G’day and welcome to your weekly edition of Overnight Success - your download on all the important things that have happened in the Aussie startup ecosystem. 🚀
Some news!
After years of writing about Australian startups, I’m excited to share that the Overnight Success community is now taking a more active role in funding them!
We're officially launching the Overnight Success Syndicate, one of Australia's most accessible pathways into early-stage startup investing, and you’re invited!* (if you qualify as a wholesale investor, more on this soon)
Why?
For years, Overnight Success has been a trusted guide for founders, operators, and investors across Australia. We’ve always focused on listening to our readers, identifying areas of friction, and then trying to solve them. This is one of those areas.
We’ve identified an opportunity to serve as a community capital connector. This is how I look at it.
On one hand, many of you are building and working at elite startups.
And on the other hand. You understand startups inside and out. You're aware of the incredible opportunity available to early-stage investors and want a piece of the action (and the potential upside!).
But some find angel investing prohibitively expensive or exclusive.
The OS Syndicate will try to put these two together. We aim to provide access to early-stage AI-enabled opportunities, secondary positions in Australia's top scale-ups, and follow-on investments. Our point of difference is the community, low minimum cheque size and an education-first approach.
So, if you’re a current angel investor, I’d love to share some exciting deals with you. No obligation to invest. If you’re curious about how to take a more active role as an investor. Stay tuned, cool things are coming!
Sponsor shoutout:
Overnight Success, Vanta, and Mighty Partners are partnering on the 14th of October to host a community coffee and breakfast inside Stone & Chalk for founders, investors, and builders to catch up. There are over 80 people registered! You can register here! Learn more below and get $1000 off Vanta here!
We’ve also partnered with Sip Ventures, the corporate venture studio of Asahi Beverages, to help promote their newest program. If you’re a seed-stage startup or later enhancing beverage experiences? Whether at home, in stores, venues, or digital? Sip Ventures wants to pilot your solution across the massive Asahi Beverages network. And they’re willing to pay you up to $150,000 in equity-free funding to be your customer. More information below!
👀 Headlines 👀
🏢 Employment Hero says it is on track to deliver its first-ever full-year operating profit in 2025, with positive EBITDA expected for the calendar year after its first profitable month in December. (AFR)
The company reported annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $300 million in September, up from $250 million at the end of 2024, but did not disclose its projected EBITDA figure.
The 11-year-old HR and payroll platform serves SMEs and lets customers post roles to multiple job boards, including Seek, Indeed and LinkedIn, from one interface.
Backed by major VCs such as OneVentures and Airtree, Employment Hero was last valued at just under $2 billion in its October 2023 raise.Employment Hero is in a legal dispute with investor and partner Seek, alleging anti-competitive conduct after Seek cut off platform access.
🤝 OpenAI has signed its first Australian federal contract: a $50,000, year-long “software as a service” deal with Treasury, awarded via limited tender with OpenAI as the sole supplier. (Crikey)
The contract sits below the $80,000 threshold that typically requires open advertising and multiple bids, giving Treasury discretion to proceed directly.
Pinery Capital’s analysis argues that this small, low-friction engagement is a strategic foothold that can build credibility and ease repeat procurement by providing panel access and structured pathways.
This strategy is known as land-and-expand, where supply starts small, easy, and low-risk. In this case, awarded with no competitive process. Once OpenAI is inside, it gains credibility, familiarity, and technical integration with government workflows. Over time, this makes it much easier to sell larger, more complex contracts — for example, whole-of-government AI access or enterprise-level ChatGPT subscriptions.
The firm estimates a future whole-of-government subscription (e.g., ChatGPT for all public servants) could exceed $150 million, citing OpenAI’s 2024 deal giving 100,000 PwC staff access as a precedent.
📊 Birchal released its FY24/25 crowdsourced funding industry report, where crowdfunding numbers dropped ~50% YOY, but investment into diverse teams (with more than one woman founder) almost doubled that of traditional VC.
Overall, 63 crowdfunding campaigns raised $33.1M, with 15.1K individual investments.
32% of campaigns were for businesses with at least one woman founder and 29% of raises were completed by solo founders.
🇦🇺 Melbourne-based Maincode has dropped the loaded “sovereign AI” label, saying it is too defensive and out of step with the realities of building systems, and will instead use “Australian-made AI”. (Innovation Aus)
Co-founder and CEO Dave Lemphers says the intent (control, security, capability) remains, but the rhetoric has become divisive; the firm wants to emphasise collaboration, creativity and optimism. “Australian-made AI” means products are principally created, operated and advanced in Australia, with jobs and innovation originating locally, even if not every component is built here.
