Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Anthropic landed 54% of enterprise logos through self-serve. OpenAI, Replit, and other AI leaders still run sales teams, but reps are processing inbound demand, not creating it. Meanwhile, companies outside AI budgets watch growth collapse regardless of sales team quality. The gap between winners and losers is now 500% versus 15%, and that spread gets set before sales picks up the phone.
Federal government is considering exempting startups from its proposed capital gains tax overhaul after weeks of industry backlash. The change would replace the 50% CGT discount with cost-based indexation from July 2027, materially increasing founders' tax bills on exit. Ministers are working through eligibility criteria, potentially using existing startup incentive frameworks.
The federal government has axed its Startup Year program after attracting just 8 participants from a target of 2,000 annual loans. The scheme offered HECS-style funding for university students in startup accelerators. $80,000 was drawn down before the May budget killed it.
New ICONIQ benchmark of 150+ B2B companies shows AI-adopting GTM orgs are running 20 to 30% fewer FTEs while producing roughly double the net new revenue per rep. Sales-sourced pipeline now makes up 62% of total pipeline, up from marketing's 19%. Comp plans are shifting: 33% of companies now tie AE pay to net new recurring revenue, up 8 points year on year.
Three foundation models graded 120 B2B APIs and agreed: marketing automation and sales engagement platforms have no place in agent workflows. When AI can craft and send personalised emails natively, the templating layer that defined these categories becomes redundant. Here is what that means for your stack.
Canberra ag-tech startup Goterra, backed by Mike Cannon-Brookes' Grok Ventures in an $8 million Series A, has appointed administrators. The insect-waste processing company says it has working tech and contracted customers but ran out of runway chasing growth capital. Teneo is pursuing a going-concern sale.
The Victorian government has axed its Startup Year program, which burned $15.4 million over four years to attract just eight participants. The scheme offered HECS-style loans for university students joining startup accelerators. It was meant to support 2,000 students annually.
Nine Entertainment offloaded youth publisher Pedestrian to Vinyl Group for nominal consideration after spending $49M over a decade. The deal signals continued media sector contraction, with implications for digital sales teams as legacy publishers shed non-core assets. No headcount or sales org details disclosed.
Jason Lemkin opened the books on SaaStr's AI agent stack. Three humans, 20+ agents, 614 meetings booked, and $500K recovered from leads no rep would touch. Real costs, real output, and the one place you should not point an agent.
Jason Eubanks put his old GTM stack on a slide: 22 products, $3 million in annual fees, 11 ops team members to keep it running. Reps spent 24-30% of their time actually selling. The rest was context switching across 10-12 tools per day. Now he is building Aurasell to replace the whole thing with one AI-native CRM.
Vercel's CPO Tom Occhino detailed how the company runs on hundreds of internal AI agents, posting numbers that should make every B2B sales leader rethink 2026 headcount. The dev platform reabsorbed its SDR team after an AI agent took over lead qualification. Support runs at 93% automation, marketing content starts at 96% AI-drafted.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr runs 20+ AI agents with 3 full-time humans, same revenue as when they had 20 employees in 2020. Their custom-built AI VP of Marketing, called 10K, plans campaigns, manages pipeline, and assigns daily tasks. They spent over $500k on AI infrastructure because every AI marketing tool they demoed only wrote content, not strategy.