💌 Aussie Startup & VC Summary | 14th June, 2025

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. 🚀 

👀 Headlines 👀 

🎰 Immutable’s stash of crypto tokens has plunged from > US$1 billion to US$289 million, casting doubt on its US$3.8 billion paper valuation. (AFR)

• IMX tokens account for most of the company’s balance-sheet assets; their combined market cap has fallen 90% in four years, and IMX alone is down from US$4.7 billion to US$885 million. The company raised $280 million in 2022 and is likely still holding the majority of this money in its balance sheet. 

• Token sales via a Cayman-based Digital Worlds Foundation make up roughly half of Immutable’s reported monthly revenue (~US$1.5M of a US$2–3M run-rate); core gaming-platform fees contribute the rest. This Digital Worlds Foundation's revenue comes from the trading of the IMX tokens. 

• Immutable has shifted its focus from developing in-house games, such as Gods Unchained, to collaborating with other developers and handling the ‘tokenisation’ side of things. Apparently, there is a 500-strong pipeline of Web3 games coming. 

🔍 According to the Australian Tech Council, early-stage VC tax breaks now stifle scale-ups, need overhaul of 18-year-old ESVCLP regime (Innovation Aus)

• The Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership (ESVCLP) program, launched in 2007 with generous tax concessions for VC funds that held less than $200M, has channelled $3.43B into startups between 2007 and 2021.

• The Tech Council argues that scale-ups bust the scheme’s $50M total-assets cap well before IPO readiness, leaving local investors penalised for follow-on rounds and widening Australia’s late-stage funding gap, which is projected to hit $53B by 2030.

• In short, the Tech Council is proposing independent valuations, ILPA-style quarterly reporting, voluntary governance codes, reform of the 50-shareholder limit that now triggers early VC rounds, and modernised employee-equity rules.

🦄 Unicorn founders unite to launch Glitch Capital, a $50 million Australian founders fund bankrolled 70% by operators themselves. (AFR)

• The new fund includes backing from Go1’s Andrew Barnes, A Cloud Guru’s Sam Kroonenburg, and Aconex co-founder Leigh Jasper, who will chair the investment committee alongside fellow founders Rob Phillpot and Geoff Tarrant.

• Glitch positions itself between mega-funds and struggling micro-funds, betting that lived-scale-up experience will help its portfolio firms. The fund will not lead deals; instead, it will partner with leading local funds. 

• More information below in the New Fund, Who’s This section.

📋 Victoria orders sweeping review of state-run VC vehicles LaunchVic and Breakthrough Victoria as part of budget-saving “Silver Review” (Innovation Aus)

• The goal is to ensure the two funds “work in harmony” and still suit a startup ecosystem now worth $132B, up from $5B a decade ago. Additionally, the overlap with the $15B federal National Reconstruction Fund will be assessed.

• Breakthrough Victoria (est. 2021) has injected over A$350M so far but faces budget cuts, leadership churn, a recent court battle, and scrutiny over expenses; funding is secured only for 2025-26 while the review is ongoing.

• LaunchVic (est. 2016) delivers grants and programmes for early-stage founders and ecosystem builders. 

💪 The StrongRoom AI saga has ended with Pharmacy owner Joe Zhou buying assets for $3M (Capital Brief)

• Zhou’s Aceso Group acquired the assets last week; his funding is a straight loan, not equity, and the business will keep the StrongRoom AI brand. Zhou confirmed he had also taken out a $1 million loan with EVP to complete the purchase

• The software, already used by 1,000+ pharmacies across Australia, the US and UK, continues unchanged; Zhou blames “financial mismanagement”, not the product or team.

• Creditors, including VCs EVP, Artesian, Tyson Blake and InterValley are now wiped from the cap table; Zhou says they may reinvest if they wish. Those creditors are now likely to sue directors for the missing funds.

⚡️ Startup Retro ⚡️

Tracksuit lands $38M Series B to scale its AI-powered brand tracking platform

Founders: 

Tracksuit, the MarTech brand tracking platform, has raised $38 million in a Series B round led by VMG Partners, with participation from existing investors Blackbird, Icehouse Ventures, Altos Ventures, and Footwork. The capital will be used to deepen its US presence, expand into Europe and Asia, and double its customer base to 20,000 brands by the end of 2025.

Launched in 2021, Tracksuit provides a live, always-on dashboard that helps marketers track how consumers perceive their brand across awareness, consideration, usage, preference, and sentiment. The platform replaces outdated and expensive brand health reports with a simple, continuous, and affordable tool that surveys thousands of people each week. Customers use Tracksuit to inform marketing campaigns, product development, and strategic decisions with real-time insights that are updated continuously.

Already used by over 1,000 brands, including consumer names like Bondi Sands and Movember, Tracksuit’s platform is powered by AI and designed to make brand data accessible and actionable for marketing and product teams.
The company has more than doubled its team since its Series A, now at 150 employees across New York, London, Sydney, and Auckland, with plans to add 50 more in the next year.

