages, following its recent Snap partnership and Threads' rapid user growth.
Defender's quarterly fund letter reports Q2 returns, AI and resources holdings, and portfolio company Lyka's second up-round at a stated US$150 million valuation.
Also SmartCompany·SmartCompany·Techboard·Business News Australia·Forbes Australia
Canva has opened a converted Collingwood warehouse as its new Melbourne office and says it has no layoff plans, citing six consecutive profitable years while hiring continues despite widespread tech sector job cuts.
Melbourne-based Linktree has hired three US executives: Farnaz Azmoodeh as CTO, Sam Rogoway as its first CPO, and Monica Austin as CMO, drawing on backgrounds at Snap, Google, Headspace, Calm, Netflix and Meta.