Farmers’ software start-up raises $11m with profitability promise

Livestock management software company AgriWebb has raised $US7.2 million ($11 million) via a convertible note which the company’s chief executive says will fund the business through to profitability.

The SaaS company, which was founded in 2014 by fifth generation farmers Justin Webb, Kevin Baum and John Fargher, originally sought to raise between $8 million and $9 million, but the round was oversubscribed by interested parties.

Currently, the platform manages over 23 million head of livestock across more than 150 million acres in 18 countries, with a dominant presence in Australia, the UK, the United States and Brazil.

AgriWebb previously raised a $30 million Series B round, which was led by the venture capital arm of Canadian telco Telus. That was followed by a smaller $10 million raise in 2022 from Grosvenor Food & AgTech, Telus, and The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, plus new investors Germin8 Ventures and iSelect Fund.

Listed Swedish industrial company Munters Group joined AgriWebb’s cap table in the latest round, while existing backers such as Germin8 Ventures, Grosvenor Food & AgTech, and Telus Ventures, also participated in the latest raise.

Mr Webb said the company wanted to raise enough cash to “comfortably and confidently get through profitability while continuing our forward investment into growth”.

“The increasing interest from impact investors and corporate stakeholders in AgTech underscores a collective commitment to thriving, sustainable agricultural practices,” Mr Webb said.

Australian digital and data consultancy and AWS partner V2 Digital has raised $30 million from US-based investor Columbia Capital.

V2 Digital was created in April 2023 by Craig Howe, a second-time founder who sold his company Nebulr to UK-based consultancy Contino for an undisclosed amount in 2018.

As part of the deal, Neublr’s 50 employees joined Contino and Howe became the company’s managing director for Asia Pacific until he departed in April 2022.

Howe declined to disclose V2’s valuation but said the consultancy had grown exponentially over the past 12 months and plans to more than double its team of 40 employees by the end of the year.

“This investment will enable V2 to further bolster our strong market position by strengthening our offerings, attracting top talent to grow our consulting team to more than 90 by the end of the year, and broadening our geographical reach beyond our existing footprint in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane,” Howe said.

A start-up making an AI-powered customer support help desk has raised $3.85 million from investors including Peak XV, formerly known as Sequoia Capital India.

Brainfish’s raise is the Sydney start-up’s second and includes cash from Macdoch Ventures, Black Sheep Capital and angel investors. It has raised $5 million in total.

The start-up claims that the answers its AI bot provides to customers will resolve 80 per cent of their claims, which could allow company’s to cut customer support staff.

It said in a release announcing the capital raise that it was growing at 65 per cent monthly. Its customers include pet sitting site Mad Paws, gig economy task marketplace Airtasker and taxi firm 13Cabs.

A host of companies are developing AI tools for customer service, including giants such as Intercom and Zendesk, alongside other Australian start-ups including Sydney-based OpTech.

Brainfish’s co-founder and chief executive Daniel Kimber said the investment would help the company save its customers time and money. “Bad bot answers just won’t suffice anymore,” he said in a brief statement.

Peak XV was part of the big US-headquartered venture fund Sequoia Capital but the fund hived off its Indian and Chinese offices in a process announced last year amid heightened geopolitical tension.

Brainfish did not disclose its valuation.

Tasmanian-founded emissions accounting software company Sumday has raised a $5.3 million seed funding round led by a New York venture capital fund to help companies track their climate goals.

The investment is the first international deal from the American fund, Planeteer Capital, which is focussed on climate technology. Several existing investors returned to support Sumday, including Blackbird Ventures, environmental loans and investment fund Wedgetail, and Canva co-founder Cameron Adams.

Sumday did not disclose its valuation for the round, which takes its funding to $7.3 million. Founded in 2021, Sumday takes data from other pieces of accounting software such as Xero and calculates greenhouse gas emissions from transactions. It also offers online training to accountants and advisers.

Sumday co-founder and chief executive Jessica Richmond said if the company succeeded it would make tracking emissions from supply chains much easier.

“More importantly, we will all be able to make decisions that reward
companies who have demonstrated emission reduction, driving more to take action,” Ms Richmond said. “Whether that’s consumers at the supermarket checkout, investors writing cheques or companies making
procurement decisions based on reliable emissions data, everyone needs improved transparency to collectively drive change.”

NFT-based video game maker Illuvium has banked $US12 million ($18.4 million) from crypto investors King River Capital, Arrington Capital and Amimoca Brands, capitalising on the recent rally and renewed interest in blockchain-based businesses.

It’s been nearly four years since three Sydney-born brothers – Kieran, Aaron and Grant Warwick – began developing a “Pokemon-like” video game based on non-fungible-token technology.

In 2021, during the last run in crypto prices, the three Illuvium co-founders debuted on the AFR Rich List with a combined wealth of $1.08 billion. The bulk of this was attributed to their ownership of Illuvium tokens, or ILV, that underpinned the game’s internal economics.

However, this week’s Series A round reflects the company’s need for fiat currency to further its development, and brings Illuvium’s total funding to $US60 million to date. The company declined to reveal its new valuation.

The launch of Illuvium’s game has been pushed back several times, and is now slated for release in the second quarter of this year. According to the company, there are more than 1 million registered users.

