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Australian tech news: December 2024
- Australia: A brief intro to LILA, a startup working on personalized, wearable compression tech for athletes, a company in Tennis Australia’s AO StartUps portfolio / full item
- Australia: Drought Venture Studio, backed by the government’s Future Drought Fund, unveils 8 startups working on climate-focused solutions in agriculture / full item
- Australia: Sydney Startup Hub is to relocate from the CBD out to the Tech Central precinct in 2025, bringing founders closer to researchers and larger companies / full item
- Australia: The Digital ID Act commenced on 1 December 2024 / full item
Australia & big tech:
“The new rules…will require firms that earn more than A$250m in annual revenue to enter into commercial deals with media organisations, or risk being hit with higher taxes.” / full item
- Australia: James Cook University instals Starlink on several remote sites, and student accommodation, in Queensland, providing reliable internet for education access / full item
- Australia: Quantum Brilliance secures Au$13M equity investment for quantum diamond foundry for devices capable of room-temperature operation / full item
- Australia’s Country Liberal Party in the NT and Indonesia ink first-of-its-kind MOU on critical minerals development between an Australian jurisdiction and Indonesia / full item
Australia: NAB is to pivot from traditional passwords to passkeys and biometrics for online banking “…the bank was fighting off more than 50 million cybersecurity attacks a month…”: / full item
- Australia: CyberWest Summit 2025 is set for May 28-29 in Perth, WA, delivering cybersec education and awareness for business leaders / full item
- The UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australian governments launched the Secure Innovation program to help tech firms and startups improve baseline cybersecurity / full item
- KPMG Fintech Landscape 2024 sees a decline in the number of active firms for the 2nd year in a row, with the crypto and blockchain sector showing the largest YoY drop / full item
“50% are choosing not to buy a product or service because an organisation asked to collect personal information they weren’t comfortable sharing (up from 35% last year)” / full item
- Australia: Pilbara Solar, a 50% Aboriginal-controlled startup business and social enterprise, gains Offer to Connect to deliver to Horizon Power’s coastal network / full item
- Australian Securities & Investment Commission issues consultation paper outlining new guidelines for the crypto industry, proposing new licensing requirements / full item
- Australia: UniSA engineers have combined star-based navigation with vision analysis tech for navigation where GPS is out or unreliable / full item
“…without equipping citizens with media literacy, legislation can only have limited impact. Misinformation will remain part of our media diet…” / full item
- Australia: Austrade opens EOIs for firms in AI, cybersec and blockchain for upcoming visit to the Philippines in February 2025, looking to boost collaboration and business growth / full item
- Australia: MGA Thermal adds $200K to pre-B fundraise with thermal bricks energy storage technology, building on last year’s container-based demo unit / full item
“The VIC government will invest $150K each to create 50 new startups and pay their salary for the year as part of an entrepreneurship program run by Breakthrough Victoria.” / full item
- Australia: The Digital Currency Reserve rolls out new GLO product, leveraging tokenised real-world assets including gold / full item
- Online ‘Bootstrap Your Brand’ workshop is set for December 12th, delivered by BGain and covering 5 cost-effective marketing strategies for SMEs and tech startups / full item
- Australia: Under new law, under-16s to be prohibited from accounts on some social platforms, with firms responsible for enforcement and facing non-compliance fines up to Au$50M / full item
- Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to Darwin in Australia’s far north in a Google-backed project / full item
- A brief look at the recent 2024 Innovation Leaders Summit in Tokyo, and the Australian tech firms and startups, including Quantum Brilliance and Novalith, that presented / full item
- Space Machines Co, an Australia-India in-space servicing firm, inks agreement with UK’s Lúnasa for space debris imaging systems, and satellite orbit and manoeuvring / full item
- United Kingdom becomes the first European nation to join the Indo-Pacific’s Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc / full item
