Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
Meta's reported 20% workforce reduction is not about AI replacing jobs. It is about capex priorities: when you spend tens of billions on Nvidia infrastructure, the depreciation eats operating cash flow. Meta cannot afford both the compute and the headcount. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's $1 trillion revenue forecast landed with a shrug because the market already priced it in.
Jason Lemkin's B2B media company hit 140% of Q1 2025 revenue with a skeleton GTM crew: 1.25 humans and 5 AI agents doing SDR, BDR, and RevOps work. The agents closed deals, including a $70k sponsorship with zero human involvement. But Lemkin is clear: the results were not all AI magic.
Google says it's building controls to let sites opt out of AI features in search. Publishers aren't buying it. The proposed opt-out still ties traditional search visibility to AI inclusion, and there's no detail on how it actually works or what penalty you'll pay for using it.
ServiceNow reported 603 customers spending over $5M annually, averaging $14.7M each. The company closed 244 deals over $1M in net-new ACV in Q4 alone, up 40% YoY. Paul Fipps, President of Global Customer Operations, detailed how they built the GTM engine behind $10B+ revenue and five years of 20%+ growth.
New Carta data shows two-thirds of Australian startups are running on fumes, with 86% reporting higher burn rates over the past year. Translation for sales: fewer AE roles, longer ramp periods, and bridge rounds instead of growth hires. Victorian startups are hurting worst at 71% sub-12-month runway.
NSW Premier's Department is directing agencies to sell flexible work arrangements before bumping comp for hard-to-fill roles. The directive comes despite the same government mandating 50% office presence across agencies. Skills shortage allowances can add up to $20k, but agencies now need to exhaust flexibility options first.
Every major software company has printed lower growth rates each year since 2021. Salesforce went from 25% to 8%, Snowflake from 106% to 24%. The culprit is not AI replacing software yet. It is simpler: CIOs are reallocating finite budgets to foundation model providers, and traditional software vendors are taking the hit.
Andrew Leigh, Assistant Minister for Productivity, says formal qualifications matter less as AI changes what employers value. Judgment and oversight skills will trump degrees as AI handles execution work. Worth noting: Atlassian just cut 1,600 jobs to fund AI investment.
Sydney defence tech company Advanced Navigation closed a $158 million Series C led by Airtree, with $50 million from the NRFC. The company hired Michelle Toscan as APAC Head in December to drive sovereign positioning tech sales. Revenue hit $21.8 million in FY2024, but EBITDA was negative $14.3 million.
New measurement data from Larridin reveals most sales teams are not using the enterprise AI tools companies paid for. The bigger issue: VPs have no visibility into what is actually working. Here is what the data says about AI ROI and where the money is going.
Amazon leads 2026 tech layoffs with 16,000 cuts attributed to AI efficiency. Reality check: Goldman Sachs data shows AI threatens 2.5% of US jobs, and workers in AI-exposed roles show no higher job loss rates yet. The automation narrative is running ahead of the evidence.
Jason Lemkin's team processed 1.5 million inbound sessions and sent hundreds of thousands of outbound messages using Artisan, Salesforce AgentForce, Qualified, and Monaco. The takeaway: your human playbook has to work first, and you probably only need one vendor.