Funding & Investment Milestones

The headline rounds

1. Firmus — US$2 billion Australian AI infrastructure builder (“AI factories,” Project Southgate sites in Tasmania and South Australia, expanding into Indonesia). Strategic equity round led by follow-on cheques from Coatue and Nvidia, with new backers Blackstone and trading firm Jane Street. More than US$3 billion raised in the last 12 months. Valuation reported at “north of US$10.5 billion.” ASX float now expected to slip, possibly to 2027. Around it: Maas Group took $300m of Firmus shares and won $855m of electrical infrastructure work on the rollout. Argo Investments bought in but its CEO said publicly he wasn’t swallowing the valuation whole. ⚠️ Two figures in circulation — see Notes.

2. Heidi Health — Australia’s newest unicorn (pending) Melbourne medical AI that transcribes doctor–patient consults and automates clinical documentation. Closed a $98m Series B at a $704m valuation led by Point72 Private Investments with Blackbird, Headline and Latitude. Then, mid-month, reported to be raising more than $100m at a valuation above $1 billion. ARR has passed US$60m, up from US$50m in April and US$1m in 2024. Software used more than a million times a week across 190 countries. Blackbird calls it the fastest-growing startup ever on its books. ⚠️ The unicorn round was explicitly reported as “not yet completed or guaranteed to close.”

3. Cover Genius — US$100m at a US$1.9 billion valuation Sydney insurtech joins the double-unicorn club, backed by Vista Credit Partners. 50% year-on-year revenue growth, more than $3b in cumulative gross written sales.

4. Airwallex — US$300m Series F, US$11 billion valuation Melbourne-founded cross-border payments. The story worth telling: Blackbird passed on Airwallex in 2016 and finally invested nine years later. Partner Michael Tolo: “We absolutely made a mistake not investing earlier… it’s the most expensive one that we have made at Blackbird!” Airwallex generated more than US$1 billion in annualised revenue in March. Stripe tried to buy it for $1.2 billion in 2018, when it was doing $2m in recurring revenue.

5. Constantinople — $62.5m Australian banking technology, funded by existing investors Square Peg and AirTree. Reported to be on track for a potential $1 billion valuation in its next round.

6. Everlab — A$65 million Series A (filed) Longevity and preventative health screening across 1,000+ diseases. Led by Airtree Ventures, with European fund Plural, existing investors Left Lane Capital and b2venture, plus angels. Originally announced June 2025, formally filed this month.

Growth and Series B

7. Farmbot / Ranchbot — $22m (US$15m) Series B Sydney-born agtech doing satellite-connected water and livestock monitoring. Led by Lewis & Clark Partners, with Fulcrum Global Capital, Builders VC, Level VC, MLA’s Cultiv8 Livestock Technology Fund and long-time backer Macdoch Ventures. Part of the round funds a corporate flip-up: Ranchbot Technology Holdings Inc., a Delaware corporation, becomes the group’s global parent, HQ’d in Fort Worth. 12,000+ customers, ~10 million cattle and 15 million sheep monitored. Good newsletter angle: an Australian agtech that raised to move its parent company offshore.

8. Nbryo — seed doubled from $10m to $20m Brisbane agri-biotech doing bio-digital and robotic mass production of cattle embryos in vitro. Includes $2m from the Sowing the Seeds of Farming Innovation Fund — the Queensland Government’s $30m vehicle managed by QIC Ventures, and that fund’s very first investment. Existing backers the Gates Foundation, AgriZero and Tenacious Ventures followed on. Separately secured $18m in grant funding with research partners.

9. Vessev — A$27m Series A (New Zealand) Auckland-based fully electric hydrofoiling passenger vessels. Led by Blackbird, with GD1 and Rypples joining alongside K1W1, Icehouse Ventures, Shasta Ventures and NZVC. 58 staff. Delivering VS-12 vessels into a future Sydney harbour network; VS-9s expected on Perth’s Swan River in 2027; in Hobart, Fly Derwent has doubled its order to 10 vessels. Local Tasmanian hook.

10. Atmo Biosciences — $12m at a $25m valuation, down nearly 64% Melbourne medtech, ingestible gut-sensing capsules, chasing a new market treating gut side effects of GLP-1 drugs. An unnamed family office cornerstoned the raise and set the terms that reset the valuation — down from $70m. Existing shareholders followed, including Innovation Victoria (formerly Breakthrough Victoria) and former Cochlear CEO Chris Roberts. Japanese pharma Otsuka is on the register. The honest counterweight to the up-round list. Worth including for exactly that reason.