Due Diligence: Startup Daily, Tracksuit Announcement

Lyrebird Health raises $12M to scale AI medical scribe across global healthcare systems

Founders: Linus Talacko and Kai Van Lieshout

Melbourne-based Lyrebird Health has raised $12 million Series A led by Five V Capital and Octopus Ventures, as the healthtech startup looks to address clinician burnout and expand its AI-powered medical scribe technology beyond Australia. Other investors include Startmate, which has followed on since their original investment in the 2023 summer accelerator. 

Launched in 2023, Lyrebird uses artificial intelligence to generate clinical documentation from doctor-patient conversations automatically. The tool integrates with existing EMR systems like Best Practice and Gentu, helping clinicians reduce after-hours admin work and spend more time focused on patients.

Currently used in over 30,000 consultations per day in Australia, Lyrebird’s platform is seeing rapid growth, logging over 600,000 consults in May alone and growing over 10% month-on-month. Hospitals such as Gold Coast Health have reported a 22% boost in patient throughput after rollout, with staff citing improved consultation quality and efficiency.

The new capital will fuel product enhancements, deepen integration with Electronic Medical Record (EMR) providers, and support international expansion into the UK, the Middle East, and beyond. With clinician workloads at breaking point, its solution offers an increasingly essential fix to healthcare’s documentation burden.

Due Diligence: AFR, Capital Brief, Business News Australia

JumpStart Fertility raises $4M Seed round to improve IVF outcomes with redesigned embryo nutrients

Founders: Manuel Serrano and Marc Ramis Castelltort

Sydney biotech startup JumpStart Fertility has raised $4 million in a seed round backed by local investor Proto Axiom and San Francisco-based VU Venture Partners, aiming to boost IVF success rates for patients aged 35 and older.

A spin-out from the University of New South Wales, JumpStart is tackling the sharp drop in IVF efficacy linked to age by reengineering the nutrient solution used to grow embryos in vitro. The company claims its tech could improve embryo development and increase IVF success rates by up to 60%, potentially saving patients up to $30,000 in reduced treatment cycles.

The funding will be used to advance the startup’s research through human trials and secure FDA approval in the US, with a commercial rollout expected within three years.

For Proto Axiom, this is its fifth deal since launching in 2021 and its second with UNSW. The firm, led by Anthony Liveris, raised $20 million last year from high-profile backers including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and World Bank president Ajay Banga.

Due Diligence: AFR

Voltavate raises A$850K to reinvent battery components with nanomaterials

Founders: Dr Amir Hooshang Taheri, Omid Javadi

Melbourne-based battery tech startup Voltavate has raised A$850,000 in an oversubscribed pre-seed round led by Artesian, with support from Investible, Electrifi Ventures, and prominent energy investors including John Wood, Christiaan Jordaan, and Reza Behnam. The latter also joins as Chairman.

Voltavate is developing a battery innovation platform, starting with next-generation separators. As a quick explainer, battery separators are the barrier between the anode (negative) and the cathode (positive) while enabling the exchange of lithium ions from one side to the other 

This is a crucial but often overlooked component that directly affects battery safety, performance, and manufacturing cost. Voltavate uses advanced nanomaterials and new manufacturing techniques to deliver better-performing, more scalable, and environmentally friendly solutions for the global battery supply chain.

Founded by materials scientist Dr Amir Hooshang Taheri and engineer Omid Javadi, the company is targeting a high-growth market. According to McKinsey, the lithium-ion battery sector is expected to exceed US$400 billion by 2030, with separators alone projected to hit US$25 billion.

The funds will be used to validate Voltavate’s core tech, grow the team, and secure strategic partnerships. Already backed by climate tech accelerators like Climate Salad, EnergyLab, and New Energy Nexus, Voltavate is now eyeing Southeast Asia for its next phase of growth.

Due Diligence: Startup Daily, Business News Australia

Sociability raises $3.5M to make venues more accessible for people with disability

Founder: Matt Pierri

Accessibility startup Sociability has raised a $3.5 million Seed round to expand its platform, which helps people with disability find and share information about accessible venues. The round was led by the UK’s Growth Impact Fund, with support from Innovate UK, Lightbulb Trust, HFM Investments, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and Sydney-based Remarkable, a global disability tech accelerator.

Founded in 2019 by Matt Pierri, Sociability provides detailed accessibility data for over 15,000 venues in the UK, nearly two-thirds of which are in London. The platform empowers users to discover places, like bars, pubs, and nightclubs, that often lack clear accessibility information. By crowd-sourcing and verifying venue data, Sociability is working to dismantle stereotypes and promote inclusive design.

The funding will support further platform development and international expansion. Remarkable’s investment came via its Scaler initiative, which backs disability-focused tech globally.

The global disability economy is estimated at US$18 trillion, and as accessibility gains mainstream traction, investors are recognising the commercial potential of inclusive design.

Due Diligence: Startup Daily

Phantm closes oversubscribed seed to build the “Xero for packaging

Founders: Elliot Costello and Paul Rowlinson

Melbourne sustainable packaging startup, Phantm has closed an undisclosed round to build the “packaging operating system” for a post-plastic economy. The round was backed by Black Nova Venture Capital, Salus Ventures and a cadre of climate-focused angel investors via Exhort Ventures, giving the two-year-old company fresh capital to accelerate product development and hire engineers.

