Eleven Aussie AI startups we’re excited to watch in 2024

While 2023’s social feeds were dominated by insufferable AI Bros dispensing ChatGPT hacks – who were all most likely CryptoBros last year – out in the real world Australian innovators have been hard at work building exciting startups powered by artificial intelligence.

Here are eleven we’re particularly excited to watch in 2024.

aKin: AI robots for people with disabilities

Focused on building an empathetic AI model delivering social impact, founder Liesl Yearsley’s aKin is developing a more complex LLM than those popularised by Chat GPT and Google Bard. Currently being trialed at the University of Sydney in robots designed to help people with disabilities, Akin is also developing a generative AI based on chaos theory.

Eyeonic: AI-powered glaucoma testing

Founded by opthalmologist Simon Skalicky, medtech Eyeonic uses artificial intelligence to enable home glaucoma testing on laptop or tablet screens. There are 80 million people in the world with glaucoma, and in the developing world, 90% of cases go undetected: “That’s a huge missed opportunity to save sight,” says Prof Skalicky.

Haast: Digital marketing compliance

Canberra-based digital compliance startup founded by three former ANU students that is deploying AI to help companies with marketing compliance across their own and third-party assets, monitoring text, images and video. Haast’s AI is designed to help firms find and resolve marketing compliance issues before they result in brand damage, lost revenue or costly fines.

Harrison.ai: Improving the odds of IVF success

Aussie healthtech utilising AI to alleviate strain on healthcare systems around the world, by helping healthcare professionals with diagnosis, treatment design and image analysis. Co-founded by brothers Dr Aengus Tran and Dimitry Tran, the startup’s medical imaging AI Ivy had an early win, successfully predicting the likelihood of pregnancy by analysing embryo videos.

Heidi Health: Streamlining patient care

Built by doctors, designers and engineers aiming to advance the transition to AI-supported healthcare, Heidi Health was founded by Dr Thomas Kelly, Waleed Mussa, and Yu Liu to free up doctors’ time. August’s $10 million Series A, led by Blackbird, is helping Heidi Health scale their Clinic AI solution automating pre-consults and letting patients manage their own bookings/payments.

Leonardo.AI: Hyperrealistic image generation

Co-founded by Jachin Bhasme, JJ Fiasson and Chris Gillis, and heading into 2024 on the back of a massive $47 million raise, Leonardo.Ai’s seven million users give it one of the biggest generative AI communities globally, with more than 700 million images already generated since its late 2022 launch, and some 4.5 million images being generated each day on the platform.

Relevance AI: Low-code workplace automation

Aiming to “scale work with computing, not headcount” Relevance AI provides businesses with low-code tools to build custom AI agents to autonomously perform detailed workflows or tasks. The startups wants to to improve worker performance by going hard on automation. Relevance AI says 6,000 companies have registered to use the platform in the last three months alone.

Rich Data Co: Ethical AI decision-making for banks

Bringing ethical AI into financial services to use data for good, Ada Guan’s globally focused startup is improving access to credit and closing the financial inclusion gap via an AI-powered software-as-a-service product that helps banks serve people with limited or poor credit history – by going beyond traditional credit history sources.

Sapia.ai: Improving hiring diversity

One of Australia’s most quietly successful artificial intelligence companies, Barb Hyman’s Sapia.ai is an AI-driven recruiting engine programmed against biases such as gender, race, class, and education history and instead testing candidates’ strongest aptitude for a particular role. It is already being used by companies such as Qantas, Bunnings, and Woolworths.

SourseAI: Telco customer identification via AI

Led by “evangelist for women in AI” CEO Tanya Hyams-Young, SourseAI recently bagged $3m to expand their AI platform, which helps the telco industry aggregate and analyse data to acquire and retain customers. Currently used by three-quarters of Australian telecoms, SourseAI is now focused on global expansion, with an initial focus on Europe.

Traffyk.ai: AI-based employee communications

Founded by former CBA communications boss Kate Abrahams, this AI-based employee communications startup aims to help businesses become more efficient and productive by calculating the cost of time spent writing emails and attending meetings, and producing recommendations for better, more strategic, impactful internal communications.