Australian startups
News from May 2020
The monthly Australian startup news summary for May 2020, drawn from the daily Startup News Asia news feed.
The Australian startup news headlines below each link to one of the original online news articles that published the item concerned. Each article either directly covers Australian tech startups, or deals with issues of importance to Australian startups in some way.
News headlines featured here are the Australian tech startup news items pulled from our daily startup news coverage, which currently covers 17 primary locations across Asia and Oceania. News sources we pull from are agnostic; we find and aggregate news about Australian tech startups from online outlets large and small, based purely on relevance to individuals, and organisations, interested in Australian tech startups.
Australian startup news from previous months are also available online, along with quarterly collections of Australian tech startup news.
Additional subject-focused news summaries are also online, covering the month’s blockchain news, artificial intelligence, digital currency news, cybersecurity and datasec, and a broad collection of fintech news.
- Australia: The RegTech Association Virtual PitchFest set for May 7th, featuring 6 early-stage RegTech startups
- Australian Technologies Competition entries close May 8th, seeking globally-minded Australian scale-ups across 12 categories
- AWS Summit Online Australia New Zealand set for May 13th
- China’s Tencent acquires 5% stake in Australia’s Afterpay buy-now-pay-later consumer lending startup
- Australia’s Aglive livestock traceability platform completes blockchain-backed beef traceability trial from Australia to China
- Australia: Labor Party floats UK-style Active Cyber Defence program and Civilian Cyber Corps, focusing beyond critical infrastructure and ‘big-ticket capabilities’
- Australia: Shelfie AI-driven retail tech startup gains Series A follow-on backing from Singapore’s d:tribe to analyze and automate replenishment of stock levels on shelves
- Australia: Qwilr SaaS document design and automation firm raises Au$10.8M
- Australia: Property management tech startup :Different raises $7.1M Series A with sights on nationwide growth
- Australia: GovPitch 2020 set for August 28th, allowing SMEs in cybersecurity firms to pitch directly to decision-makers in the federal government
- Australia: Festival Of Dangerous Ideas Digital live-streamed conference takes place May 9-10, holding conversations on the them of ‘dangerous realities’
- Australia: Springboard Enterprises E3 Program applications are now open for women-led tech or life-science businesses
- Australian transportation and logistics company, Toll Group, suffers 2nd cyber-attack in 4 months, shuts down IT systems and key customer portal as precaution
- Australian universities soon to run exams online to comply with Covid-19 requirements – using facial recognition and machine-learning surveillance tech
- Australia: Verteva raises Au$33M Series A with digitised home loan solutions
- Australia: RMIT Online partners IBM to deliver courses to help business leaders prepare for wide-scale adoption of IoT and 5G
- Australia: StartupAus 2.0 – ‘Imagining the future of the ecosystem’ video conference set for 27th May, looking at pandemic recovery and beyond
- SafeStay Australia short-term rental safety auditor partners I-PRAC membership platform to invest $6M in short-stay rental standards
- Australia: Fishburners to launch Fempowered 2020, a 6-month free program for 30 women across Australia, with applications closing May 31st
- Australia: Xccelerate 2020 Pitch Event applications close May 30th, seeking startups focused on improving financial wellbeing of micro and small businesses
- Australia: LaunchVic aids 4 angel groups with Au$1.16M boost, allowing groups to assist 40+ early-stage startups in securing seed investment
- Australia-founded GO1 enterprise learning platform gains $40M from Microsoft, Salesforce and others
- Australia: An interview intro to Sprintlaw, startup using tech to make legal services affordable for small business
- Australia: Afterpay buy now, pay later startup gains 1M new users as online shopping booms during pandemic lockdown
- Australia: A video capture of the recent ‘RegTech Solutions in a COVID-19 world’ event, delivered online
- Australia: Tripfuser gains $4.5M led by RACT with online travel platform offering near 1400 customisable and digitally-manageable itineraries
- Australia: Preezie secures $575K seed funding with personal assistant approach to e-commerce via tool that quizzes customers on what they’re looking for
- Australia and COVID-19: “As physical doors close, new digital doors swing open”, from McKinsey
- Thai Digital Energy Development public-private JV partners Australia’s fast-growing Power Ledger energy firm to develop blockchain-backed digital energy trading business
- Australia: An intro to Envirostream Australia, making fertilizer supplement from repurposed alkaline batteries, 97% of which currently end up in landfill
- Australia: A look at StructureFlow, tech startup focused on visually modeling complex legal structures and transactions for lawyers and finance professionals
- Australia: RMIT Online launches postgrad cybersecurity and blockchain courses, partnering IBM, Palo Alto Networks and Stone & Chalk
- Australia: X15 Ventures, Commonwealth Bank’s fintech investment vehicle, to run virtual pitch event for startups supporting SMEs, with $150K prize pool
- A brief intro to 10 plant-based food tech startups boosted by Germany’s ProVeg Incubator
- Startup Vietnam Foundation Australia launches, aiming to develop startup and innovation ecosystem for Vietnamese students and entrepreneurs in Australia