Indo-Pacific 5×5: Daily geopolitics newsletters & downloads
Australian tech: November 2024
- evokeAG agri-food innovation event, set for Brisbane in February 2025, is set to showcase more than 50 startups & scaleups from 10 countries / full item
- ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Nat’l Australia Bank, Suncorp Bank, and Westpac have joined BioCatch network for fraud and scams intelligence-sharing / full item
- Australia: Deloitte expands Space Info Sharing & Analysis Centers with new Watch Center Hub in Australia to deliver real-time threat intelligence and cybersecurity / full item
- Australia: Norway’s KSAT partners WA’s Starsite to host, maintain and operate a new lunar mission-focused site in WA, featuring a 20M antenna / full item
- Australia: Airtree Ventures VC firm targets a 5th fund, Core Fund V, with $650M, securing 3 US investors as it approaches first closure / full item
- Australia’s All G biotech firm becomes the first globally to land regulator approval for sale of animal-free lactoferrin protein in China / full item
- Australia: Kapture unveils solution collecting emissions from exhaust fumes and embedding carbon in concrete, creating high-quality replacement for cement ingredients / full item
- Australia: Gov’t drops proposed legislation to fine social media platforms for spread of misinformation, but maintains pursuit of separate bill to keep children off social platforms / full item
- Australia: Hort Innovation R&D NFP firm and Artesian VC partner for $60M fund to back early-stage startups focusing on fruit, vegetable and nut farming solutions / full item
- Australia & NZ: ‘AI and Music’, a study on the impact of technology on Australia and New Zealand music creators / full item
- Australia: Adelaide’s OmnigenIQ adapts its bioreactor tech for use in space, enabling production of vital biologicals during missions rather tha requiring transport from Earth / full item
- Australia: Future of Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT may be uncertain as it has reportedly entered discussions about whether it should be shut down / full item
- Australia: NSW Automation Guide has been launched by the NSW Gov’t, looking at the potential of automation for organisations and productivity, and service accessibility / full item
- Australia: ‘Dare to Venture – Startups and the innovation ecosystem in Western Australia’ is available to download, from BankWest and Curtin University / full item
- Australia: Scalare Partners early-stage tech accelerator and fund commences trading on the ASX, looking to expand Tech Ready Women initiative, and establish US office / full item
- Australia: Gov’t has introduced a bill in parliament that aims to ban social media for children under 16, with fines up to Au$49.5M for social platforms for systemic breaches / full item
- Australia: Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator awards over $60M in R&D contracts to 21 projects spanning quantum, defence tech, universities and the CSIRO / full item
- Australia: Privacy Commissioner rules against Bunnings Group over use of facial recognition tech deployed in 63 stores between 2018 and 2021 / full item
- Australia’s Vow cultivated meat startup gains regulatory approval in Hong Kong to debut cell-culture foie gras at the Mandarin Oriental, building on the success of cultivated quail / full item
- Australia: Nourish Ingredients partners China’s Cabio Biotech to produce and distribute precision-fermented ‘designer fat’ alternatives in China / full item
“Online shopping spend accounted for around a fifth of all retail spending in Australia in 2021… E-commerce revenue in Oceania is projected to… [grow] to US$67.10 billion by 2029.” / full item
- ‘AI & Music Market Development of AI in the Music Sector and Impact on Music Creators in Australia & NZ’ “…by 2028, 23% of music creators’ revenues will be at risk due to Gen AI…” / full item
- Australia: INNOVOCEAN event from Ocean Impact Org’n is set for November 20th in Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum, showcasing startups, tech and innovations / full item
- Over the last decade Singapore has received the most investment from Australia overall, representing 52% of Australia’s outgoing tech investment. / full item
- ‘Empowering Australia’s Digital Futures – Data Centres, essential digital infrastructure underpinning everyday life’ / full item
- Australia: A video intro to one of the Gold Coasts agri-focused startups, using micro-algae to convert plant waste into proteins and products for agriculture / full item
Video: The Startupbootcamp FoodTech Tasmania 2023 Demo Day, showcasing 10 early stage food-focused startups / on YouTube
