Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
BNPL provider Zip is shutting down New Zealand operations effective 16 August, citing strategic focus on Australia and US markets. The company posted $65.1m cash EBITDA in Q3 FY26 (up 41.5% YoY) but did not disclose headcount impact or sales team changes from the NZ exit.
University of Canberra AI expert Ryan Payne says workers over 50 are unlikely to retrain for AI-heavy roles, while employers see under-25s as over-reliant on AI. The federal government's 'jobs created, not lost' promise ignores reality: roles are changing faster than workers can adapt.
Dropbox guided to revenue decline. PagerDuty ARR is dead flat at $496M. Net dollar retention below 100% means the existing base is shrinking. This is what happens when AI agents replace headcount and seat-based models break. Your expansion motion just became a retention problem.
Sydney-founded insurtech Cover Genius closed a $143 million funding round backed by Vista Credit Partners, valuing the company at $2 billion. The 2017 Smart50 winner now serves major clients including Booking.com and eBay, with plans to expand AI capabilities and make acquisitions.
Auckland-based Tracksuit bought Sydney's Hall to track how brands appear in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini responses. The acquisition adds AI visibility tools to Tracksuit's existing brand-tracking platform, which already monitors consumer perception through surveys. Hall founder Kai Forsyth joins as product lead for AI visibility.
Sydney-based Oz Hair & Beauty bought Melbourne retailer Beauty Works in July, adding a Melbourne Central store and e-commerce operation to its portfolio. The deal, undisclosed sum, signals a shift from product retail to service-integrated strategy as the $100m revenue business expands beyond its NSW base.
New RBA research shows which Australian businesses are acquisition targets. Medium-sized firms ($10m-$50m turnover) face highest acquisition probability. Counter-intuitively, acquirers prefer unproductive targets, looking to cull staff and merge functions while keeping revenue.
Production costs collapsed. Match rates now matter more than creative. The constraint moved from making ads to reaching the right people, and most B2B teams are still optimizing for the wrong thing.
ICONIQ's 2026 GTM benchmark shows quota inflation at well-funded B2B startups: $2.25M for enterprise, $1.35M for mid-market, $750K for SMB. The kicker: attainment is holding at 85-90%, not cratering. The difference is AI-powered pipeline generation and comp plans that finally pay for expansion work.
Xero is paying underperformers to leave instead of putting them on PIPs. The move comes as the ASX-listed company's shares tanked 40% and the CEO's equity comp went underwater. Meanwhile, leadership is negotiating a new pay structure.
Everyone wrote Zoom off as a COVID one-hit wonder. The data says otherwise. Q1 FY2027 shows revenue growth picking back up, customers actually paying for AI features, and free cash flow margins over 40%. Enterprise deals are driving the turn, not SMB bounce-back.
Three B2B acquisitions in 30 days, all around $3B, all buying the same thing: proprietary data to train AI models. Salesforce bought Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B, but the real story is a $100M AI agent line growing 350% YoY. The legacy helpdesk business? Flat. For ANZ sales teams: this validates outcome-based pricing and shows legacy seat-based models are being commoditised.