Latest updates for ANZ sales professionals
New Zealand agtech Halter closed a $314.4 million Series E led by Founders Fund, nearly tripling its valuation to $2.9 billion in under 12 months. The company, which makes GPS-enabled cattle collars, now employs over 300 people across NZ, Australia, and the US, with expansion into the UK and Ireland planned.
Lee Hickin, National AI Centre exec director, says Australia should focus on AI applications in data-rich sectors like agriculture and healthcare, not competing on frontier models. Worth noting for sales teams: enterprise AI adoption is already at 68%, but the play is sector-specific tools, not generic platforms.
Sydney brothers Daniel and Will Roberts steered IREN from near-collapse (down 95% in 2022 crypto crash) to $17B market cap by pivoting from Bitcoin mining to AI data centres. The Nasdaq-listed company is hiring across commercial roles as it scales operations backed by renewable energy infrastructure.
The trust objection to AI account executives assumes buyers prefer human relationships. Reality: most B2B deals happen with strangers on Zoom who know 20% of the product. AI AEs answer every question accurately, no quota pressure, no overpromising. SaaStr data shows higher close rates when the AI is well-trained.
Google has put a reported $20 billion data centre investment on hold after the Australian government indicated the infrastructure would create a permanent establishment, triggering local tax obligations. The move comes as competitors like AWS commit billions to ANZ cloud infrastructure.
Sam Kroonenburg's adtech startup Cuttable closed a $5.7M raise at a $100M valuation, double its August round. The Melbourne company is opening a New York office as US demand hits 50% of inbound. Total raised: $16M since mid-2024.
Tech Council of Australia reports the sector now contributes $248.5 billion to the economy, making it Australia's third-largest industry. Worth noting: nearly half that value comes from indirect tech adoption, not the tech industry itself. Job growth is lagging the council's 2030 targets.
Jason Lemkin's media company ditched human SDRs entirely, now runs Agentforce, Monaco, Artisan, Qualified, and others 24/7. The budget shift: AI agents are no longer plug-ins, they are replacing the headcount. CRM spend is flat, agent spend is climbing.
Jason Lemkin's B2B SaaS community replaced nearly its entire sales team with AI agents after the last salesperson quit. The new structure: 4 AI SDRs, Salesforce Agent Force, Qualified AI BDR, plus support and research agents. Lemkin now says the only hiring question that matters is what AI tool you deployed in the last 30 days.
Jason Lemkin's advice for AI B2B founders: deployment bottlenecks kill retention faster than lack of check-ins. Most scale sales without implementation support, then wonder why churn is brutal. The fix: sequence your post-sales hires, starting with field deployment engineers.
Advanced Navigation pulled $158 million Series C led by Airtree, with $50 million from NRFC. MiAI Law and Deftbiotech raised undisclosed amounts. Worth noting: this fits Q3 2025's pattern where top 10 deals captured 70% of ANZ's $1 billion in venture funding, concentrated in AI and deep tech.
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.