Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Seven ANZ startups closed $71.8 million in funding this week. Phonely, a University of Melbourne AI spin-out, led with a $22.3 million Series A. Y Combinator doubled down after backing the virtual receptionist startup in 2024. Worth watching: enterprise customers co-invested, signaling product-market fit.
Four male founders just exited for $1.6 billion selling GLP-1 weight loss subscriptions, mostly to women. CEO Tim Doyle stands to net $160 million. Female health tech founders are asking: where's the scrutiny that hit Flo's all-male team?
Auren Hoffman's Flex Capital already deploys 500+ AI agents to source deals. His prediction: by end of 2026, your first VC meeting will be agent-to-agent, founders and investors talking through bots before any human contact. Worth noting for sales teams: if VCs are automating initial meetings, your buyers will too.
Auckland-based fund admin software company Caruso closed a $9.3 million Series A at an $80 million valuation. The company is scaling headcount to 80+, with Sydney office doubling to around 40. Revenue grew 400% year-over-year, with $80 billion in assets under administration across 80+ fund managers.
Revolut is pushing SME banking in Australia with merchant acquiring at 0.5% and business accounts, but won't say how many AEs they're hiring or what the comp looks like. The company has 1 million local users and claims A$250 million in fee savings, but sales team details remain opaque.
The Sydney fintech postponed its ASX listing, citing Middle East war volatility. Directors opted for a private raise that values the business at $750m, down from the $850m IPO target. Another SaaS company choosing private capital over public markets in 2025.
Adelaide mining tech startup DryFlow Magnetics is raising more capital on the same terms as its December seed round, led by Orion Industrial Ventures. The company develops waterless magnetic processing tech for iron ore, targeting green steel production. No sales team details disclosed yet, typical for pre-revenue hardware startups.
Anthropic reached $30 billion annualised revenue with roughly 5,000 employees, generating 6 to 10 times more revenue per head than Google did at the same scale. The AI company grew 30x in 15 months with no dedicated sales team, no CRO, and a research-heavy structure. OpenAI is running similar numbers: $24B revenue, 4,500 staff, doubling headcount to 8,000 by year end.
Every vendor deploying AI sales agents faces the same problem: not enough Forward Deployed Engineers to make the tech actually work inside customer environments. Traditional CS teams cannot fill the gap, and the agents cannot deploy themselves. Here is what that means for sales organisations hiring in 2026.
Australia's $335B sovereign wealth fund is reviewing 10 investment and ops roles after deploying new data systems. Expected savings: $10-15M in FY26/27, or 5-7% of costs. CEO Raphael Arndt says tech investment since COVID is now 'baked in.' This mirrors Bendigo Bank's recent AI-driven cuts and signals broader government sector automation.
Sydney quantum sensing startup Deteqt closed a $5 million seed round led by Main Sequence to scale diamond chip manufacturing for defence navigation. The 12-month-old University of Sydney spinout is building team for ADF contract work. No sales roles publicly listed yet, but defence tech hiring typically follows funding by 60-90 days.
SaaStr's Jason Lemkin hasn't opened Canva in months despite being a happy customer for 8 years. The pattern: specialist AI tools like Reve, Opus Pro, and Higgsfield are eating specific use cases while team usage masks power user churn. When your most engaged champions quietly disengage, that is a leading indicator every B2B vendor should track.