Mike Cannon-Brookes

Today, we're announcing Arcanys Ventures’ strategic partnership with Innovation Bay, Australia's leading community for tech founders and investors. What does this partnership mean for founders? Early-stage startups typically face two critical challenges: - Securing the right technical talent to scale products quickly - Accessing informed, strategic capital efficiently Together, Arcanys Ventures and Innovation Bay solve these exact problems: 👩🏽‍💻 Tech Team Scaling Arcanys Ventures directly addresses talent scarcity by deploying experienced, reliable software development teams as an investment from USD 200k to USD 500k per round. This helps founders focus on growth and strategic execution rather than recruitment bottlenecks. 🤑 Investor Readiness and Confidence Innovation Bay connects startups to a network of deeply experienced investors, while Arcanys Ventures brings rigorous technical due diligence. Combined, this significantly increases investor confidence, smoothing the fundraising journey. 🤝 Strategic Network Access Innovation Bay's robust network provides invaluable market insights, mentorship, and opportunities for strategic partnerships—essential components for startup success. Our joint effort is designed to alleviate founders' common pain points, ensuring they have the support necessary to scale sustainably and efficiently. Looking forward to empowering more founders together.

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Aussie and Kiwi ML builders, quantum architects, and computational chemistry technologists: Some of the most consequential companies begin the same way: a hard problem, a special person, and the decision to build. Saron Berhane kicks-off the Foundry Roadshow today in Perth, then all major cities across Australia and Aotearoa through February (dates in the comments). Foundry supports unreasonably ambitious technical people building cornerstone solutions—researchers, engineers, builders. We care about ambition and quality above all. Not polish. Not permission. Not whether you already have a company, a deck, or traction. It’s never too early. Sometimes there isn’t even an idea on a page yet, just a person we believe is exceptional, and a problem worth a decade. The greatest regret is rarely trying and failing. It’s never trying at all. If you’re waiting until it’s “ready,” you're always too late. This is the point everyone underestimates. A few early Foundry companies that started where you are now: 🧊 Iceberg Quantum — fault-tolerant quantum architectures → $2M announced funding + PsiQuantum partnership 🐒 Unsloth — high-performance LLM fine-tuning → millions of downloads, used by NVIDIA, NASA, Meta 🧬 Cell Bauhaus — hybrid ML + mechanistic cell models → millions raised, incl. Gates Foundation ⚡ Aquila — long-range wireless energy transfer → $5M announced funding 🤖 Andromeda — humanoid companions addressing loneliness → $26M announced funding Foundry companies are entering the world’s best accelerators (incl. YC, Startmate, and MassRobotics) and raising from top-tier global funds, including Blackbird, LocalGlobe, and Footwork—because ambition and quality travel. ... and there's more exciting news still to be announced! We're hosting lunch and learn sessions in each city that cover, what’s changing in venture in 2026, raising with intent, how Foundry supports founders from the earliest spark through to scale. We'll also open the floor to questions about Cohort 6 applications, which are now open! If you know someone doing unreasonably ambitious technical work (inside a lab or outside it), please tag or share this with them. The next generational companies will be built by deeply technical people, many of whom are sitting today in the technical departments of our research institutions. cc: James Palmer and Jessica Tulp #DeepTech #MachineLearning #ResearchToReality

