Company
Space agency and customer of Advanced Navigation
Every investor coverage indicates participated in a round NASA raised.
Companies NASA 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dr Michael Smart | Research Scientist (former) | Startup Daily, SmartCompany, @AuManufacturing |
| Jared Isaacman | Administrator | Defence Connect, TechCrunch Venture |
| Jonathan Stock | Chief Scientist for Innovation | Defence Connect, Startup Daily |
| Pamela Melroy | Deputy Administrator (former) | SmartCompany, Startup Daily (30 Jun 2026), Startup Daily (25 Jun 2026), Defence Connect |
| Professor Daniel Shaddock | Engineer (former) | SmartCompany (21 Jun 2024), SmartCompany (19 Jun 2024) |
Stories naming NASA. Where several outlets covered the same round, they are bundled under whichever ran the fullest account.
Agscent, a NSW agtech venture that reads cattle breath for pregnancy, illness and methane, has secured $5 million from Scale Investors and Tundra Capital, valuing it at $26.9 million.
Southern Launch raised a $25m Series A with $10m from the National Reconstruction Fund, led by Brindabella and Company and including ex-Macquarie executives and Coupland Asset Management, to grow headcount and launch services.
Gilmour Space Technologies has appointed ex-NASA deputy administrator and astronaut Pamela Melroy to its board, a move the company says strengthens Australia's sovereign defence space capability.
Navigation technology firm Advanced Navigation has banked a $158 million Series C, with Airtree leading and Quadrant plus the NRFC taking part, funding global expansion and Australian manufacturing scale-up.
Also Dealroom·Tech Funding News - Australia·SmartCompany·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·Forbes Australia
Breakthrough Victoria recounts how its joint fund with La Trobe University seeded hydroponics developer YieldX, now running a commercial greenhouse in Victoria and expanding to India via a deal with Zomato's Hyperpure.
Australian space startup Terram Astra has opened a seed round to fund a sovereign ground-station network near Alice Springs, offering satellite communications and space-junk monitoring for defence and government users.
Brisbane hypersonic aircraft developer Hypersonix Launch Systems has raised a $46 million Series A led by High Tor Capital with Saab, RKKVC, QIC and federal backing, valuing it at $141 million.
Hypersonix, a Queensland company developing hypersonic planes that run on hydrogen, has secured a Series A backed by a UK fund, government investors and Saab.
Also SmartCompany·Dealroom
Crunchbase News profiles 14 venture-backed companies its predictive models flag as likely IPO candidates, from Stripe to Sierra Space, recapping their funding histories, valuations and financial milestones.
NASA confirmed the Australian-built Roo-ver will reach the Moon by 2030 under its Artemis program. The ELO2 consortium, technically led by Lunar Outpost Oceania of Melbourne, has $42 million in Australian Government backing.
Q-CTRL has won $38 million of DARPA defence contracts to build GPS-independent quantum navigation technology, working alongside Lockheed Martin on jam-proof sensors.
Also Defence Connect
Agtech spin-out Gaia Project Australia has raised $1.7 million from Breakthrough Victoria, La Trobe University's Eagle Fund, Mandalay Venture Partners and LaunchVic to commercialise plant-spacing technology that lifts leafy green yields.
Melbourne agtech YieldX has raised seed capital from the Eagle Fund, Mandalay and LaunchVic's Hugh Victor McKay Fund to commercialise its NASA-recognised growing technology, with first commercial farm builds planned in Victoria and India.
AgTech firm YieldX has attracted a $1.7 million round, with Breakthrough Victoria and La Trobe University's Eagle Fund contributing $500,000 apiece alongside Mandalay Venture Partners and LaunchVic's Hugh Victor McKay Fund.
Paladin Space has received a $100,000 South Australian Government Seed-Start grant to develop AI debris-identification with AIML, and will pitch SpaceX and NASA during a US trade delegation.
Also @AuManufacturing
Two South Australian space companies, Safety from Space and AICRAFT, each received $100,000 from the state's new Space Collaboration and Innovation Fund for lunar rescue beacons and AI-powered radar payload projects with international partners.
Also @AuManufacturing
Perth consortium AROSE has unveiled Roo-ver, its Trailblazer-funded moon rover prototype, at Parliament House; the Australian-built machine will study the lunar surface carrying a NASA instrument.