11. Alloy Robotics — US$8m (A$11.5m) seed at a US$80m valuation Sydney-founded, building AI agents that diagnose robot fleet failures. Led by Square Peg, with Blackbird, AirTree and Skip Capital returning from pre-seed. Angels from OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla, Waymo, Halter and Carbon Robotics. Customers include Advanced Navigation and DroneForge.

12. Vexev — $8.6m UNSW medical robotics spinout; autonomous robotic vascular ultrasound. Brings total funding to $27m. Existing investors Blackbird, Neotribe, Startmate and Horizon, plus new backers TreeArc Investment Group, TEN13, Bioshore Ventures and Alumni Ventures. Hit a 94% scanning success rate with non-specialist staff in a multi-site US study. Funds FDA 510(k) work and US commercialisation.

13. Pay.com.au — US$28m (A$39m) Series E Australian payments platform launching PayRewards in the US, targeting small businesses. Takes total funding to US$70m.

Seed and early stage

14. Sophiie AI — $5m seed at a $30m valuation Gold Coast AI receptionist and back office for tradies and service businesses. Backers: Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest and Aussie Angels. Growing 10–15% month on month; 750,000+ calls handled. US launch later this year.

15. Seitec — $4m first close (of a seed round with ~$1m still open) Canberra defence tech; software-defined passive seismic sensing. ACTivate Capital led with $1.5m, joined by Beaten Zone Venture Partners and UNSW. One of the first cheques out of ACTivate, the ACT Government-backed fund. Its UXOTrackS product has reached ADF service entry with paid trials at the Air Warfare System Program Office and the Office of National Intelligence.

16. Zabidou — $3.5m seed Laser-and-camera quality inspection for factory floors. Founded July last year by Cibby Pulikkaseril (previously LiDAR company Baraja). Led by Black Nova, with Main Sequence and Antler. Deployed across 15 sites and six customers. ⚠️ A second source reported A$4.8m — see Notes.

17. Sterling — NZ$3.8m (A$3.15m) seed New Zealand AI autopilot for finance and accounting teams, founded October 2025. Blackbird led, with Rowan Simpson, Eliot Crowther and alumni of Trade Me, Pushpay, Xero and Vend. ~1,200 hours of finance work completed since rolling out in March.

18. Enrola — $2.1m seed Australian AI sales agents, pivoted from a marketplace last September. Led by Purpose Ventures, with Antler, AfterWork Ventures and Skalata following on. 28 customers signed in under 12 months.

19. Bower — $2m pre-seed at a $10m valuation Gold Coast “operating system for scientific work” — voice, video and image capture at the lab bench plus a wearable. Brisbane’s TEN13 led, with Admiralty Capital Group and Edale Capital. Early customers include Mount Sinai Hospital New York and Southern Cross University.

20. Visaible.ai — ~$1m seed Sydney startup that tracks and fixes how hotels surface in AI assistant answers (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity). Led by Blacksheep Capital. Live in Australia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam.

Funds, vehicles and non-dilutive capital

21. Blackbird closes Fund VI at more than $1 billion — the marquee number of the month Australia’s largest VC firm closed its sixth vintage above $1 billion against a $1.2 billion target (revealed accidentally by law firm Gilbert + Tobin in a job ad). Raise began March 2025.

Returned $728 million to investors in 2025 alone, cumulative distributions now past $2.3 billion

Portfolio marked at $10.28 billion across 188 companies — 10 unicorns, five decacorns

Headline 32.24% net IRR across all funds

The first fund took 22 months and 500+ meetings to raise $29 million from 97 individual investors, mostly tech founders. It’s now marked at 43.32x invested capital

Blackbird’s $250,000 seed cheque into Canva in 2013 is now roughly a 10% stake

Vintage-by-vintage TVPI: 2012 43.32x · 2015 15.13x · 2018 5.30x · 2020 2.20x · 2022 1.38x Capital Brief’s fair caveat: the headline IRR is “doing a lot of work carried by the early vintages.”

22. Galileo Ventures — $15m first close of a $30m Fund II Australian pre-seed. LPs named: Innovation Victoria, Artesian Capital, Brad Feld, Michael Donahue, Andy Hamilton and Nicola Kaldor. Unlike Fund I, Fund II reserves capital for follow-ons; targeting 30 companies at $250k–$500k initial cheques. Fund I is at an unaudited 1.8x net TVPI across 25 investments, with Relevance AI, Andromeda, SyncTech and Tixel up more than tenfold in three years.

23. Australian Business Growth Fund doubles its cheque size The $540m government-backed fund doubled its maximum initial SME investment from $15m to $30m, lifted its total limit to $50m, and can now take majority stakes. CEO Anthony Healy said the old $15m cap had been forcing the fund to turn founders away. Targets businesses turning over $10m–$100m.

