It seems all is not rainbows and unicorns in Australian venture capital. A bit of the green-eyed monster is emerging against market leader Blackbird Ventures, according to today’s AFR. The business paper has been talking to “industry sources”, anonymous founders and VC figures who won’t go on the record because they “need to eat”, painting a picture of Blackbird as the 800-pound gorilla (with wings?), gobbling up all the startup bananas, to the frustration of competitors reportedly “wary of paying high prices”. It seems the venture kumbaya is starting to sound a little discordant. Could it be ..read more

Australia’s oldest venture fund, university-backed Uniseed, has doubled its research partners from five to 10 as it looks to back more startups focused on research commercialisation. Joining its founding ‘sandstone’ uni group – Queensland, NSW, Melbourne, and Sydney, plus science agency CSIRO, are Monash as a full partner, alongside a collaboration partnership of four NSW universities – Newcastle, UTS, Western Sydney and Macquarie. The five new members collectively spend around $7.7 billion annually on research, which accounts for around 60% of the total spend by Australian R&D-focuse ..read more

Victoria’s startup agency, LaunchVic, is hoping to lure more venture capital to south, offering VC funds up to $300,000 in backing if they put up their shingle in the state. Eligible funds can either new or “new to Victoria,” under the incentive program, providing existing fund managers with operations elsewhere to set up local offices in Victoria, and commit to raising a minimum of $10 million. LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick said the financial support can be allocated for various purposes, including covering establishment costs such as legal fees and company registration, supporting new staff ..read more

Sydney VC fund Investible is gearing up to launch a new global climate tech fund in a partnership with Mandiri Capital Indonesia (MCI). MCI is the VC subsidiary of Indonesia’s largest financial institution, Bank Mandiri. The joint venture Mandiri-Investible Global Climate Tech Fund will support and back climate tech startups in the Southeast Asia and Oceania regions and beyond. It’s two years since Investible, which last week was part of the opening of the Sydney Greenhouse climate tech hub, launched its Climate Tech Strategy, and $100 million climate tech fund. Since then the VC has looked at ..read more

AI-based workforce automation startup Relevance AI, and employee engagement platform Mercu are the Australian companies selected for Surge, the accelerator program run by the now rebranded Sequoia India. The Surge cohort of 13 includes seven startups from India, four from Southeast Asia, and the two Australians, chosen from around 4,800 applications for the 16-week program, now in its 9th series. All up, more than three-quarters (10) of the startups selected are focused on AI and deep tech. It’s not the first time Relevance AI, founded in Sydney in 2020, has caught the eye of international inv ..read more

Six months after launching Purpose Ventures with a $37 million war chest to back Western Australian startups, strong support from local investors has seen the VC top up its first fund with another $8 million as it backs its third company. The Purpose Ventures Fund is committed to investing at least 70% of its capital into WA-founded or operated startups and its success in attracting investors at a time when many similarly-sized funds on the East Coast have struggled is a sign that WA’s high net worths are interested in local innovation. There’s also been strong demand on the deal side, with mo ..read more

Early-stage venture capital firm Antler says it has commitments approaching A$60 million at the final close of its second Australian fund Investors in Australian Fund II include Canberra Airport billionaire Terry Snow’s Snow Foundation, Flight Centre co-founder Geoff Harris through his family office and pioneering Melbourne early-stage investor Roger Allen. Antler launched in Australia in 2019 with a first $46 million Australian fund. The Singapore-based global parent business secured a US$285 million emerging growth fund in June this year to invests scale-up capital from Series A on, with som ..read more

A new venture capital fund looking to back medtech and deep tech health ventures is on the hunt for investors as it looks to raise up to $100 million/ Synthesis Capital has emerged out of the MedTech Actuator’s Origin program, which has helped develop more than 70 leading medtech startups the past five years, including Nutromics, Navi Medical Technologies, VitalTrace and Moon Technologies. The VC fund will invest in deep tech health startups from pre-seed to series A+ in Australia and the Asia-Pacific and is hoping to raise between $50 million and $100m to back them.  The target for the f ..read more

Canva’s $39 billion valuation has been given the tick of approval by the government financial watchdog, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), in a sign that investors have been getting it right when backing private tech companies. The regulator ran its ruler over Canva, which celebrated the 10th anniversary of its launch last week, as part of a review into the governance practices of registrable superannuation entity (RSE) licensees. Several have a stake in Canva through their investments in venture capital funds run by the likes of Blackbird. The VC holds a 15% stake in Canva ..read more

Victorian agtech startups have access to a new funding source with LaunchVic backing a new $1 million angel sidecar fund backed by Agriculture Victoria. The Hugh Victor McKay Fund is named in honour of the inventor who patented the combine harvester in the 1880s, one of the most important agricultural innovations in recent history.  The fund is hoping to back at least five early-stage startups over the next 12 months, investing between $100,000 and $200,000 in each one.  The model is based on LaunchVic’s pioneering $2.5 million Alice Anderson Fund, which began in mid-2021, and w ..read more