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. 🚀

It was great to meet so many of you this week, last week in Sydney! And thanks to everyone who came to the community coffee! I’ve made a folder of all the photos. Thanks to Paz and Harry, who took them!

Major Overnight Success Product Release

This week, I released a pretty epic video highlighting the vision and future for Overnight Success. If you’d like to know more about the vision for OS, please check it out! In the meantime, here are some of the products I’ve been building…

DealsOS: Australia's first dedicated deal data platform for startups, scale-ups, and VC funds, already helping investors discover opportunities and founders raise capital. This one is available for $80 per month and is already used by Blackbird, Vanta and fundraising founders!

InvestOS: Democratising investment in Australia's best startups through education and a syndicate. Join the syndicate here. Otherwise, if you’d like a crash course into the world of angel investing in Australia/NZ — from key terms and strategies, to how the power law shapes every big win. Learn directly from leading VCs and ecosystem players through engaging video lessons. Sign up today and for a limited time use the code OVERNIGHT for a special discount.

PeopleOS: Lowering the friction for talent to enter high-growth companies with an aggregated jobs board for startups across Australia.

Stripe is hosting a free half-day online virtual event about the future of commerce on the 6th of November, designed for Asia Pacific businesses to connect with fellow business and technology leaders, with some heavy hitters speaking. More information below, or sign up 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!

Click here to read the newsletter in full

👀 Headlines 👀

🧑‍💻 Firmus Technologies has signed a $4.5 billion agreement with Nvidia and CDC Data Centres to build a network of large-scale “AI factories” across Australia, a project that could ultimately reach $73.3 billion in value. (AFR)

  • The plan will deliver 1.6 gigawatts of renewable-powered capacity by 2028, with CDC’s existing sites in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Canberra to be retrofitted with Firmus’ cooling and software.

  • As part of “Project Southgate,” Firmus will deploy 18,500 Nvidia GB300 chips from April 2026 to power its AI infrastructure. The company claims its cooling stack consumes 30 per cent less energy and 99 per cent less water than conventional systems.

  • Once a bitcoin mining venture, Firmus has successfully pivoted to AI infrastructure, achieving unicorn status after raising $330 million at a $1.9 billion valuation. Globally, Firmus now competes with major players such as CoreWeave and Lambda Labs, while Australian rival IREN has also shifted from crypto mining to AI factories.

  • However, regulatory complexity remains a challenge, with up to 100 approvals required for each data centre, prompting calls for streamlined yet responsible processes.

🏥 Remedy Robotics, an Australian-founded medtech start-up, has achieved the world’s first fully remote robotic surgery, performing neurointervention procedures from thousands of kilometres away. (The Age)

  • Founded by Perth-born cardiac surgeon Dr David Bell, the company successfully carried out operations in Toronto, with surgeons remotely controlling robotic catheters. 

  • The system will soon be trialled in Darwin and Alice Springs, in partnership with the Australian Stroke Alliance, allowing city specialists to treat patients remotely.

  • The company’s N1 System combines robotic hardware, custom catheters, and AI-driven software to let doctors perform complex cardiovascular procedures via the internet. Advanced machine learning helps navigate “fine, floppy tools” in the brain with precision.

  • Remedy’s innovation addresses a major issue: stroke treatment access. Currently, Darwin patients must fly 3000km to Adelaide for thrombectomy, the gold-standard clot-removal surgery. The new system could allow rural hospitals to initiate treatment locally, under the guidance of remote specialists.

✂️ The CSIRO has confirmed it has cut more than 800 jobs over the past 18 months and is planning further reductions, as funding fails to keep pace with inflation and national growth. (Innovation Aus)

  • Chief executive Dr Doug Hilton told Senate Estimates the agency lost 818 jobs to save $120 million, describing “challenging sustainability issues” driven by stagnant government appropriations that haven’t kept pace with the rising cost of scientific research.

  • According to new Parliamentary Library modelling for Senator David Pocock, government investment in the CSIRO has fallen sharply — from about $75 per person in the 1980s to $37 today, and from 0.16% to 0.03% of GDP.

  • Dr Hilton said the CSIRO has been forced to reduce non-research roles, delay project renewals, and not rehire contract researchers, with job losses amounting to a 9.4% headcount drop last year and another 3.3% decline this year.

