Venture Down Under 2026

For three days on the Gold Coast, Venture Down Under brought together around 180 venture leaders, international guests from five continents and more than 90% of GPs across Australia and New Zealand.

At the centre of it all was one question: What future is Australia willing to build and back before anyone else can see it?

Across conversations on national ambition, AI, productivity and the future of venture capital, one message kept resurfacing: Australia has the talent and capital. What matters now is having the conviction to use it.

Building Australia’s future

Dr Larry Marshall opened VDU with a challenge to think beyond individual companies and focus instead on the markets Australia could create.

His message was simple: stop debating which future is most likely. Look at what is becoming inevitable, identify what is holding it back and ask whether Australia can solve that problem better than anyone else.

When the answer is yes: “Don’t build a company, build an industry.”

It set the tone for the three days ahead. Australia’s next chapter cannot simply be an imported Silicon Valley playbook. It requires its own market vision, ambition and conviction.

AI, capability and ambition

Professor Anton van den Hengel took that conversation into AI, warning against building businesses that rely entirely on capability developed elsewhere.

“The value is in the capability layer, not the applications.”

For Australia, the opportunity is not simply to adopt AI, but to build genuine capability and competitive advantage within it.

As Anton put it: “We’ve got great people, we’ve got great money. The problem is that we lack ambition.”

That idea carried throughout VDU.

Where Australia fits

The East Meets West panel brought together perspectives from Silicon Valley, Asia and Australia to explore how capital, technology and opportunity are shifting globally.

The conversation ranged from increasingly ambitious US investment theses to Australia’s position between East and West, particularly as AI drives greater investment into infrastructure and energy.

HSBC Chief Economist Paul Bloxham widened the lens further, pointing to Australia’s productivity challenge and the role business will need to play in solving it.

“Productivity doesn’t come from policymakers. Ultimately it comes from businesses.”

For a room full of people deciding where capital flows next, the message was clear.

More than a conference

Of course, VDU has never just been about what happens on stage.

The VC Olympics returned with Topgolf, jet skiing, pickleball, basketball and paint-and-sip, before around 180 venture capitalists transformed into pirates, mermaids, sailors and assorted sea creatures for the VDU party.

The Capital Cruise aboard The Yot Club, a live recording of The Contrarians and smaller Distillery conversations created space for the discussions to continue well beyond the formal program.

That is ultimately what makes VDU different.

For three days, the venture community steps outside the usual cycle of meetings, boards, ICs and fundraising to think together about where the industry, and Australia, goes next.

Nine years after it began as an experiment, Venture Down Under has become the largest gathering of GPs in the region.

This year, the message was one of ambition: Australia already has the science, talent and capital. The opportunity now is to decide what future we want to build and have the conviction to back it.

And, occasionally, to do it dressed as pirates.

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