Australia’s tech news headlines in September 2023 captured items and issues including Australian hydrogen detection from space, a critical minerals agreement between France and Australia, a proposed ‘space hub’ for the Australian capital, Canberra, quantum computing news from Australia, and more.
Hit the links below to read each Australian tech news item in full.
Also available here:
New Zealand’s tech news, September 2023 >
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Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Australia’s north and space
- Australia: RayGen renewable energy firm opens $27M solar plant of over 1000 rotating mirrors, also capturing excess heat as hot water to drive a generator
- Australia: Startup to Scaleup Summit 2023 set for November 16th in Sydney Startup Hub, featuring Demo Showcase, Pitch Comp and a range of speakers
- Australia: Samsara Eco unveils R&D facility to scale patented enzymatic capabilities towards ‘infinite recycling’ of plastics, aiming to process 1.5M tonnes per annum by 2030
- Australia: River City Labs launches the Elevating Female Founders Program to empower female entrepreneurs in Queensland
- Australia: Commonwealth Bank innovation arm, x15ventures, to incubate an as-yet unnamed spin-out firm in bid to combat rising number of scams and online fraud activity in Australia
2023 Asia Pacific Regional Security – Key trends
- Australia: BP completes feasibility study for WA H2Kwinana large-scale green hydrogen hub, seeing domestic and export opportunities alongside sustainable aviation fuel and ‘renewable diesel’
- Australia: Q-CTRL and Diraq partner for 3 multi-million dollar quantum computing projects delivering quantum hardware and software solutions
- Australia: An intro to AI Builder Club in Sydney, 6-week program for engineers, hackers, and enthusiasts to build AI-focused ideas, products and startups
“…critical seabed infrastructure is vulnerable to attack; India and Australia must make a coordinated effort to protect these assets in the Indian Ocean.”
“Australia already has extensive gas pipelines of its North West Shelf in the Indian Ocean, connecting offshore extraction facilities to the mainland. But it will also become vulnerable to seabed warfare in new ways. Australia is prioritising establishing offshore renewable infrastructure, including offshore wind and solar farms, wave energy plants and undersea interconnectors at various sites around Australia’s coast, including the Indian Ocean. Australia may soon begin exporting solar power to Singapore via the world’s longest undersea high voltage direct current cable, the Sub Cable Australia-Asia PowerLink.”
- Australia’s Agetech Startup Map 2023 is now available, highlighting and aiming to boost Australian tech and innovation in the aged-care sector
- Tennis Australia’s AO Startups program, run in partnership with Techstars: “Ideally, at the end of it, you land [Tennis Australia] as a client”
Tech Council Australia: US Tech workers and Australia’s tech ecosystem
- Australia: Internet of Things Alliance Australia’s State of the Nation event set for Sydney Startup Hub, October 10th
- Australia: The Pitch applications are now open for November event for seed or early stage startups
- Indian Institute of Tech Kanpur and Uni of Wollongong gain Australia-India Cyber & Critical Tech Partnership Grant to focus on shared issues affecting the Indo-Pacific
- Australia: Refilled launches BYO-Bottle system at Uni of Technology Sydney and Uni of Sydney Union, aiming to eliminate the waste involved in single-use plastic bottles
- Australia: Personal data of more than 1M Dymocks customers stolen and published on the dark web
- Australia: EnergyLab unveils 13 startups for Climate Tech Charge program, working on solutions in green hydrogen, plastic and biomass treatment, building materials and more
Tech Council of Australia: Australia’s Generative AI opportunity
- Australia: An intro to the startups that presented at the recent Swinburne Innovation Studio 2023 Accelerator Demo Night
- Australia: NAB bank proposes gov’t-set security standards and requirements for cloud service providers and third-party services
- Australia & zero-knowledge ID: “Digital services that rely on the aggregation of personally identifiable information (PII) attract identity fraud and cybercrime at-scale.”
- Australia: ‘Innovate to Grow – Agrifood’ program launched by CSIRO, a 10-week program to help early-stage firms advance their agri-food technology, solutions and ideas
- Australia: Tikpay raised $1.6M with cloud-based transport ticketing, with user info stored digitally rather than a tangible card to provide multiple fund sources, management and payment options
CSIRO: Australian Tech Industry Map
- Australia’s Cyclion launches $1.5M crowdfunding campaign to commercialise tech to clean soft-plastic waste, possibly partnering Philippines for processing
- Australia: An intro to the firms and startups under consideration in the Defence, Dual-Use Tech & Space category of the 2023 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence
- Australia: West Australia’s H2EX and Adelaide’s Fleet Space Technologies partner to speed satellite-driven discovery of naturally-occurring hydrogen in SA’s Eyre Peninsula
“Fleet said the Exosphere system delivers detailed subsurface 3D mapping using an array of geode sensors. The sensors create a detailed map of the subsurface using ambient noise tomography which listens to seismic waves present on Earth.”
“Fleet Chief Executive Flavia Tata Nardini said the data is then transmitted and processed via the company’s constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit to deliver a 3D visualisation of the area in near real-time, reducing the data acquisition process from six months to as little as a few days.”
- Australia: Canberra Space Hub proposed as method to deliver a fit-for-purpose workforce, expand research capabilities, boost investment and promote ACT space-focused tech
- Australian Fashion Council and eBay Australia unveil $200K Circular Fashion Fund, seeking startups specialising in sustainable practices for the fashion industry
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: AUKUS and critical minerals
- Australia: An intro to the startups selected for the University of Queensland UQ Ventures’ first Empowered Women’s Accelerator cohort
- Australia: A podcast interview intro to how Silver Futures is mapping the current ecosystem for age-tech or longevity-tech in Australia
- Australia’s Stone & Chalk inks partnership with New Zealand’s GridAKL, home to Auckland’s startup community, aiming to boost networks for tech startups in both countries
- Australia and France ink agreement to boost cooperation on critical mineral supply chains, focusing on needs including in clean energy, medical and defence
- Australia: An intro to 10 of the country’s startups who in September collectively raised over $101M with solutions in e-commerce, climate-tech, sports-tech and more
- Export-Import Bank of Korea inks MOU with Export Finance Australia to collaborate on stabilizing core mineral supply chains
CSIS: Semiconductor Supply Chains & Indo-Pacific Economic Framework
New Zealand tech: September 2023
- New Zealand: Gov’t announces intention to enact digital services tax from 2025 to address revenue generated by Apple, Amazon et al who funnel profits to low-tax jurisdictions
- New Zealand: “…new research investigated how young New Zealand adults use debt. What we found suggests greater regulation of delayed payment schemes is needed.”
- New Zealand: Māori education institution, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, withdraws from Kōkiri accelerator it co-founded, citing high resource requirement vs small participant numbers
“Aquaculture has promise both as a field where we can dial up…sustainable protein production from New Zealand for global markets, and where we can share advanced technology with the world…”
- New Zealand: LawVu workspace for in-house legal teams completes NZ$15M fundraise, consolidating technology stacks for legal firms into one shared workspace
- Australia’s Stone & Chalk inks partnership with New Zealand’s GridAKL, home to Auckland’s startup community, aiming to boost networks for tech startups in both countries
2023 Asia Pacific Regional Security Assessment – Key trends
Indo-Pacific TECH news
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CSIS: Mapping semiconductor supply chains – Role of the Indo-Pacific
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Indo-Pacific Tech News, September 2023 download edition