  • The CSIRO Staff Association warned that scientists are being forced to “compete in survivor-style pitches” for funding, urging the government to step in and properly finance Australia’s premier research institution.

🌇 SXSW: The best gatherings apparently happening unofficially (Capital Brief)

  • SXSW Sydney might have had the government’s $12 million backing, but its soul lived off the grid. According to Bronwen Clune's write-up from Capital Brief, the real creativity and energy pulsed through the unofficial events, mixers, parties, and pop-up gatherings hosted by the ecosystem’s own builders.

😔 Well-funded startups from 2021, Carted and Great Wrap, are both shutting down. (Smart Company Carted, Smart Company Great Wrap)

  • Carted will shut down next Wednesday, 22 October 2025, four years after raising a $13 million seed round that ranked among Australia’s largest. (LinkedIn Post Announcement)

  • Founded by Holly Cardew and ex-Shopify engineer Mike Angell in April 2021, the start-up initially built a universal commerce API to streamline out-of-app checkouts and affiliate journeys. Backed by Blackbird, Grok Ventures and Tidal Ventures, Carted aimed to let creators sell any product on the web and turn content platforms into marketplaces.

  • Great Wrap has entered voluntary administration with reported debts of about $39 million, bringing the Melbourne materials start-up’s journey to a close almost six years after launch.

  • Administrators were appointed on 17 September 2025; staff are believed to have been let go. Founded in 2019 by husband-and-wife team Jordy and Julia Kay, the B Corp set out to replace petroleum plastics and became the only Australian manufacturer of compostable stretch wrap for homes and businesses.

Stripe is bringing the best of their recent Stripe Tour event online. Leaders from finance and technology share what’s next for startups and small businesses in Australia and New Zealand, and how to put it into practice.

Join The Future of Commerce

A free half-day online event, on Nov 6th at 2 pm AEDT / 4 pm NZDT.  Gain valuable insights and explore the latest trends shaping the future of payments and financial technology.

You’ll get insights around:

  • The Asia-Pacific AI landscape

  • What’s new for Australian businesses

  • Playbooks for cross-border growth

  • The science behind successful pricing strategies

Featured speakers include: 

  • Peak Ji, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, Manus AI

  • Julia Edwards-Smith, GM Product Marketing, Growth, Xero

  • David Wills, CEO, FeeWise

  • Honey Mittal, Co-founder & CEO, Locofy.ai

  • Gaurav Bubna, Co-founder, Nextbillion.ai

  • Maia Josebachvili, Chief Revenue Officer, AI, Stripe

You can also explore guided demos and connect live with our experts—all from wherever you are.

Register now!

⚡ Startup Retro ⚡

GXE raises $3.3M Series A to make private investment management easier

Founders: Ed Hooper and Andrew Armstrong

GXE, a private assets management and administration platform used by MA Financial, Nash Capital and Westpac-backed Reinventure, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding to scale its software and expand its customer base. The round was led by US real estate investor Second Century Ventures, alongside Archangel Ventures and Australian Medical Angels, bringing total funding to $5.3 million across three rounds.

Founded in 2020 by Omny Studio alumni Ed Hooper and Andrew Armstrong, whose audio platform was acquired by Triton Digital in 2019, GXE tackles the messy back-office of private markets: investor onboarding and comms, tax and regulatory compliance, and securities ops. The company says it now services 250+ private funds and SPVs, replacing spreadsheet-driven workflows with a purpose-built system. Pricing is subscription-based for smaller managers, while larger funds pay a percentage of funds under management.

GXE aims to give GPs and investors a single tool that can handle everything within fund management, for capital calls, distributions, statements and audit-ready records, cutting reporting cycles and compliance risk as private-markets activity scales. With Second Century Ventures (the venture arm of the US National Association of Realtors) on board, an investor also behind Aussie proptech ActivePipe, GXE gains a beachhead to push deeper into real-estate and alternative-asset managers globally.

Due Diligence: AFR, Capital Brief, SmartCompany 

Optimaze raises $3M pre-Seed to reduce enterprise infrastructure costs

Founders: Ralf Capel and Dawshiek Yogathasar

Optimaze, a Sydney-based startup tackling cloud waste, has banked a $3 million pre-seed led by Arconic and The Innovation Club to help enterprises rein in ballooning infrastructure costs and energy use. 

