July, August & September
Australia’s technology news headlines in Q3 of 2023 touched on innovations, issues and achievements in a number of industries. These spanned, for instance: quantum computing projects in Australia across both hardware and software solutions; Australian satellite-delivered discovery of hydrogen; lithium and critical minerals developments; Australia’s moves to develop its defence-focused innovation; and more.
For our other editions, you should take a look at Asia’s tech news, daily, delivered via social media channels, and our Indo-Pacific tech newsletters for a weekly update on the region’s tech news.
Hit the links below for each month’s news, or simply scroll to read as an all-in-one update on Australia’s tech news in Q3 2023:
September 2023 | August 2023 | July 2023
SharePass: Online digital security solution
September 2023
- 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
- 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
- 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
2023 Asia Pacific Regional Security Assessment – Key trends
August 2023
- Australia: Report finds tech industry outside major capital cities is key to job creation, with 60 metro suburbs and 36 regional towns making up 62% of tech jobs created in Australia
- Australia: Fishburners Services Hub launches to provide a one-stop marketplace for startups to connect with high-quality, vetted and affordable providers to help build businesses and products
- South by SouthWest – SXSW – to take place for a second time this year, in Sydney from October 15-22
- Available now: ‘The geography of Australia’s digital industries’ from CSIRO and the Tech Council on Australia, mapping and analyzing the nation’s digital technology clusters
- Australia: Applications open for Social Impact Pre-Accelerator Program, seeking 60 participants with intakes in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong
Australia: SXSW Sydney 2023 – October 15-22
- Australia: CSIRO Tech Industry Map is online, providing detail on concentrations of tech workers across the country
- Australia: An intro to 8 startups that raised a total of Au$85.6M in the first week of August, with solutions in mining tech, cybersecurity, wellness, food waste and medical tech
- Australia: Women in Technology Bootcamp 2023 applications are now open for university students in STEM subjects, a 4-day program set to run in 6 cities
- Australia: MGA Thermal secures $5.39M to prep commercial-scale production for thermal long-duration storage solutions featuring aluminium-graphite alloy to hold heat for later dispatch as energy
“In 2022, malicious cyber actors exploited older software vulnerabilities more frequently than recently disclosed vulnerabilities and targeted unpatched, internet-facing systems“
- Australia: MinRes commits $4.5M for plant to extract lithium from mining waste using tech developed by Lithium Australia and gov’t ANSTO, aiming to test towards full commercialization
- Australian Competition & Consumer Commission opens consumer data right portal to guide on technical requirements, with features including CDR Sandbox and CDR Mock Solutions for developers
- Amazon’s Australian branch to move into country’s largest warehouse, spanning 209K square metres across 4 levels outside Melbourne
- Australia: CSIRO Digital Infrastructure Energy Flexibility pilot to use software to control power usage of up to 200 buildings in New South Wales, seeing potential for new ecosystem of enargy tech solutions
Indo-Pacific Space-Earth Conference – October 23-24 – Australia
- Australia: EnergyLab 2023 Climate Solutions Accelerator unveils 10 startups selected, working on solutions in batteries tech, solar panels, minerals recovery and more
- Australian Broadcasting Corp’n, country’s public broadcaster, announces closure of most Twitter / X accounts, citing the platform’s ‘toxic’ interactions and erosion of X’s trust and safety teams
- Australia: Next intake for the 8 micro-credential course ‘Australia and the Indo-Pacific – Understanding our strategic connections to Asia’ is set for September, from Perth USAsia Centre
- South Asian Australian Startup Founders List and Insights Report is now available, featuring 101 individuals who have collectively raised over $1.1BN and employ over 2200 people
- Australia: University of Canberra, ACT Gov’t and NetApp launch Open Source Institute to boost research, collaboration and innovation in open source technologies
- Australia: evokeAG Future Young Leaders Program applications are open to September 4, seeking 5 agri-tech innovators
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency to invest AU$20M in Hysata to build out hydrogen electrolyser tech at commercial scale, with approach producing hydrogen with 95% efficiency
“Ninety per cent of Victorian government agencies were targeted in cyberattacks last year, exposing critical services to serious disruption, the state’s auditor-general has found.”
