Four ANZ startups raised around $43M in one week in July. Not a SaaS tool among them, and one of them took the money and immediately left the country.
The raises
HAMR Energy (Portland, VIC). Up to $32M from ARENA, with $12.5M for front-end engineering and the rest subject to HAMR finding co-funding. The plan takes around 600,000 tonnes a year of plantation forestry residue in Victoria, turns it into renewable methanol at Portland, then into roughly 140 million litres of sustainable aviation fuel a year at a refinery planned for Gillman in South Australia.
Superstat (Melbourne). $3.5M pre-seed led by Blackbird. AI that turns raw footage from your local club into the kind of performance data elite teams pay for. It came through Startmate’s summer 2026 cohort, says it has more than 5,000 active users, and is moving the company to Austin, Texas.
Navi Medical (Melbourne). $6.8M, led by $4M from healthcare fund KP Rx. Its Neonav device helps clinicians get a catheter into the right place in the veins of critically ill newborns. University of Melbourne research says around 40% of attempts to place a central line in a newborn end up misplaced. The device has FDA approval and US sales are expected to start this year.
Octopusbot (Sydney). Just over $1M in its first raise, backed by Folklore Ventures and No Brand. It reads satellite imagery, weather and yield history to forecast grain crops up to 7 months before trade and official estimates. It has more than 100 customers.
My read
Jet fuel from tree waste, a catheter for newborns, AI for grassroots footy and grain forecasting. This is the kind of week I like covering. The only thing that bugs me is another promising company packing up for the US the moment it raises.