Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Noam Shazeer and John Jumper left Google for Anthropic within 48 hours, wiping $225 billion off Alphabet's market cap. The departures signal a talent retention crisis as Google holds #3 in AI behind OpenAI and Anthropic. Wall Street is questioning whether the company can compete when pre-IPO rivals offer equity upside that a public giant cannot match.
Melbourne-founded fintech closes $460M Series H at $16B valuation, doubling from $8B eight months ago. Revenue hit $1.3B ARR (up 74% YoY) as the company pushes AI-driven finance tools. Worth noting: AUSTRAC is still investigating AML/CTF compliance.
Australian businesses sending branded SMS (like 'YourCompany' instead of a phone number) have days to register their Sender ID with ACMA or face 'Unverified' labels on every text from July 1, 2026. That includes appointment reminders, booking confirmations, and sales outreach. Your customers will see it grouped with suspected scams.
Chetan Puttagunta breaks down Benchmark's AI investment thesis and what changed in GTM. The firm's seeing legal AI startups hit $100M ARR in 18 months while taking longer to find product-market fit. Direct sales is back, PLG is not the default, and the moat moved from code to distribution.
DeepMind alumni Adam Liska and Devang Agrawal closed $20M Series A for Airspeed, their AI sales execution platform. DN Capital led the round. The company hit 200 customers across 20 countries two years post-launch, automating CRM updates, follow-ups, and risk flagging for GTM teams.
PayPal deployed Salesforce Agentforce across 200 reps, targeting leads no human would touch. The AI SDR runs 10-nudge cadences on 8,000 dropped merchants monthly. Meeting conversions are up 50% in 14 weeks.
Adobe walked away from planned Creative Cloud price increases worth $500m ARR in H2 FY2026. The company that raised prices every year for the past decade just blinked. Enterprise renewals still getting the full increase, but consumer and SMB tier pricing power is gone. Canva at $4b ARR, Figma at $1.2b, and free Affinity changed the math.
Former NASA deputy administrator and Space Shuttle commander Pam Melroy joins Gilmour Space's board. The Queensland rocket builder hit unicorn status in January after a $217M Series E led by government fund NRFC and Hostplus. Worth noting: this is governance hire, not go-to-market.
Jason Lemkin's team strangled their pitch deck grader by adding too many rules. The lesson: over-guardrailing kills agents as fast as under-guardrailing. Meanwhile, their AI VP of Finance found an 8-year-old settings mistake and an agent now negotiates vendor contracts.
The NSW Budget allocated nearly $80 million for innovation and tech startups through its Innovation Blueprint, but the word 'startups' does not appear in the document. The state leads ANZ startup funding at 41%, yet the budget's focus on payroll tax increases and property revenue decline reveals how government priorities translate to policy language.
Sydney health firm faces Federal Court action over sales team posing as medical professionals to sell programs worth up to $7,500. ACCC alleges scripted fear tactics, refund denials, and unfair contract terms affected 6,000+ Australians between 2022 and 2025.
Erica Berchtold, David Jones CCO since May 2025, takes the top job at Australia's oldest department store. She replaces Scott Fyfe at a legacy retailer facing pressure from online competitors and specialist fashion brands. Worth noting: David Jones trades from 30+ stores but was sold for ~US$100M in 2023, down from A$2.1B in 2014.