Maincode will still honour customers’ requests to keep data and models within Australia, but is “not interested in sovereignty as a slogan” or compliance-led debates that entrench incumbents.
Maincode will unveil its flagship ‘Matilda’ platform next week, following July headlines about billionaire backer Ed Craven supporting locally trained, Australia-centric models.
📚 You wouldn’t read about it! Hundreds of Australian authors are apparently eligible for compensation from a US$1.5 billion (A$2.27 billion) Anthropic AI copyright settlement, following the company’s admission that it used over 500,000 books to train its models without permission. (The Australian)
Writers including Trent Dalton, Helen Garner, Julia Baird, Thomas Keneally, Christos Tsiolkas, Kate Grenville and others appear in the “settlement database”, each potentially owed around A$4,500 per title, shared with publishers.
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⚡ Startup Retro ⚡
Heidi Health raises $65M Series C to scale its AI “care partner” for clinicians
Founders: Dr Tom Kelly and Waleed Mussa
Melbourne-based healthtech startup Heidi Health has raised $65 million in Series B funding, led by Steve Cohen’s Point72 Private Investments, with participation from Headline, Blackbird, Possible Ventures and Archangel.
Founded in 2021 by trauma surgeon Dr Tom Kelly and technologist Waleed Mussa, Heidi builds an AI medical scribe that automates clinical admin, from transcribing notes to generating patient summaries and tracking tasks so that doctors can focus on care.
Heidi has reportedly returned 18 million hours to healthcare providers across 70 million patient visits in 116 countries, and now works with over 2 million clinicians weekly. The company builds its own AI models while integrating others, such as Gemini, using a model-agnostic approach to optimise accuracy and cost.
Alongside the raise, Heidi launched an AI agent that calls patients on behalf of clinicians, and has appointed Dr Simon Kos (ex-Microsoft CMO) and Paul Williamson (Plaid’s head of revenue) to its leadership team.
The fresh capital will fund product development as Heidi pushes to double global healthcare capacity and remove the “drudgery” from medical work.
Due Diligence: TechCrunch, AFR, The Australian
Nexl is valued $100M+ with a $35M Series B growth round to scale the front-office legal platform
Founder: Phil Thurner
Sydney-born, New York–based legal tech Nexl has secured A$35M (US$23M) from Tidemark Capital (led by veteran investor Dave Yuan), pushing its valuation above $100M.
Founded in 2018 by Phil Thurner, Nexl pivoted from a “LinkedIn for lawyers” to a front-office operating platform for law firms—think CRM meets rev ops—using AI to surface actionable insights across business development, client relationships, and planning. Existing backers, EVP and Shearwater Capital remain on the register.
Nexil has now raised more than $45 million in the past two years, following a $6.6 million Series A in December 2023 and $4 million in March that year.
Positioning itself against back-office AI tools like Harvey (US$5B val), Nexl is doubling down on the commercial side of firm operations. Post-raise, the company is building Navidion, a data lake and conversational interface that unifies internal/external signals to guide partners without data scientists.
Nexl is used by 150 law firms worldwide and plans aggressive product and international expansion. While an eventual PE buyout is seen as the likely exit, the near-term focus is shipping Navidion and growing its global footprint.
Due Diligence: Startups Daily, AFR
OpenSolar raises US$20M (A$30M) Series C to scale AI-powered solar design and sales platform
Founders: Andrew “Birchy” Birch, Adam Pryor
Australian-born, US-based OpenSolar has secured US$20 million (A$30m) from existing backers, Titanium Ventures (ex-Telstra Ventures), 2150 Sustainability Fund, Google and others to deepen AI across its free renewables design and sales suite.
Founded in 2017 in Sydney, OpenSolar connects 25,000+ installer businesses across 160+ countries to hardware, finance and services, monetising via marketplace integrations rather than software fees.
Fresh capital follows a US$15m Series B (2023), taking total funding to US$45m (A$68m). The company recently launched OpenSolar 3.0, using AI to automate installer workflows and improve proposal accuracy and speed. OpenSolar also taps Google’s Solar API for high-fidelity site data and bundles sales proposals, project management, payments, financing options, hardware ordering, and inventory.
