Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
New ICONIQ benchmark of 150+ B2B companies shows AI-adopting GTM orgs are running 20 to 30% fewer FTEs while producing roughly double the net new revenue per rep. Sales-sourced pipeline now makes up 62% of total pipeline, up from marketing's 19%. Comp plans are shifting: 33% of companies now tie AE pay to net new recurring revenue, up 8 points year on year.
Three foundation models graded 120 B2B APIs and agreed: marketing automation and sales engagement platforms have no place in agent workflows. When AI can craft and send personalised emails natively, the templating layer that defined these categories becomes redundant. Here is what that means for your stack.
Canberra ag-tech startup Goterra, backed by Mike Cannon-Brookes' Grok Ventures in an $8 million Series A, has appointed administrators. The insect-waste processing company says it has working tech and contracted customers but ran out of runway chasing growth capital. Teneo is pursuing a going-concern sale.
The Victorian government has axed its Startup Year program, which burned $15.4 million over four years to attract just eight participants. The scheme offered HECS-style loans for university students joining startup accelerators. It was meant to support 2,000 students annually.
Nine Entertainment offloaded youth publisher Pedestrian to Vinyl Group for nominal consideration after spending $49M over a decade. The deal signals continued media sector contraction, with implications for digital sales teams as legacy publishers shed non-core assets. No headcount or sales org details disclosed.
Jason Lemkin opened the books on SaaStr's AI agent stack. Three humans, 20+ agents, 614 meetings booked, and $500K recovered from leads no rep would touch. Real costs, real output, and the one place you should not point an agent.
Jason Eubanks put his old GTM stack on a slide: 22 products, $3 million in annual fees, 11 ops team members to keep it running. Reps spent 24-30% of their time actually selling. The rest was context switching across 10-12 tools per day. Now he is building Aurasell to replace the whole thing with one AI-native CRM.
Vercel's CPO Tom Occhino detailed how the company runs on hundreds of internal AI agents, posting numbers that should make every B2B sales leader rethink 2026 headcount. The dev platform reabsorbed its SDR team after an AI agent took over lead qualification. Support runs at 93% automation, marketing content starts at 96% AI-drafted.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr runs 20+ AI agents with 3 full-time humans, same revenue as when they had 20 employees in 2020. Their custom-built AI VP of Marketing, called 10K, plans campaigns, manages pipeline, and assigns daily tasks. They spent over $500k on AI infrastructure because every AI marketing tool they demoed only wrote content, not strategy.
AI company Anthropic raised $65B at a $965B valuation and filed for IPO, four years after founding. The company is doing $47B in annualized revenue with 5,000 employees: $9.4M per head. That is 4x what Apple and Google generate per employee, and it breaks every assumption about how enterprise software scales.
Seven ANZ startups closed deals totaling $17 million in early June. QuantX Labs led with a $7 million seed round for quantum sensing tech sold to Defence. Two startups headed to Y Combinator. Socceroo Tim Cahill joined one as investor and advisor.
Swedish AI startup Lovable crossed $400M ARR with under 200 employees. That is over $2M per head. No traditional sales team. No VP titles. Head of Growth Elena Verna says feature differentiation is dead and the new moat is brand, not product. Worth watching if you are in B2B SaaS sales.