A snapshot of tech news headlines from across Australia in April of 2025
ASEAN Post-2025: Reimagining the ASEAN economic community
- Australia: DeteQt ‘quantum sensing’ firm raised $750K pre-seed funding to commercialize diamond-on-silicon quantum magnetometer technology / full item
- India’s KABIL partners Coal India, Oil India and ONGC Videsh in bid to gain 20% stake in Australia’s SQM’s Mount Holland and Andover lithium projects / full item
- Australia: CommBank has opened a Tech Hub in Seattle to advance the bank’s technologies across efficiency and customer service / full item
- An intro to Australia’s ApateAI, using synthetic voice tech to create a ‘victim’ designed to waste scammers’ time whilst learning how each con works / full item
- Australian Securities and Investments Commission has cancelled the licenses of 95 companies, many of them suspected of having links to online scams / full item
Australian SME cyber risk: “SMEs, particularly in the hospitality, retail, and service sectors, frequently depend on cloud platforms, emails, and POS systems that utilise public networks…” / full item
- Australia: Flagship raises Au$6M with digital visual merchandising platform, giving physical stores real-time data spanning inventory levels, product views and conversion rates / full item
- Australia: Q-CTRL successfully completes field trials of a new generation of quantum-assured navigation solutions, overcoming GPS-denial / full item
- Australia: Government has donated PHP34 million in drones, and operator training, to the Philippine Coast Guard, reinforcing the Philippine-Australia Strategic Partnership / full item
- Construction is underway on one of Australia’s largest solar farms, with early works progressing at the 585 megawatt-peak Goulburn River Solar Farm in New South Wales’ / full item
- DARPA awards contracts to two Australian startups, Diraq and Silicon Quantum Computing, for research as part of Quantum Benchmarking Initiative / full item
- Australia: The University of Sydney is to take an equity stake in up to 50 health and tech spinouts via new commercialisation fund aimed at bridging the early-stage funding gap / full item
Indo-Pacific 5×5: Daily geopolitics newsletters & downloads
- Australia: An intro to Teer, a media aggregation service streamlining the process of identifying and executing media opportunities for agencies and creative suppliers / full item
- Australian Securities and Investments Commission has cancelled the licenses of 95 companies, many of them suspected of having links to online scams / full item
- Western Australia’s first grid-connected hybrid solar-battery site now online, aiming to deliver 4 hours of daily supply at peak demand / full item
- Australia: Prime Minister allocates Au$2.3 billion to lowering the price of home battery systems ahead of May 3 election / full item
Australia’s social media age limit: “Australian children are easily circumventing inadequate and poorly enforced minimum age rules employed by well-known social media services…” / full item
- Australia’s Vow, producing cultured quail, gains regulatory approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand, opening the door to cultured meat in New Zealand / full item
“[Australian] Federal Arts Minister… told ABC Arts last week that there was nothing the Australian government could currently do to prevent unlicensed use of creatives’ work to train AI models…” / full item
Lowy Institute: Southeast Asia Aid Map
New Zealand: 3 tech news items
- New Zealand and US state of Colorado ink cooperation agreement around aerospace, quantum and geothermal technologies / full item
- New Zealand: Government is investing NZ$60M to explore ‘supercritical’ geothermal energy, potentially delivering three to seven times more energy for conversion to electricity / full item
- Australia’s Vow, producing cultured quail, gains regulatory approval from Food Standards Australia New Zealand, opening the door to cultured meat in New Zealand / full item
Plus: Asia’s Tech News, Weekly in April
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- April 26th: LinkedIn newsletter / Substack newsletter
- April 19th: LinkedIn newsletter / Substack newsletter
- April 12th: LinkedIn newsletter / Substack newsletter
- April 5th: LinkedIn newsletter / Substack newsletter