CEO Andrew Birch says next-gen AI will compress delivery costs and accelerate the transition to clean energy, with a moon-shot goal of 50% of global energy by 2035 coming from solar. To date, the platform has enabled 6,000,000 solar designs and an estimated US$10 billion in solar sales, with this round earmarked for AI improvements and broader global coverage.
Due Diligence: Business News Australia, Renew Economy
Lucent secures $2M pre-seed in 36 hours to solve the AI browser agent data bottleneck
Founder: Alisa Wu
Lucent, founded by 22-year-old solo founder Alisa Wu, has raised $2 million (pre-seed) from Long Journey Ventures, Horizon, Browder Capital and Weekend Fund, with the round closing within 36 hours. Wu previously founded Stella AI (acquired in 2024) and was a founding engineer at MagicBrief (later bought by Canva).
Lucent is building behavioural datasets grounded in real web interactions for frontier AI labs, aiming to help them develop differentiated capabilities. Early demand is centred on training data for browser agents, a growing bottleneck in AI for frontier AI labs trying to build their training data moat. Despite having minimal product or team yet, investors cite Wu’s track record and technical depth as the bet.
The company plans to relocate to San Francisco over the next 12 months to deepen partnerships and expand its dataset.
Pre-seed funds will go toward product development, landing pilot customers, and scaling data pipelines. Lucent is also looking for a founding engineer.
Weekend Fund’s Vedika Jain says Lucent is positioned to become a foundational provider for browser-agent training. Horizon’s Sandy Kory calls the raise a conviction bet on Wu’s execution and insight into where AI is headed.
Due Diligence: Capital Brief, Startup Daily, Overnight Success
🚀 Sip Ventures x Asahi Beverages: $150K Equity-Free Funding
Transform how Australia drinks.
Got a startup enhancing beverage experiences? Whether at home, in stores, venues, or digital? Sip Ventures wants to pilot your solution across the massive Asahi Beverages network.
What you get:
Up to $150K non-dilutive funding
12-20 week commercial trial
Access to Asahi Beverage's brands & distribution
Perfect for: Seed-Scale startups with proven traction. Whether you’re in payments, loyalty tech, smart dispensing, venue solutions, delivery innovation & more. If you’re ready for an inflection point in growth, this is for you.
🤑 New fund, who’s this? 🤑
🖼 Sydney-based venture builder/studio Nakatomi has raised $3.5 million to co-found and scale “soulful” AI startups with founders and corporates. (The Australian)
Backers include the founders of Leonardo.ai, Gannet Capital, Scalare Partners, Booking.com interests, and private-equity veteran Les Fallick.
Rather than pure capital, Nakatomi embeds from day one across strategy, creative, technology, product and growth, aiming to launch 3–4 new ventures per year.
The fresh funding will deepen Nakatomi’s hands-on company-building model, targeting founders in Australia and New Zealand and tackling the earliest stages where capital and product support are scarcest.
💰 M&A 💰
🚗 Carbar has acquired HelloCars Subscription from Loopit to bolster its position as one of Australia’s fastest-growing car subscription providers.
The deal follows ongoing market consolidation, coming after Carbar’s acquisition of rival Carly Car Subscription in May.
Carbar will keep the HelloCars brand, while Loopit focuses on scaling its global subscription software and will integrate its technology more deeply across Carbar’s operations.
The acquisition advances Carbar’s “house of brands” strategy: Carly targets mid-term subscriptions, HelloCars offers a value, no-frills option, and Carbar serves as the premium, longer-term subscription alternative to ownership.
Across Carbar, Carly and HelloCars, customers get exclusive vehicle use with maintenance, roadside assistance, insurance and registration included in a fixed weekly fee, no lock-in contracts, and the flexibility to stop, swap or upgrade with short notice.
📃 Affinda acquires Pathfindr in $15M all-scrip deal to pair AI product with enablement (AFR, Startup Daily)
Melbourne-based Affinda has made its first acquisition, buying AI consultancy and training firm Pathfindr in an all-scrip $15 million deal. Pathfindr founder Dawid Naude (ex-Accenture MD) will continue to run the business inside Affinda, giving the 13-year-old AI company a services arm to help enterprises adopt practical AI faster.
Affinda’s stack spans Draftable—used by law firms like Allens to compare documents—and a document-processing platform that parses high volumes of unstructured data. It already powers résumé processing at SEEK across multiple languages.
