Nine Aussie startups that raised more than $104 million this week
It’s been another huge week for Australian startup raises, with around $104 million invested across nine companies.
Who said VC raises for startups were falling? This week the cash is flowing to the tune of around $104 million — almost double compared to last week.
Sadly we only have business founded by a woman this week, so we’re putting it at the top.
Significant and consistent investment into women-led businesses continues to be a struggle. So if you know of or run one and secure any kind of funding, let us know. We want to highlight you, even if it’s a comparatively smaller amount to the blokes.
DiaperRecycle: $334,000
DiaperRecycle takes disposable nappies and turns them into reusable plastic and cat litter, with an aim to decrease landfill and carbon emissions.
The process has been developed and refined after four years of R&D and testing and is now focusing on its commercial demonstration plant in Melbourne.
The $334,000 cash injection has come from a public investment raise over on the company website. This is just the minimum target and there is still room for stretch goal investment.
Vald: $36 million
Brisbane sports tech company, Vald, has the largest raise this week at $36 million. The round was led by Vistara Growth and the Queensland Investment Corporation.
Some of this money has gone towards scooping up the convertible notes the company issues before it planned to IPO in 2021. These plans are currently on hold.
The company creates both hardware and software solutions for athletes that monitor performance and injuries. The tech is being used in sporting teams across the world, including the NRL here in Australia as well as in the NBA, MLB and English Premier League.
Morse Micro: $30 million
Morse Micro has added an additional $30 million to its Series B fund, which originally consisted of a massive $140 million back in September.
This top-up has been a rush of Superannuation funds including Hostplus, HESTA, TelstraSuper, NGS and UniSuper.
According to the semiconductor maker, the extra cash will be used to help get its new long-range wi-fi chips into more devices sooner.
You can learn more about Morse Micro and its plans from our original story.
FrankieOne: $23 million
‘Regtech’ startup FrankieOne landed $23 million in Series A. While it was led by AirTree Ventures and Greycroft, it was also joined by some big hitters in the crypto space — Binance Labs and Kraken Ventures.
The company developed a single API and dashboard for clients in the banking and fintech spaces to help with onboarding and compliance.
Josef: $5.2 million
Josef is a legal automation startup that just landed $5.2 million in pre-series funding, led by OIF Ventures. It was joined by Carthona Capital, Flying Fox Ventures, Jelix Ventures and Saniel Ventures.
The Melbourne company has created software that allows legal professionals to build tools to automate their work, without any coding experience. This includes drafting contracts, issuing advice and streamlining intake.
The funding will go towards growing the business, including its office space as well as new hires in APAC and the US.
Upollo: $4.1 million
Subscription software platform Upollo has received $4.1 million in early seed funding, led by Index Ventures.
The cash injection coincides with the launch of its platform which works with subscription-based businesses to better understand and retain their users, as well as convert new ones.
Some of the insights it can tap into include customers who are account sharing, using fake phone numbers and email addresses and those who have already used a trial.
In these cases, it can spin this insight into a positive interaction with the customer, by offering a discount if it detects a trial has been used and is being reattempted.
According to Upollo, its early customers have seen a 9x ROI as well as up to $22,000 in APR per day.
Saasguru: $4 million
Square Peg Capital has led a $4 million seed round into Saasguru — an edtech platform with a focus on building cloud cert skills. This comes just 10 months after a $1.3 million ore-seed round.
Black Nova and Antler also participated in the round and were prior investors.
Despite only launching 18 months ago, Saasguru has provided cloud training and certification to 40,000 people across 20 countries with an aim to help in what it is calling a ‘cloud skills crisis’ in the workforce.
Agronomeye: $3.5 million
Tasmanian agtech startup Agronomeye has landed $3.5 million in funding. Investors include Canva co-founder Cameron Adams and SiteMinder co-founder Mike Ford.
The platform allows users to create ‘digital twins’ of their farms, allowing for better management, risk assessment and productivity opportunities. It’s also deeply reminiscent of Age of Empires, which makes me personally very happy.
While Agronomeye originally started with high res imagery to recreate farms, it’s not largely relying on LiDAR technology which can better capture landscape specifics, such as object height, to offer farmers high-fidelity data.
Celosia Therapeutics: $2 million
Celosia Therapeutics is a biotech startup from Macquarie University that just raised $2 million in seed funding.
The company has been researching for more than 20 years and uses gene therapy to help research neurodegenerative diseases, including dementia and epilepsy.
According to the company, it will begin developing gene therapy to treat motor neurone disease and it hopes to start clinical trials within five years.
It will also be seeking further funding in 2o23 to develop further gene therapy treatments for the likes of Alzheimer’s disease and Dravet syndrome.