- Australia: AO StartUps unveils 7 startups selected, working on aspects of tennis, sports-tech and sporting events
- Australia: Woolworths partners Goterra startup to use Black Soldier Fly larvae to reduce food waste on-site by 95% in just 24 hours, producing fertiliser and protein meal
- Indo-Pacific Space and Earth Conference set for October 23-24 in Perth, Western Australia
- Australia: Victorian state gov’t announces $3M support focused on regional agriculture-tech startup businesses
- Australia: 7-Eleven Australia to trial Grabango computer vision-based system in some stores allowing customers to purchase as they browse
- Australia: NeedleCalm founder awarded The Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers with tech minimizing fear and discomfort in needle procedures
- Australia: auDA internet domain administrator hit by 15GB data breach, with hackers threatening to sell access to auDA user bank account details
CSIRO: Australian Tech Industry Map
- Australia: Update – auDA concludes investigation and finds no evidence that cyber criminals accessed auDA systems or have auDA user data
- Australia: The Hugh Victor McKay Fund launches to invest $100K-200K in at least 5 early-stage startups over 12 months, focusing on tech and innovations in the agricultural sector
- Australia: HEO Robotics raises $12M Series A with satellite and space debris monitoring, using software to redirect the cameras of existing satellites
- The Weeknd to bring ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ world tour to Australia and New Zealand, powered by Binance crypto exchange and featuring Souvenir NFTs
- Australia: Transurban toll-road operator partners Plus, US autonomous driving software firm, to advance Level 4 autonomous trucks for automated freight transport
- Australia: Fintech Pitch Night from The Startup Network set for August 29th in Melbourne
Australia and digital currency:
“…it is likely that any serious policy consideration of issuing a CBDC in Australia is still some years away…”
- Australia: Hadean Energy launches to commercialize CSIRO tech to reduce hydrogen production costs, at the same time allowing industry to decarbonise
- Australia: An intro to MyBrix, blockchain platform facilitating ‘fractionalisation’ of property enabling owners to sell shares of their properties as units of value to investors
- Australia: US space launch firm, Spinlaunch, conducting feasibility study on two possible launch sites for its orbital ‘slingshot’ accelerator in WA
- Malaysia’s iPrice ecommerce platform, backed by Indonesia’s Bukalapak, launches product price comparison site for Australian market
- Australia: An overview of the Dell for Startups program, free to join and running in Australia
- ICYMI: Australian gov’t sets $50M to back Indonesia’s clean-tech and renewables startups, building on $200M Australia-Indonesia Climate and Infrastructure Partnership
- South Korea’s Innospace and Equatorial Launch Australia ink multi-launch contract for orbital launches in north-east Arnhem Land
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: AUKUS and critical minerals
July 2023
- Australia: Federal gov’t to invest $3.4BN over the next decade to establish Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator in urgent bid to boost Defence innovation in the tech space
- Australia: Telstra, country’s largest telco, partners Musk’s Starlink, stepping into direct competition with gov’t-owned NBN to provide services to rural Australia
- Australia’s VentureCrowd equity crowdfunding platform inks JV with Singapore’s Lightworks Ventures for SE Asia expansion
- Australia: BlackRock global asset manager raises over $500M for Waratah Super Battery construction, aiming for key role in shift from coal power to renewables
“Opposition cyber security spokesman James Paterson conducted an audit that found 3114 drones and other technology manufactured by DJI were in use by at least 38 agencies and departments.”
“DJI was black-listed by the US in October on national security grounds and due to concerns the technology had been used in surveillance against the persecuted Muslim Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province.”
“A spokesman for Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil said the government was considering how it managed the risks associated with manufacturers that could be ‘compelled by foreign governments to act against Australia’s interests’.”
- Australian Signals Directorate, gov’t cyber agency, unveils new cyber training course to be delivered nationally by TAFEcyber, aiming to boost cyber awareness and basic skills
- Australia: Cyber-attack on equestrian competition management site sees data of 10K individuals leaked online, following company’s refusal to respond to extortion
- Australia: Applications open for AgriFutures AgXelerate Program, seeking solutions for industry challenges from environmental sustainability to food production
Australia: “During 2020-21, a quarter of reported cyber attacks…were targeted at critical infrastructure with…education, health, communications, electricity, water and transport most at risk”
- Amazon Web Services launches inaugural Australia-New Zealand Generative AI Accelerator program, providing mentorship and up to $200K in AWS Activate credits
- “TikTok’s Australian director of public policy Ella Woods-Joyce said she knew there were offices in China but didn’t know where the ‘formal headquarters’ were.”