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What's been happening in health tech? 💊🎉 🧠 OneMRI announced $2.5M funding to expand its whole-body MRI startup, launched by Go1 founders & Gopi Sara to bring radiation-free, preventative scans to Aussies using underutilised imaging clinics 🔬 Mirugen secured up to $4.5M in seed funding to accelerate its gene-reprogramming therapy for retinitis pigmentosa 🦴 SDIP Innovations Pty. Ltd. Innovations snagged $3.95M in federal funding to develop an implant system that manufactures bone fillers for orthopaedic surgery 🧪 Lucia Bio, raised AU$3M seed funding from UniQuest & Uniseed to advance its selective spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) inhibitors 🌏 Teladoc Health is acquiring virtual care provider Telecare to expand specialty access & hospital partnerships across the country 🧵 Southern Cross University & NACCHO bagged $2.5M to codesign a program offering cervical screening during pregnancy for First Nations women 🚀 Startmate announced its Winter ‘25 Cohort ft. 4 Health companies: *Care GP: AI infrastructure for Healthcare provider admin *HEYSTU: A desk companion robot to help people with ADHD stay focused *Medlo: AI-powered hybrid staffing and care delivery for hospitals *June Health: At-home STI & cervical screening kits 🧠 An ALS patient became the first to control an iPad with thought alone, using Synchron’s brain implant & Apple’s BCI protocol 🚀 Google & NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration tested an AI assistant to help astronauts diagnose & treat medical issues autonomously during deep space missions 📝 Epic, used by nearly half of U.S. hospitals, enters the AI scribe race with plans to launch its own ambient note-taking tool Keen for the details & links? Take a gander at last week's newsletter in the comments below👇😊 --- PS - Like this? Join >9700 legends getting the latest health innovation news direct to your inbox, by subscribing to my newsletter, What the Health, linked in the comments! 💜 📩

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Allegra Spender is spot on. Increased innovation is critical if we want a prosperous, productive and fairer future for Australia Australian technology has punched about it's weight with more unicorns per $ invested than any other nation Our VC firms are delivering returns that are at the top of global benchmarks Global investors have noticed, and are investing heavily into VC and our scale-ups. If this trend continues, a good chunk of the value creation that will come from these generational defining companies will accrue to foreign endowment funds and pension funds There is a huge opportunity to lift super fund investment into innovation AND increase net returns for members 1) Address RG97 and YFYF to allow more investment into Aussie VC 2) Create a pool of capital to seed matching capital into emerging VC managers More venture firms + more diversity is a hall mark of a thriving tech sector and the opportunity is there for the taking

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📣 Final call for the Google for Startups AI First Accelerator, applications close this coming Monday 30th June -> https://lnkd.in/gW2ZmFrh This 10-week equity-free accelerator program is designed for Seed to Series A stage Australian startups building AI and ML-driven platforms and products. The accelerator connects founders with the best people, products and practices to help them grow, with Google’s AI and ML technical expertise and global networks to support startups succeed. Selected startups can expect: 🤝 Mentorship: Hands-on guidance from Google AI experts to address unique challenges. 👨‍💻 Technical Support: Deep dives into AI tools and infrastructure, including free access to cloud credits for eligible startups. 🌐 Founders' Network: Connect and collaborate with a cohort of top-tier AI startups from across the country and globally. 📈 Workshops: Practical bootcamps on UX/product design, marketing, sales, leadership, and setting effective objectives. Our 2024 cohort was comprised of Fetch 🐾, Springboards.ai, Asseti, BuildShip, Gigabuddy, Marqo, Sauce and Mana (previously LoveHeart). For more info and the application form link head to https://lnkd.in/gW2ZmFrh Erin Howell Bradford Chan Georgie Healy Kristine Song Scott Riddle Melanie Silva Kieran O'Neill Anna Tyndale Danielle Pinkus

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Some Tips/Notes on Grants --- I just did some review of Eire Ventures grant applications: - Lots of grant applications coming in now. Both Eire Ventures Grants and Trelis AI grants have gotten onto a few micro-grants lists (like this one: https://lnkd.in/eJaY3M3z) and that has given an influx. One specific note for grant applicants, and then a general note: - I get a reasonable amount of applications (maybe 20%) looking at a product for education or research. This is a difficult space to do one's first product or startup in - because the buyer often doesn't have a lot of money. Your idea could still be a good one, and I'll consider it, but I often recommend to pursue the idea quickly, figure out if it can be business-sustainable, and consider some other ideas/markets in parallel. - If you have a range of projects that are well documented online (e.g. websites, GitHub repos) that greatly increases your chance of getting a grant, because it gives me something to review and gauge ability/potential. Applications where there's just one link to go on make it hard to be confident about ability/potential. P.S. I've caught up with a backlog as far as June ~20th. Will get up to date soon. If you applied, you will hear back.