Roundup of nine local startups that together banked a combined $38m-plus this week, spanning precision instruments, proptech, adtech, robotics, food, energy storage and AI, with several earlier raises recalled.
Also Australian FinTech·Startup Daily·SmartCompany·AgFunderNews
Victorian government-backed investor Breakthrough Victoria has put $15 million into Liquid Instruments, a maker of reconfigurable instruments expanding to Melbourne; earlier raises by Acorn Capital and Anzu Partners are also recalled.
Also SmartCompany
Opinion piece by Advanced Navigation's CEO in an @AuManufacturing series arguing for space R&D investment, citing the company's $5.2 million Australian Space Agency grant and Space Machines' satellite launch.
Australian consortium ELO2 has shown its Moon rover prototype in Adelaide, competing to collect lunar soil for NASA, with support under the national space agency's Trailblazer program.
Twelve Australian spacetech companies received Moon to Mars Supply Chain Capability grants totalling over $9m for NASA's Artemis, with NextAero, Neumann Space, Metakosmos, Valiant Space, Gilmour Space Technologies and HEO Robotics among those funded.
Also Startup Daily·SmartCompany·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing
Australia's government announces over $9 million in Moon to Mars grants for twelve space projects aligned with NASA's Artemis, helping local companies enter global supply chains.
Profile of a Brisbane predictive-biometrics wearable maker courting NASA's Artemis III mission, alongside news that it and 34 other Queensland exporters received Go Global Export Program grants.
Consortium ELO2, co-led by EPE and Lunar Outpost Oceania, reveals a prototype rover that could become Australia's first Moon rover, developed under the Australian Space Agency's Trailblazer program for a possible NASA Artemis mission.
Profile of climate tech startup Ubiquitherm, which is developing nanomaterial-based temperature control, covering its origin story, its co-founders' backgrounds, and their acceptance into the Startmate accelerator.
Lockheed Martin has chosen Australian firms Axiom and Nupress to machine components for the Orion spacecraft, NASA's Moon mission, with each already holding contracts under Lockheed's Australian industry program.
A public competition to name Australia's Trailblazer lunar rover has opened, with the two consortiums building rival designs, AROSE and ELO2, each holding $4 million in grants for early prototype work.
OIF Ventures has locked in $55 million from investors for a new Opportunity Fund aimed at later-stage tech companies, and the article recalls its earlier backing of Advanced Navigation and Go1.
Holon has opened a renewable-powered Filecoin data storage facility in Hamilton, New Zealand, its first green Web 3.0 storage for the ANZ region, with all 27 petabytes of capacity pre-sold before launch.
A weekly funding roundup covering Mindset Health's Series A, grants for two lunar rover consortiums, Pivot's raise, and Invest Inya Farmer's seed round.
WA space consortium AROSE has received a $4 million Australian Government grant under the Space Agency's Trailblazer program to design a lunar rover for NASA, leading a sixteen-organisation group including Fugro and Nova Systems.
Also SmartCompany·@AuManufacturing·@AuManufacturing·Defence Connect·@AuManufacturing
An opinion piece arguing AUKUS Pillar Two reaches beyond submarines into quantum, autonomy, AI and hypersonics, citing Australian players including Internet 2.0, Anduril Australia and Hypersonix.
Five startups joining Tennis Australia's inaugural AO StartUps accelerator cohort have been named, each trialling its technology at the Grand Slam tournament; two further participants are still to be revealed.
News roundup: EMVision receives a $2.5 million NSW medical devices grant, ADDE appoints a liquidator, DroneShield wins an order, SciDev and Q-CTRL name executives, and ReNu Energy signs a non-binding term sheet with HESTA.
Also @AuManufacturing
News roundup: Elsight locks in $8 million through convertible notes; Northrop Grumman extends its Quickstep supply agreement; Titomic grows US sales; Fleet Space to survey for Core Lithium; Venture Catalyst Space applications open.
A manufacturing roundup covering a China milk powder supply deal, a methane emissions incentive, a nasal spray distribution agreement, a university space course, a government tax refund, and two companies' fresh capital raises.
Weekly tech wrap: cloud-market trends, Tiger Global's cheques into Stake, Shippit and Carma, new VC funds, several acquisitions, grocery delivery startups Send and Quicko collapsing, and Elaine Stead joining M8 Ventures.
Also Startup Daily