Phantm’s cloud platform ingests messy supplier spreadsheets, standardises materials data and returns real-time dashboards on carbon, waste and compliance, think Xero for packaging. Customers such as Market Lane Coffee, Mecca, Amazon and Thankyou use the software to shrink reporting time and uncover cost and emissions hotspots across hundreds of SKUs.

The timing of the raise is key, as of 2025, more than 24,000 Australian businesses must lodge mandatory packaging returns under APCO, with eco-modulation fees and extended-producer-responsibility rules following in 2026 and 2027. Phantm’s life-cycle engine automates these filings while flagging future taxes, turning regulatory pain into actionable savings.

Co-founders Elliot Costello and Paul Rowlinson will utilise the new funds to expand the team, integrate global EPR datasets, and deepen supplier network vetting for next-generation materials. 

Due Diligence: OS Exclusive! Also LinkedIn Post

🔦 Inhouse Ventures Community Spotlight 🔦

• Connect with Ben in brand mode at Mercha

• Connect with Christiaan in scale mode at In Motion

• Fundraising? Join the Inhouse Ventures Community

💸 Wins💸 

🚀 Space Machines Company and UTS launch “Optimus Factory”, an 800 m² line able to build 20 Australian-made satellites a year—the nation’s largest spacecraft manufacturing site. (AU Manufacturing)

• Located inside UTS Tech Lab, OF-01 includes the country’s biggest satellite Assembly-Integration-Test cleanroom and can assemble five Optimus Viper buses at once, scaling to >20 units annually.

• The facility is a co-investment by Space Machines Company (SMC) and the University of Technology Sydney, slated to be fully operational by late 2025 with multi-craft production starting early 2026.

• Supports future Defence and commercial missions; SMC already holds an $8.5 m Australian Space Agency grant for “Space Maitri”, a joint India–Australia demo flight on the Optimus Viper platform.

👖 Samsara Eco signs 10-year offtake with lululemon, positioning its enzymatically recycled nylon and polyester to supply up to 20% of the athleisure giant’s fibre needs. (AuManufacturing)

• Polyester and nylon make up ~60% of global fibre production; replacing virgin resin with Samsara’s closed-loop feedstock cuts dependence on fossil-fuel inputs.

• Samsara’s “enzymatic depolymerisation” uses engineered microbes to break plastics back to monomers for repeated reuse. 

• Lululemon has also been an investor in Samsara Eco since 2023, framing the agreement as part of a diversified materials strategy to hit its climate goals.

💰️ New Fund, Who’s This? 💰️

🦄 Glitch Capital launches with $50 million first fund, ANZ’s first “founders-fund”.

• Impressively, 70% of the capital comes from more than 15 unicorn founders and 45 scale-up executives, pooling experience across companies collectively valued at over A$50 billion.

• The fund closed in under six months despite a tight venture market; partners and LPs have personally invested over 30 per cent of the pool, closely aligning incentives with portfolio companies.

• Glitch will write cheques of $1-3 million alongside top-tier VCs, targeting post-product-market-fit tech start-ups that are already generating meaningful revenue.

• Leadership includes chair Leigh Jasper (Aconex), managing partner Ryan Fitzpatrick (Saniel Ventures) and general partner Paul Perrett (MessageMedia), with founder-partners Sam Kroonenburg, Rob Phillpot and Geoff Tarrant.

• Collective track record spans Aconex’s US$1.6 billion exit, A Cloud Guru’s US$2 billion sale, MessageMedia’s US$1.7 billion acquisition and Payapps’ US$600 million deal.

• The key reason founders will want Glitch on the cap table? On-demand founder-to-founder support via an engaged LP network featuring operators from Employment Hero, Xero, Zeller, Who Gives a Crap, Bellroy and others.

• The first investment is in Melbourne-based ed-tech company Cadmus, an online assessment platform expanding from Australia into the UK, UAE, and the United States.

📆 Notice Board 📆 

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 💁‍♂️ AI 2027 is a 45-page scenario forecast published by the non-profit AI Futures Project.

• The lead author is former-OpenAI governance researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, with contributions from Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten), Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland and Romeo Dean.

• Rather than offer a vague “AI will be big” claim, the authors lay out a month-by-month narrative of how super-human AI could emerge by 2027 and reshape geopolitics, labour markets and security. The emphasis is on predictive accuracy, not advocacy: they want other forecasters to poke holes in their numbers and, if possible, bet against them.

• It’s a little scary, but certainly thought-provoking. It’s also a beautiful and interactive data report.

Have we missed something? Got some feedback? We love emails, so send one over!

• 👔 Connect with us on LinkedIn: Overnight Success, Will

• 🚀 Want get your product in front of ~4,500 founders, investors and operators building scaling startups? Here’s how we work directly with sponsors, or email us to learn about our sponsor and partner opportunities.

‘Til next time,

👋 Will