- Australia: Dep’t for Corporate & Digital Dev to invest $7.5M per year for 4 years to lift Northern Territory cybersec controls and capability to protect territory government’s data and critical infrastructure
- Australia: New South Wales gov’t to invest $40M in ‘spatial digital twin’ over next 3 years, delivering a 4D model of the state to allow better planning and outcome predictions on infrastructure projects
- Australia: The Best Of Moi direct-to-consumer brand lands $850K pre-seed funding to boost product development for more convenient liquid dietary supplements
Australia: SXSW Sydney 2023 – October 15-22
- Australia: Q-CTRL quantum technology firm partnered by Dep’t of Defence to develop sensors for ‘quantum-assured’ navigation in locations lacking GPS coverage, including space and undersea
- Australia: Black Nova early-stage VC targets $35M fund’s first close in 6 months, looking at backing firms in the Aus-NZ business-to-business tech industry
- Australian Competition & Consumer Commission: “”…consumers may not be aware that their information is being collected, stored and sold by third-party data brokers with whom they have no direct relationship.”
- Australia: Gov’t selects HawkEye 360 for remote-sensing satellites to aid with illegal fishing activity detection using radio-frequency sensors, in support of Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency
Tech Council of Australia: Australia’s Generative AI opportunity
- Australia: Queensland gov’t backs $8.5M Abbot Point Activation Initiative to advance planning, development and infrastructure for transforming coal port into hydrogen export ‘super hub’
- National Australia Bank blocks Au$270M in payments to ‘high risk’ crypto exchanges between March and July, citing risk of fraud
- Hostplus industry superannuation fund assigns further $100M to existing $210M investment in IP Group Hostplus Innovation Fund, continuing focus on university ‘spin out’ firms
- Australia: Canberra’s 3-month GRIFFIN Accelerator 2023 is open for applications through to August 7th
- West Australian researchers prep for build-out of TeraNet, laser-satellite data communications network capable of transmission 1000 times faster than radio
- Australia Post looks to ‘digital twin’ of delivery network, seeing use of graph database tech to make real-time predictive and proactive decisions around service efficiency
CSIRO: Australian Tech Industry Map
Australia’s Generative AI Opportunity:
“…GAI could contribute as much as $115 billion a year to Australia’s economy by 2030…improving existing industries and enabling the creation of new products and services.”
- Australia: Main Sequence Ventures, VC arm of gov’t research agency, hits $450M first close on 3rd deep-tech focused fund, taking total under management to $1BN
- Australia: East Kimberley Clean Energy Project to be country’s first 100% renewable hydrogen and ammonia production hub, with first-of-kind partnership with traditional owners of land
- Australia: Gold Hydrogen to commence drilling on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula following detection of naturally-occurring hydrogen in soil samples
- Australia: “…by our count 26 startups have raised a combined $311.7M in July, with 2 weeks of more than $100M bolstering this figure.”
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: AUKUS and critical minerals
- Australia: 2nd offshore wind zone announced to support manufacturing and energy security in New South Wales, potentially generating 5GW renewable wind energy to power near 4.2M homes
- Australia: A brief intro to the 12 startups selected for the Techstars Tech Central program in Sydney, working on solutions in women’s health, construction, coding and more
- Australia: Tech Council advisory group adds working group to advocate for reform on digital identity and digital credentials initiatives
e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2023 report – Google, Temasek, Bain and Co
Indo-Pacific TECH news
All-day tech news updates from across the broad – and increasingly strategically and technologically important – Indo-Pacific region, and across South and Southeast Asia:
- Indo-Pacific tech daily on Twitter
- Indo-Pacific tech daily on Facebook
- Indo-Pacific tech news on LinkedIn
Our mobile app is currently offline, due to the ongoing devolution of what was Twitter, now X.
We aim to have the app back online with a much-improved interface and broader functionality by the end of 2023.
World Economic Forum: Space Applications in Agriculture
Indo-Pacific TECH newsletter
Our weekly e-newsletters go out via Substack and LinkedIn, giving a one-glance grasp of the week’s technology news from the Indo-Pacific and South & Southeast Asia.
