Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
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.
Jason Lemkin's three-person team replaced contact forms with an AI agent that handled 402,000 interactions across 2.25 million sessions. The agent booked 614 qualified meetings at $85k average ticket size for a single event. No BDRs, almost zero complaints, and it runs campaigns and discount routing autonomously.
Noam Shazeer and John Jumper left Google for Anthropic within 48 hours, wiping $225 billion off Alphabet's market cap. The departures signal a talent retention crisis as Google holds #3 in AI behind OpenAI and Anthropic. Wall Street is questioning whether the company can compete when pre-IPO rivals offer equity upside that a public giant cannot match.
Melbourne-founded fintech closes $460M Series H at $16B valuation, doubling from $8B eight months ago. Revenue hit $1.3B ARR (up 74% YoY) as the company pushes AI-driven finance tools. Worth noting: AUSTRAC is still investigating AML/CTF compliance.
Australian businesses sending branded SMS (like 'YourCompany' instead of a phone number) have days to register their Sender ID with ACMA or face 'Unverified' labels on every text from July 1, 2026. That includes appointment reminders, booking confirmations, and sales outreach. Your customers will see it grouped with suspected scams.
Chetan Puttagunta breaks down Benchmark's AI investment thesis and what changed in GTM. The firm's seeing legal AI startups hit $100M ARR in 18 months while taking longer to find product-market fit. Direct sales is back, PLG is not the default, and the moat moved from code to distribution.
DeepMind alumni Adam Liska and Devang Agrawal closed $20M Series A for Airspeed, their AI sales execution platform. DN Capital led the round. The company hit 200 customers across 20 countries two years post-launch, automating CRM updates, follow-ups, and risk flagging for GTM teams.