First up, let’s deal with the elephant in the room – or is it more unhatched chickens we haven’t counted? – the $725 million investment in AI infrastructure company Firmus Technologies.
As we pointed out earlier this week, the announcement was very carefully worded – the headline in the present tense – “raises’ before it says Firmus “expects to secure a further USD$505 million strategic equity investment led by Coatue… with participation from Nvidia subject to certain closing conditions”.
As anyone’s who’s ever hooked a very large fish, let alone raised (past tense) capital knows, you only get to weigh/count it when the fish/money is in the boat/bank.
So we haven’t included Firmus this week, and instead have five Australian startups which definitely raised a combined $30.1 million, with funding flowing into enterprise AI infrastructure, vertical software, women’s health diagnostics and more.
Haast: $17 million
The Haast cofounders Jason Watling, Liam King and Kunal Vankadara
Compliance startup Haast has raised $17 million (US$12m) in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners, supported by DST Global Partners, Airtree, Aura Ventures and Black Sheep Capital.
Founded in Sydney, Haast is building an AI-powered compliance infrastructure designed to automate regulatory and policy workflows inside enterprise systems. The platform embeds organisational policy and risk frameworks directly into day-to-day tools, aiming to reduce the manual burden on legal and compliance teams.
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The fresh funding will be used to scale its agentic workflow products and expand its global enterprise footprint.
Read more here.
Kimia: $7 million
Kimia co-founders Farid Mirmohseni and Sajjad Azami. Image: Kimia
Sydney-based startup Kimia has raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by Airtree Ventures, with backing from Blackbird Ventures and Skip Capital.
Founded by Farid Mirmohseni and Sajjad Azami, Kimia is developing a “chemical intelligence” platform that applies AI to company data, documentation and institutional knowledge to support commercial teams in the chemical industry.
The platform is designed to deliver technically accurate, source-backed answers in real time, addressing delays caused by reliance on specialist expertise and fragmented internal knowledge.
Kimia is already working with enterprise customers such as Bostik, Univar Solutions and Stahl, with the funding set to support customer growth and further product development.
Read more here.
Rosella: $3.7 million
Rosella co-founder Sean Stuart. Source: supplied.
An AI commercial insurance brokerage automation startup has raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding.
The round for Sydney-based Rosella was led by Peak XV Partners (the former Sequoia Capital India) and US VC Intact Private Capital.
The platform automates key operational tasks for commercial insurance brokers focused on small and mid-market-sized businesses.
Former VC turned founder Sean Stuart launched Rosella in late 2025 with Chris Dwyer, a founding engineer at Constantinople and AI lead at Accenture. The pair met at university a decade earlier.
Stuart, the CEO, and an endurance athlete who completed 80 marathons in 80 days, said the startup, which also has a US base, is addressing three persistent challenges in the market: time-intensive workflows, coverage complexity, and service variability.
“The holy grail is not chatbots. It is browser agents that can navigate a hundred carrier portals, each one different, each one changing daily,” he said.
“Everyone asks how AI replaces workers. We ask how it makes them extraordinary. Our AI turns a one-year rep into a 10-year veteran.”
Read more here.
Proseek Bio: $1.5 million
Proseek Bio’s Dr Leo Bolero, Michelle M Hill and Dr Idris Mohd Najib. Image: CSIRO
Brisbane-based women’s health startup, Proseek Bio, has raised $1.5 million in a Seed round to commercialise its ovarian cancer detection blood test.
The company is developing OC-Triage. This is a blood-based diagnostic that identifies glycoprotein markers linked to a future likelihood of ovarian cancer. The test is designed to support earlier and more accurate clinical decision-making, improving referral pathways and reducing unnecessary surgery.
The company says up to 80% of surgeries for suspected ovarian cancer return benign results, while more than 15,000 Australian women undergo diagnostic procedures each year, often with late-stage diagnoses.
Proseek Bio said the new funding will support clinical validation and progression toward lab deployment, with plans for a Series A raise focused on market entry, regulatory approvals and further trials.
The company is also exploring broader applications for the technology, including endometriosis triage and other women’s health diagnostics, as investor interest in the category begins to grow.
Chime Labs: $900,000
Chime Labs founders Alexis Griveau and Mathew Pretel. Source: supplied.
Sydney startup Chime Labs has raised $900,000 in pre-seed funding to help tradies manage their workload using AI.
The round was led by 500 Global, supported by angel investors.
Former Googlers Alexis Griveau and Mathew Pretel founded the AI-powered receptionist service in 2025 to support trades and service businesses. They’ve kicked off with an AI receptionist that answers calls 24/7, qualifies leads, and books jobs directly on the calendar.
The capital will be used to expand the product offerings to make Chime Labs a one-stop shop for Australian trades and services businesses, as well as bolstering the headcount.
Griveau said the idea for Chime Labs came about as a result of witnessing family members and friends struggling when running their service-led business, adding that a single missed call could cost them up to $12,000 a month in lost revenue.
Read more here.