24. National Reconstruction Fund blows past its target Ended the financial year with $1.7 billion invested, past its $1.5bn target in a year-end rush. CEO David Gall is preparing to deploy a further $2.5 billion over the next 12 months. Included a $120m loan to Wesfarmers-backed modular housing venture Built Living, funding a WA facility making components for up to 2,000 apartments a year from 2028.

25. Two new funding structures worth knowing about

Rampart Capital — a new Australian lender making non-dilutive loans against private company shares to founders and employees. Founded by Trevor Abromowitz, backed by Zip co-founder Larry Diamond and Stake co-founder Matt Leibowitz. Has deployed more than $20 million in 12 months. No equity, warrants or options. LVRs typically under 20%, rates mid-to-low teens.

Tractor Ventures + Kashcade — two of Australia’s most active alternative lenders formalised a partnership expected to channel more than $200 million to tech founders in year one. Tractor co-founder Jodie Imam: “one front door for founders who are looking for capital.”

26. Other vehicles

ACTivate Capital (ACT Government-backed) — $23m first close against a $50m target

GD1 Core Fund II (NZ) — NZ$56.7m first close against a NZ$150m target; about a fifth from NZ “golden visa” holders working at Google, Apple, TSMC, Nvidia and SpaceX

Ampere — Christie Jenkins launching a new fully in-person Australian accelerator writing $200,000 cheques, a year after Techstars Sydney closed

CUREator+ — $13.5m shared across six Australian biomedtech startups via the MRFF (Aleris Therapeutics $2.5m, Frontier Inflammasome $2.5m, Luma Bio $2.5m, Navier Medical $2.13m, Neurotologix $1.95m, WeGuide $1.945m)

Exits and M&A worth naming

27. Everlight Radiology — around $1 billion Australian-founded teleradiology agreed terms with Radiology Partners. A major exit for Livingbridge.

28. Seek is selling its Employment Hero stake Bids landing at the same $2 billion valuation Seek got from KKR last year for a roughly 18% holding, on the market via Goldman Sachs since February. Seek has said it will return around $1 billion to shareholders from its startup portfolio.

29. VALD acquires GymAware — terms undisclosed. Australian sports tech buying the velocity-based training system used across elite sport, universities and defence. VALD now serves 15,000+ organisations in 130 countries; follows its acquisition of US platform BridgeAthletic.

30. Airtree exits DroneDeploy after a US$845m buyout, more than doubling its investment.

31. Eucalyptus / Hims & Hers (context, closed earlier this year) — valued at up to US$1.15 billion (A$1.63 billion). Blackbird backed it at seed and followed on, capturing “the early-stage multiple and the late-stage liquidity.”

32. The big-ticket Australian M&A backdrop — worth one line as scene-setting: Cleanaway/EQT $9.4b · Steadfast/KKR-led consortium $7.7b · Reliance Worldwide/Brookfield $4.1b · oOh!media/I Squared $898m · Tabcorp/BetMakers $267m, plus a five-way contest for FleetPartners that ran nearly every day of the month and closed August with a Sumitomo-led consortium bid at $813.1m.

International, for contrast

33. Alphabet’s $5.5 billion kangaroo bond — the largest local corporate bond issue ever Google’s parent raised A$5.5 billion across three maturities, drawing about $18 billion in bids. The 20-year note priced at a 6.98% yield — the highest rate Alphabet has ever paid on a bond. Bankers hope it pulls other hyperscalers into the Australian market. This is the international story with the most direct Australian relevance.

34. Anthropic’s run-up to a mega-IPO — revenue run rate surpassed US$65 billion; revolving credit facility set to exceed a US$10 billion target; adding Citigroup alongside Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan as IPO advisers, with reports it could aim to raise US$100 billion, matching or beating the US$86 billion SpaceX raised in June. Agreed to spend US$45 billion over six years on compute from Nscale’s West Virginia campus.

35. Nvidia’s US$500 billion financing machine — a “strategic partnership” with Apollo, Blackstone, BlackRock, KKR and Goldman Sachs to raise US$500bn for AI infrastructure build-out. Nvidia disclosed US$42.3 billion in private companies and US$63 billion in public stakes, including a first-time-disclosed US$21 billion stake in SpaceX.

36. Stripe acquires OpenRouter for a reported US$7–7.5 billion — the AI model reseller was last valued at US$1.3 billion in May; its monthly revenue has more than tripled to about US$13 million since April.

37. Bending Spoons buys Airtable for US$1.285 billion — a steep haircut from its US$11 billion valuation in 2021. The clearest single datapoint on the SaaS reset.