Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Elias Torres walked away from Drift's $1.2B acquisition calling it a failure. The product got shut down, the team was let go, and the mission died. Now he is building Agency, an AI company targeting $1B revenue with fewer than 100 employees, 80% engineers, and no traditional sales org.
Four Australian tech startups closed $80 million this week, led by aerospace company MAKO with $28 million Series A and Southern Launch with $25 million. This sits within Australia's $5.48 billion funding year, up 31% from 2024. Worth noting: hiring details were not disclosed in any of the rounds.
Government considering splitting audit and consulting arms at KPMG, EY, Deloitte, PwC after KPMG withdrawn AI report contained fabricated case studies. Caps on partner numbers also on table. Combined $219B revenue firms could face structural changes affecting thousands of ANZ consulting and sales roles.
A US government order blocked Australian access to Anthropic's top models in June. Days later, OpenAI delayed its GPT-5.6 launch, limiting rollout to 20 White House-approved partners. The moves highlight how little control ANZ has over AI infrastructure sales teams increasingly rely on for prospecting, research, and customer engagement.
Brisbane robotics startup Emesent closed $25m: $10m venture debt from NRFC (its first deal), $15m SAFE note from Main Sequence and others. Fourth raise since 2018 CSIRO spinout. They map mines with drones, sell to Rio Tinto and BHP. Funding goes to product dev and manufacturing scale at Wacol facility.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr is consolidating AI agents instead of multiplying them. Their AI VP of Finance recovered six figures in overdue receivables and now runs inside their existing marketing agent. The pitch: fewer agents going deeper, not 100 specialized tools.
Brisbane drone mapping company Emesent closed $15M in equity from Main Sequence, Orion Resource Partners, QIC, NGS and Hostplus, plus $10M venture debt from the National Reconstruction Fund. First institutional round since $32M Series A in 2022. Headcount at 109, adding 21 roles for Wacol manufacturing facility and Cortex AI development.
SaaStr AI 2026 showed how enterprise platforms are deploying agents in production. Salesforce, Snowflake, and Databricks are shipping agents that write to systems of record and perform revenue-generating tasks. The shift: agents are moving from demo to deployment, with implications for how sales teams get evaluated and compensated.
Sydney-founded AI data center builder Firmus locked a $43B Nvidia partnership for Indonesia compute infrastructure, but postponed its ASX listing from June to September after investor pushback on valuation. The deal spans 170,000 AI chips through 2028.
Adelaide VC Eastend Ventures secured $5 million from government-backed Funds SA, bringing total raised to $25 million for Fund 1. The firm targets early-stage B2B tech in SA, WA, and QLD, deliberately avoiding Sydney and Melbourne. Worth noting: this is SA's first registered ESVCLP, offering tax-free returns for investors.
Mako Aerospace closed a $28 million Series A led by Virescent Ventures. The Sydney-based drag reduction startup previously raised $700k in pre-seed (May 2022), meaning this round represents a 40x jump. Worth noting: Mako rebranded from MicroTau and has manufacturing partnerships in Australia, but headcount and sales team details remain undisclosed.
From July 1, Australian employers must pay superannuation within 7 business days of payday, down from 91 days. National minimum wage rises 4.75% to $26.44/hour. Parental leave extends to 26 weeks. Here's what changes for your comp budget and payroll admin.