NFTs, which are digital assets that are linked to an underlying blockchain, sparked a wave of interest when they first appeared in late 2021. Video game developers in particular were interested in the technology as it theoretically allowed players to “own” assets they acquired or paid for inside the game.

Chief executive officer Kieran Warwick said NFT technology has enabled the team to roll out a revenue-sharing model, where players and investors in the game could earn tokens while they played and revenue was generated.

“The concept of redirecting 100 per cent of all in-game revenues to staked investors is a major draw for ILV, resonating strongly with our community,” he said.

Buddy, an online marketplace that allows businesses to buy and sell recycled metal, has raised $1.4 million from New Zealand VC fund GD1.

The company was founded last year by husband and wife team Stuart and Lisa Kagan who have spent over three decades in the metal recycling industry. The couple previously co-founded New Zealand metal recycling company Endless in New Zealand.

The start-up plans to launch the app to metal recyclers in North America, Australia and New Zealand from April.

“Most companies use WhatsApp, email and spreadsheets as their trading tech stack to collectively trade hundreds of billions of dollars,” Ms Kagan said.

“The industry is missing out on the efficiencies and accuracy that comes with end-to-end process digitisation. What’s more, without comprehensive and integrous data sets, the industry has no basis to leverage the latest in technological advances such as machine learning and AI.”

Cauldron, a start-up which uses precision fermentation to produce the raw ingredients required to make synthetic food, fibres and fuel, has closed a $9.5 million (US$6.25 million) series A.

Based in the regional NSW town of Orange, Cauldron was founded by Michele Stansfield who was previously the general manager at Agritechnology, which spent 35 years researching and developing continuous fermentation systems for the agricultural market in Australia.

Cauldron acquired Agritechnology’s precision fermentation IP through its $10.5 million seed round last year in order to commercialise and scale the technology globally.

Its latest raise was led by existing investor Hong Kong’s Horizons Ventures, with CIA’s In-Q-Tel and SOSV joining existing investor Main Sequence in the round.

Cauldron’s long term plan is to build hyper fermentation plants around the world to produce proteins, fats and fibres which can then be used to create animal-free “milk”, plant-based “meats” and biodegradable plastic alternatives.

“Our investments include technologies needed to safeguard the interests of the US and its Allies,” said Olivia Jones, Director at In-Q-Tel. “Food insecurity and competition among countries to control resources is a real risk. The technology Cauldron has created in enabling alternative ways of producing food, proteins, and materials on an industrial scale will be game changing.”

Former Wilsons stockbroker and Australian national swimmer Luke Trickett has raised $16 million for his start-up Marmalade, which he co-founded alongside two early Afterpay employees, David Whiteman and Richard Johnson.

The invoice payments start-up has raised a total of $32 million since it was founded in 2019 to allow small and medium businesses to cash in their invoices on-demand.

The current round was led by Brisbane fund manager Blue Stamp Company. Existing investors Paloma Capital and several Queensland-based family offices also participated in the round.

Read more here.

Sydney cybersecurity start-up Nullify has raised $5.2 million to build AI that automates the job of a cybersecurity engineer.

The seed funding round was co-led by two US venture capital firms, Two Sigma and Root Ventures, with participation from Sarah Guo’s Conviction Partners.

The start-up also scored backing from prominent angel investors including, Ely Kahn, former deputy chief of staff at US. Dept Homeland Security, Pascal Boillat, former CIO at Commonwealth Bank, and Sajeeb Lohani, technical information security officer at Bugcrowd.

Nullify says it is building AI agents capable of performing cybersecurity work autonomously, reasoning and making decisions like a real security engineer, so that organisations can build more secure software without needing to hire more security specialists.

“Our vision is to go beyond a”copilot” model, and train Nullify to operate as an instantiated human resource unit of an organisation’s security team, in the way they may get staff augmentation from an outsource or consulting firm,” Nullify Co-Founder and CEO Shan Kulkarni, said.

Fertility giant Virtus Health has backed two early-stage healthcare start-ups NeoGenix Biosciences and a genomics business called 23Strands.

NeoGenix was founded by Dr Majid Warkiani and Dr Steven Vasilescu, two biomedical engineering experts from the University of Technology Sydney.

Dr Vasilescu is the inventor of a microfluidic sperm selection technology, designed to select the healthiest sperm for assisted reproductive techniques. The medtech has also pioneered SpermSearch, an artificial intelligence designed to identify rare sperm during testicular surgeries for severely infertile men.

NeoGenix has raised over $300,000 pre-seed funding in 2023 and recently landed $100,000 from Virtus Health.

23Strands, founded by Mark Grosser and Omer Ingber has raised $300,000 from Virtus Health to develop end-to-end platform using the whole genome and AI to develop algorithms to help doctors create a specialised, personalised treatment plan.

Beyond cash, the two start-ups will receive several hundreds of thousands of dollars in in-kind commercialisation support including access to Virtus Health’s experts, clinical trial access, future direct investment and market access across the Virtus network.

Franca Agresta, Virtus Health’s Head of clinical research, said the funding aims to boost innovation in female-focused health tech.

“In Australia and globally, health tech startups encounter many problems, particularly when it comes to sourcing funding and finding accessible pathways to market entry,” she said.

“By assisting women’s health focused start-ups, we are aiming to boost innovation to benefit the lives of women and their families, ensuring they have access to new innovations that can help them.”