Affinda raised $12.9m at a $60m pre-money (2022) and added $10m at a $120m valuation (June 2024), from investors including Paul Little’s family office, Ashok Jacob, Greg Ellis, Craig Bingham, and Mark De Ambrosis. Post-deal, the combined group claims an implied $195m valuation, ~100 staff, $20–25m ARR guidance, 100% YoY growth, and 2,000+ customers in 80+ countries
🥳 Wins 🥳
🕐 TIME just released its list of the best inventions of 2025. Very cool to see a few Australian inventions get recognised. The Full list is available here.
💎 Quantum Brilliance's Quoll computer, which uses naturally occurring defects in diamonds as qubits and can be operated at room temperature.
🪴 FutureFeed by CSIRO, which is commercialising Asparagopsis (seaweed) to create an additive that reduces greenhouse gas in livestock.
⚓ Fortescue Green Pioneer, a first-of-its-kind vessel powered by ammonia and diesel
🧭 Q-CTRL Ironstone Opal, a quantum navigation system that uses ultra-precise atomic sensors to deliver GPS-like accuracy without satellites.
♻️ Samsara Eco EosEco for their AI-designed enzymes to break down plastic fibres
🎨 Canva doubles down on cash aid by pledging US$100m more for GiveDirectly. (Canva Announcement)
Four-year pledge will fund direct, unconditional transfers for ~185,000 more people (starting in Malawi’s Chiradzulu district) and back research/pilots to maximise long-term impact.
According to the article, this is just part of a larger two-step plan.
Step One is to build one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Step Two is to do the most good possible.
Builds on US$50m given since 2021; part of Canva’s plan to channel >30% of its value into doing good and give recipients the dignity of choice through this programme.
🐨 The Australian also released their list of Top 100 Innovators of 2025 (people) and their list of the most groundbreaking tech innovations.
Featured startup jobs
🏠 Slate is building the first AI-native finance platform for lending, emerging out of Ownhome with $42M in backing from top-tier VCs and banks. If you’re an elite full-stack builder with a founder mindset, this is a brilliant chance to join a tight-knit high-calibre team at day zero. Slate – Senior Software Engineer (Founding)
🟢 Hello Canopy is rethinking HR tech with an AI-native enablement platform that helps HR teams focus on people, not paperwork. Backed by Techstars, the team has proven its MVP and is now scaling into a category-defining product that blends compliance, engagement, and performance into one centralised system. As Founding Engineer, you’ll set the technical foundations, shape the product, and influence how the company scales.
🏎 Vyro is the operating system for automotive retail — powering digital car sales for brands like Polestar, Škoda, and CUPRA. Profitable and scaling fast, they’re raising Series A to expand globally. The Activations team is the sharp end of growth: getting new clients live, troubleshooting high-stakes rollouts, and shipping fixes in days, not months. Vyro’s Senior Engineer (Activations) role puts you right at the frontline.
Explore these roles and more on the new Matchbox x Overnight Success Job Board, the one place to discover Australia’s most promising early-stage startup jobs.
📆 Notice Board 📆
☕ Grab a coffee and breakfast with me and some awesome founders, investors and builders before you head into SXSW or work at Tech Central Innovation Hub. Supported by Vanta, Mighty Partners and the team at Stone & Chalk!
Float on through from 8:00 to 10:00 AM on the 14th of October. Sign up here.
🤝 SXSW starts on Monday. Friend of the newsletter, Franko Ali from Airtree, has written this op-ed for us in defence of SXSW.
He’s also shared the Unofficial Satellite Events Guide for any who wants to soak in the vibes without forking out for an official ticket.
📅 Cremorne Digital Hub is hosting [NEXT] Founder Community Day, which promises to teach anyone new to Melbourne startups about support, accelerators, programs, investment and communities. Register free here.
The best place to find upcoming events to attend and promote any events you’re hosting is the ANZ Startup Events Calendar.
Would you like to promote an event or an opportunity? Enquire about a Notice Board promotion here.
🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)
Will’s Pick 💁 The Ultimate Income Statement Guide By ONLYCFO
This is very much what it says on the tin. The guide is a really digestible, startup-relevant guide to reading and understanding an income statement. The guide even goes into the nuance of stock-based compensation and how that.
Secondary recommendation by the same author. The lies of stock-based compensation.
Have we missed something? Got some feedback? We love emails, so send one over!
👔 Connect with me on LinkedIn: Overnight Success, Will Richards
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‘Til next time,
👋 Will