- Australia: Canada’s BTQ Technologies quantum computing firm partners Macquarie University on advanced quantum algorithms and secure communications research / full item
- Australia: eLumina battery-tech startup launches $20M Gold Coast battery & EV charger pilot factory, partnering TAFE for industry-focused jobs and training / full item
- Download: ‘Building the Australia-Asia Tech Corridor – Australian Investment in Asia’s Startups’, a discussion paper from Tech Council of Australia and AsiaLink Business / full item
- ‘Australia’s opportunity in the new AI economy’, a report from Mandala Partners and Microsoft / full item
- KPMG Nature Positive Challenge 2024 applications are open to sustainability- and environment-focused startups in Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea / full item
- Australia’s Gilmour Space gains launch permit from Australian Space Agency for first flight of Eris small launch vehicle from Queensland’s Bowen Orbital Spaceport / full item
- Australia’s Canva partners Philippines’ Enstack e-commerce platform, providing businesses with free-to-use design tools, in part focusing on Enstack mobile app-based store builder / full item
- Tether, issuer of USDT stablecoin, is now the 18th largest holder of US Treasury bonds at $102.5BN, surpassing economies of Germany, Australia and the UAE in Q3 2024 / full item
“Approximately 50% of the critical minerals on Australia’s Critical Minerals List are co-products or by-products of major commodities… Australia has large economically demonstrated resources.” / full item
- ‘1st Australian Space Education Forum’ is set for November 25 in Perth, WA, delivered in partnership with the Australian Space Agency / full item
- Australia & NZ: A quick intro to the 7 startups graduation from the Founder Institute pre-seed accelerator, with solutions in battery recycling, AI-driven health-tech and more / full item
- Australia: Green Gravity commences studies to develop 2GWh gravitational energy storage project at disused copper mine in Northwest Queensland / full item
- Western Australia State Government Innovation Booster Grant awarded to WaveX, renewable energy business generating electricity from wave movement / full item
- Australia: A quick intro to 12 tech startups backed by Antler VC, with solutions in retail-tech, customer experience, the creator economy and more / full item
- New Zealand: Airwallex, Australian-founded financial platform, is launching ‘Airwallex for Startups’ program in NZ / full item
Podcast: Why should we care about the Indo-Pacific?
Australia’s tech news: October 2024
Video: ‘How quantum computing will reshape Australia’s economy‘
- Paloma Capital has launched its second fund, targeting high-growth tech firms in Australia and New Zealand, looking at 14-18 investments over 3 years / full item
- Australia: An intro to the 10 tech startups emerging from the University of Newcastle I2N accelerator, with solutions in sports-tech, disabilities, clean-tech and more / full item
- Australia-China research identifies new method for lithium extraction from saltwater, with lower environmental impacts and faster processing, and freshwater as a by-product / full item
- Australia: New package of proposed cybersecurity legislation has been released, with mandates including 72-hour reporting obligation of cyber-ransom payments / full item
- Australia-linked Ioneer gains US federal permit for Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron mine, potentially supplying lithium for 370K EVs a year and quadrupling US production / full item
- Australia: National AI Centre rolls out AI Impact Navigator to help Australian companies to understand, manage and tackle the challenges of artificial intelligence / full item
- Australia: Tasmanian gov’t under fire for use of AI in ‘validating’ economic benefits of proposed hotel development / full item
- Australia: An intro to Novalith, producing battery-grade lithium faster, cheaper and greener / full item
- Australia: ISACA Canberra Conference 2024 is set for November 1st, featuring the SheLeadsTech Breakfast for female information and systems professionals / full item
- Australia: $2BN state gov’t-backed Breakthrough Victoria fund invests $2.5M in Viridian Renewable Tech, which recycles food waste for animal feed and fertiliser using fly larvae / full item
- Australian Open’s AO StartUps launches its final intake for 2024, seeking startups and innovators to test, trial and develop technologies across Tennis Australia events / full item