With the global cloud market set to top US$1 trillion next year, and around 30% of spend wasted, per Gartner, the founders, Ralf Capel and Dawshiek Yogathasar, argue Australia’s inefficiency alone likely exceeds $3 billion and carries growing environmental costs.

Built “AI-native”, Optimaze’s platform surfaces waste in real time, quantifies financial impact, and deploys agents to push fixes across teams, aiming to cut manual FinOps grunt work (think resource tagging) by up to 90%. “Cloud waste has spiralled out of control, costing billions and consuming roughly 1% of global energy,” Capel said, adding that expanding infrastructure without attacking root causes makes the problem worse. 

Optimaze will use the cash to grow engineering, speed its roadmap, and forge cloud partnerships starting with AWS. It’s in private beta now; interested customers can join the waitlist.

Due Diligence: The Australian, Business News Australia

Good Heat raises $2M for heat batteries for factories

Founders: Bauke van Gent (CEO), Tom Geiser and Bruis van Vlijmen (CTO)

Good Heat, a Sydney startup replacing industrial gas with “heat batteries”, has raised a little over $2 million to accelerate the deployment of large-scale thermal energy storage (TES). The round was led by Understorey Ventures, the family fund of AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, with Investible and 2100VC (linked to the Benetton industrial group) also participating.

Founded in early 2025 by Bauke van Gent (CEO), Tom Geiser and Bruis van Vlijmen (CTO), the team brings experience across greenfield energy projects (Neoen, Infigen), battery tech commercialisation, and AI-driven optimisation (Stanford). Their pitch: charge TES systems when renewable electricity is cheapest (often midday solar), then dispatch on-demand steam to factories at prices below gas — slashing energy bills and emissions without customers taking technology or market risk.

Good Heat’s model is “heat, not hardware”: no capex for clients, just a monthly bill under 10–20 year Heat Purchase Agreements (HPAs). The company develops, owns and operates the assets and projects, typically costing 50m+, with on-site systems managed via an intelligent energy platform to optimise steam cost and reliability.

A flagship Victorian project, billed as Australia’s largest heat battery, is underway for a major industrial customer and is expected to save more than $1.5 million annually. Backers cite strong market pull and potential to scale across hard-to-decarbonise sectors.

Due Diligence: Media Release, Capital Brief, Startup Daily, Investible Investment Notes

Conry Tech raises $3M seed round for an efficient air-conditioning unit for commercial buildings

Founders: Ron Conry and Sam & Brenda Ringwaldt

Conry Tech, a Melbourne climate-tech hardware startup, has raised a $3 million seed round to bring its BullAnt air-conditioning system to market, promising to cut commercial building energy bills by up to 50%. The round was led by specialist climate investor Audacy, with a larger ~$13 million Series A flagged for 2026.

Founded in 2020 by HVAC veterans Ron Conry (inventor of the high-efficiency Turbocor compressor) and Sam & Brenda Ringwaldt, Conry Tech is rebuilding AC from first principles. BullAnt is a decentralised, Australian-designed “heat-pump first” system engineered without off-the-shelf components after five years of R&D. 

The goal is to build a compact, high-efficiency unit that slashes electricity use and emissions in energy-hungry assets like offices and data centres, helping landlords hit net-zero targets while lifting asset values.

CEO Sam Ringwaldt says the capital will complete development and expand the team. According to the team, HVAC has “barely changed” in decades and needs genuine innovation to curb soaring global cooling demand. While the company wants to manufacture BullAnt domestically, it’s prioritising rapid scale, “anyway and anywhere we can.”

Due diligence: Startups Daily, Business News Australia 

PredicTx Health raises $1.6M pre-seed to personalise chemotherapy dosing

Founders: Professor Justin Yeung and Abhijeet Waykar

PredicTx Health, a University of Melbourne spin-out developing an AI-powered oncology platform, has raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding to personalise chemotherapy dosing and improve treatment outcomes. The round combined capital from the university’s Genesis Pre-Seed Fund, a government grant, and angel investors, marking a key step toward commercialising its precision oncology technology.

Founded by Professor Justin Yeung, head of surgery at Western Health, and Lenia Health founder Abhijeet Waykar, PredicTx uses CT scans and machine learning to analyse muscle and bone composition. This allows clinicians to tailor chemo doses for each patient, replacing the outdated “one-size-fits-all” method based on body surface area. This is a great resource from the University of Melbourne to understand the technology more deeply.