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Manufacturing is foundational to the economy, yet most operators still run on fragmented tools and manual workflows... a solution has arrived! Proud to see Factory close its $4.7m Series A, led by our friends at Shearwater Capital, with follow on participation from Investible. From our initial pre-seed investment, what has stood out is not just the ambition of the mission, but the discipline in execution. Paul and Michael have focused on solving real operational problems for SME manufacturers which has translated that into genuine customer adoption. Factory’s progress shows there are large, underserved markets for practical, purpose-built SaaS. This round is an important step toward scaling that impact in Australia and beyond. https://lnkd.in/gafB3b6r #VC #earlystage #manuacturing

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Brisbane-based startup Enhance Labs has raised $2.3 million in pre-seed funding to solve the problem of “AI slop” — when AI tools fail to deliver on their promises and frustrate knowledge workers. The round was led by Blackbird Ventures with support from QIC Ventures. The funds will be used to build a voice-first collaboration platform designed to support and enhance human thinking, rather than replace it. Haziq Nordin | Mike Keating | Jesse Head 🔗 Read full article link in comment #enhancelabs #AIslop #funding #startupnews #businessupdate

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The 2025 Australian Startup Funding Report was published this week by Cut Through Venture, and I was grateful to be invited to contribute a short piece. The report does a great job outlining the state of funding across the ecosystem. Capital flows matter and they shape the environment founders and investors are operating in. What I shared in the report was one lens I’ve developed over the past decade as a founder and investor, and more recently through working closely with founders in The Komo Club and long-form conversations on The Startup Playbook Podcast. That lens is simple, but often overlooked: Funding starts the story. Founder capacity determines how it ends. By founder capacity, I don’t mean motivation or hustle. I mean the ability to stay clear, make good decisions, and keep showing up through long periods of uncertainty, doubt, and pressure. The part of the journey where nothing feels obvious yet, even when things look “successful” from the outside. I’ve seen how sustained pressure, burnout and the quiet trade-offs founders make around health, relationships and identity can slowly erode that capacity and when capacity drops, the impact isn’t just personal. Decision quality suffers. Short-term thinking creeps in. Teams feel it. Companies absorb it. Investors ultimately feel it too. I’ve expanded on this perspective in a longer piece below, building on what I shared in the report and going deeper into the human side of company building that rarely shows up in funding data. If you’re a founder, investor, or work closely with startups, I hope it’s a useful read. The Komo Club https://lnkd.in/gUeykZFC

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Building in public is scary as a founder. There is uncertainty on how work in progress initiatives will be received, and judgement too. However, one of the greatest unlocks enabled is reflecting on what we are focusing on and why. Recently, I've been back in Sydney, where Build Club was founded. In this period, a focus of our team has been dog fooding what 'building an AI first / native workforce actually means'. For us, we recently built an 'AI inbound sales agent', which automatically triages inbound leads. We have had a lot of learnings 👇. We had seen other companies implement it and thought it would be a simple AI use case as it was so popular. But it took us more than one week to get right! Our biggest learnings: - identify a repeatable use case: map out the process beforehand - problem solving mindset: trial different tools like AirOps, Relevance AI before committing - QA test: AI is still prone to hallucinations, even if you think you 'have it right' there are so many edge cases. Keep the human in the loop to start. Another highlight was celebrating the launch of HP ZBook with Brad Pulford, Melissa Collison, Aman Sangar, and Lisa Teh (built for the future AI workforce!). We still have a lot to learn and AI use cases we want to build internally! Would love to hear what you are doing day to day to enable your team with AI. #BuildClub #founderlife #AIstartups #futureofwork

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With a confusing two tier funding market - AI hyped (mostly), everything else normal (kind of) - here's what I'm excited about at Playfair 📽 Hardware and difficult to build stuff - things like verticalised robotics & novel manufacturing processes where tech meets proper, manual work 🤖 Regulated industries - regulatory approval risks are now, if you get it right, moats and buyer credibility that shrinks your competitor pool 🤏 Companies using AI where if you scratched the word 'AI' from the deck you've still got a clear problem & solution with a 10 year+ vision 👀 Thanks Seb Johnson 📊at ETS Live for the great conversation Link to the full episode in the comments 👇 #Founder #funding #business #investing #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneur #startup

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