- Australia: ARM Hub AI Adopt Centre launches for manufacturing SMEs to gain knowledge on AI and robotics, aiming to engage with as many as 30,000 small businesses / full item
- Australia: Green Gravity raised Au$9M with gravity-generated energy storage, using disused mining shafts to raise and lower weights for energy generation / full item
- Australia: Parliamentary inquiry rejects calls for ban on AI-generated images and videos in election campaigns despite near-certainty of the tech being used for disinformation / full item
- Australia: Paladin Space lands $100K SA State Gov’t grant to further develop space debris removal technologies, looking to new machine learning techniques for image analysis / full item
- Australia: Q-CTRL quantum infrastructure software firm secured an additional $59M, with focus on ‘middleware’ for hardware providers / full item
- KPMG Australia has opened the KPMG Nature Positive Challenge for applications, seeking eco-startups in Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea / full item
- Australia: Entertainment & Expertise for your end-of-year business event – a special offer from Tech Femme Fusion / full item
- Australia: Innovation Bay tech startup and investor network preps for launch of Horizon angel investor community in the Northern Territory, following gov’t selection / full item
- Australia: UK’s Quantum Motion opens lab in Cicada Innovations space in Sydney, looking to tap into Australia’s research talent pool / full item
- Australia: An overview of the nation’s moves into quantum technologies, focusing on PsiQuantum, the firm chosen to lead the way / full item
- Australia: An overview of quantum tech firm, Q-CTRL, following its recent $86.3M Series B extension / full item
- Australia: Capital X community-driven connections initiative launches, focused on boosting opportunities for women founders in Australia and New Zealand / full item
Australia: “Seven of the most popular [auto] brands collect some level of driving data through a connected services feature and send that data back to the company.” / full item
- Australia: Antler VC closes 2nd Australia fund, raising $17M more than planned to hit $77M, and bringing forward Queensland program launch to February 2025 / full item
- Australia Post vehicle fleet is to be used to audit mobile network coverage across 180,000km of roads across the remote interior, with results to inform improvements / full item
- Australia: University researchers develope battery component using food-based acids, potentially making lithium-ion units more efficient, affordable and sustainable / full item
- ICYMI: Australian gov’t launched the Cable Connectivity & Resilience Centre to help ensure undersea cable networks in the Indo-Pacific are resilient and secure / full item
Video: ‘The global race to build fully functional quantum computers’, Australia-focused overview – ABC News on YouTube
- Australia’s NSW Gov’t partners India’s Afthonia Labs incubator for accelerator to help NSW startups enter and thrive in Indian markets, selecting 8 fintech firms for cohort 1 / full item
- Australia: Founders Factory WA Nature Tech Accelerator program launches with 6 startups selected, working in agri-tech solutions, marine restoration and more / full item
- An intro to 8 Australian and New Zealand startups that raised over $66M between them in the week to October 4th, working in biotech, ad-tech, the future of work and more / full item
“From January to August 2024, Australians reported $43.4m in losses from scams on social media to Scamwatch, with close to $30m relating to fake investment scams.” / full item
- Australia: Telstra telco to create a ‘digital twin’ of international network assets, aiming for AI-powered modelling to automate systems and solve issues / full item
- Australia’s Metaphor Foods partners Israel’s Kinoko-Tech to commercialise mycelium protein products, including sausages, flapjacks, chips and snacks / full item
- Canberra: Kickstarter Challenge Grand Final 2024 is set for October 9th in Parliament House, featuring 5 female-led firms in a Shark Tank-style competition / full item
- Delegates from Vietnam’s Da Nang met with Australia’s NSW Investment and Stone & Chalk innovation community to discuss cooperation and knowledge-sharing / full item
- Philippines: StB Giga Factory Inc launches to produce advanced lithium iron phosphate batteries, with plans to export 70% / full item
- Project Mandala proof-of-concept: Automating compliance procedures on cross-border financial transactions, with central banks of Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Korea participating / full item
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