The funding will support clinical validation with Western Health, expand the team, and prepare for regulatory approvals with Australia’s TGA and Europe’s CE. Waykar says the next 12–18 months will focus on product readiness and deployment with oncology centres in Australia and India.

By integrating radiomics, clinical data, and predictive modelling, PredicTx aims to solve one of cancer treatment’s biggest blind spots: dosing accuracy. “This raise gives us the momentum to move from research into real-world clinical impact,” Waykar said, calling it a model for how universities and hospitals can co-create breakthrough medical startups.

Due Diligence: Startup Daily

🚀 Sip Ventures x Asahi Beverages: $150K Equity-Free Funding

Building tech that enhances how people drink?

Sip Ventures is funding startups transforming beverage experiences across:

  • 🏠 Home: Smart entertainment integration, recipe platforms, subscription service

  • 🛒 Retail: Frictionless checkout, loyalty tech, circular packaging

  • 🍻 Venues: Predictive staffing, smart dispensing, dynamic menus, POS innovation

  • 📱 Digital: Payments & rewards, gamification, personalisation platforms

The deal: Up to $150K equity-free + 12-20 week pilot with Asahi Beverage's network.

Perfect for: Seed-Scale startups with proven traction ready for an inflection point in growth.

Applications Close 31st October

Apply Now in 5 minutes

🥳 Wins 🥳

🥼Breakthrough Victoria has kicked off a $7.5m Fellowship Program to back 50 researcher-founders with up to $150k each under the state’s $100m University Innovation Platform. (Innovation Aus)

  • The first three fellows are Michelle Chen (Mental Jam, game-based mental health literacy), Mohammad Haft Tananian (InnovaIVF, non-invasive embryo imaging), and Noor E Karishma Shaik (DeepDerm, AI skin-cancer detection without biopsies).

  • The programme targets the “pre-seed gap” for university-born ideas, creating a talent pipeline that feeds into later-stage commercialisation.

  • Fellows receive capital plus structured support across investment readiness, product development, and mentoring to accelerate lab-to-market timelines.

🐦 Lorikeet, building AI “universal concierges”, has launched an industry-first Team of Agents platform with full voice integration to actually resolve customer issues end-to-end—not just deflect them. 

  • Rather than a single bot summarising help docs, Lorikeet orchestrates multiple specialised agents that collaborate across voice, chat, email and SMS to call vendors, text doctors, and email hotels while keeping customers updated in their preferred channel.

  • CEO Steve Hind says customers want problems solved, not instructions. Lorikeet’s edge rests on three pillars: truly multi-modal deployment (with voice for real-world actions), full configurability to match a company’s business logic, and coordinated “teams” of agents that can engage third parties simultaneously to drive a complete resolution.

  • Lorikeet was the top-ranked CX/support AI in a16z’s inaugural AI Spending Report, and is backed by QED Investors, Blackbird, Square Peg and Airtree.

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.

See the full job board here

📆 Notice Board 📆

🚀 Startmate’s Winter ’25 Accelerator Demo Day will showcase 13 startups from AI-native workplaces and super-intelligent healthcare agents to haptic VR gloves and at-home cervical screening kits.

  • When & Where: Thursday, 23 October at The Timber Yard, Melbourne, grab a ticket here and use code OS-FAM for $10 off.

🧑‍🌾 evokeᴬᴳ Startup Program 2026 is open to early-stage and scaling agrifood tech startups.

The best place to find upcoming events to attend and promote any events you’re hosting is the ANZ Startup Events Calendar.

Check it out

Would you like to promote an event or an opportunity? Enquire about a Notice Board promotion here.

🧠 KaaS (Knowledge as a Service)

Will’s Cultural Pick 💁 Ripple Effects, the eight-part documentary-style podcast series hosted by Soph Dicker from So Invested.

  • The podcast series follows Australian founders and VC operators on a transformative two-week journey in Tanzania - climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and immersing themselves with the local work of the Forever Projects team to see how income generation breaks the poverty cycle for women.

  • The series parallels the mountain of business building, exploring purpose, friction, fear of failure, perspective shifts, and the power of investing in women.

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

‘Til next time,

👋 Will

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