The new Startmate accelerator program to kick off the year features an impressive 19 startups in Summer ’26.
Startmate has invested $2.28 million in the cohort, giving each startup $120,000 for a 7% stake.
New CEO Phoebe Pincus said the fresh investments are not about hypotheticals, but rather founders building the infrastructure behind the world we live in and the tools that remove friction from the systems we rely on every day.
“At a time when there’s debate about whether Australia can produce globally competitive technology companies, this cohort speaks for itself. 19 companies. 42 founders,” she said.
“The ambition is bigger, the problems are harder, and the talent pool is deeper than ever.”
The ideas range from reducing construction and manufacturing waste, to automating legal diligence and government tenders, and rethinking mental health care.
Startmate’s head of founders, Emma Grife, said what unites the Summer ’26 cohort is an obsession with fundamentals: time saved, costs reduced, risk removed, outcomes improved.
“The S26 founders are relentlessly focused on real customer pain, rigorously testing hypotheses to ensure what they build delivers meaningful, defensible value. They’re not chasing 10% improvements, they’re rethinking systems from the ground up,” she said.
“Many are already in market, running pilots, signing customers, and building in complex, regulated, or overlooked industries because that’s where real impact compounds.”
Here’s who they backed.
Alloovium
Brisbane, Qld
alloovium.com
One-liner: Alloovium helps construction teams find answers fast and cut admin work
Construction teams spend 35% of their time searching for information, resolving conflicts, and fixing errors. Poor data and miscommunication drive 59% of global rework, contributing to a $1.6T annual productivity gap. Alloovium tackles this head-on.
Alloovium is a collaborative AI workspace that centralises a firm’s internal knowledge across documents, emails, and industry platforms, delivering verifiable, audit-ready answers with citations. It also automates repetitive workflows across tools like SharePoint, Outlook, Word, and construction-specific software.
Founded by civil engineer Zander Schweitzer and engineer/AI researcher Cielo Nicolosi, Alloovium’s goal is to unlock $10B+ in lost value annually and become the default workspace for construction and heavy industry globally.
Founding team: Zander Schweitzer, Cielo Nicolosi
Ascenda
Gold Coast, Qld
ascenda.one
One-liner: Ascenda helps psychologists support patients between sessions.
Demand for mental health care is growing faster than the clinical workforce, leaving patients unsupported between appointments and increasing dropout rates. Ascenda extends care beyond the therapy room.
Ascenda enables psychologists to run structured, AI-assisted patient check-ins between sessions, giving clinicians early visibility into progress and risk while helping patients stay engaged and supported in daily life. Care can be adjusted sooner, not weeks later.
Founded by Nathan Challen, a serial technology founder, and Hamada Els, a clinical psychologist and practice owner, Ascenda is working with industry and corporate co-design partners, has secured 15 Letters of Intent, and is running active pilots in private healthcare settings, and is in discussions with public health systems and an international insurer.
Founding team: Nathan Challen, Hamada Els
Brainwaves
Melbourne, Vic & Singapore
getbrainwaves.com
One-liner: Brainwaves accelerates marketing strategy by cutting through process, helping brand teams get to sharp insights and bold ideas faster.
Marketing strategy is slow, manual, and buried in process. Too much information and too many guardrails dull the thinking, while grunt work leaves less and less time for the fundamentals of growth, insight and creativity.
Brainwaves changes that, helping teams synthesise research, extract meaningful patterns, and accelerate the path from fragmented inputs to sharp insights and bold strategy. Brainwaves is on a mission to get marketing teams back to managing ideas, not process.
Founded by Jamie Brownlee (20 years in brand strategy at Publicis, former CMO of Euronews), Ben Crawford (ex-CCO at UM), and Tom McKenzie (founding engineer at Mr Yum, building AI agents for 3+ years), Brainwaves is targeting a $100B+ global strategy market.
Founding team: Jamie Brownlee, Ben Crawford, Tom McKenzie
cascayd
Melbourne, Vic
One-liner: cascayd lets growth teams create and launch website A/B tests in seconds
Launching A/B tests often takes weeks, relying on developer time and guesswork to decide what to test. cascayd turns experimentation into a one-click workflow.
cascayd continuously audits your website, identifies high-impact test opportunities, and lets growth teams launch experiments instantly, without waiting on developers. Testing becomes continuous, fast, and data-driven.
Founded by Chirag (ex-Product at Edrolo, ex-Ops at Edsemble) and Will (computer science dropout, exited founder, coding since age 13), cascayd’s vision is simple: every website visitor gets a fully optimised experience, automatically.
Founding team: Chirag Babu, Will O’Brien
CheckGen
Melbourne, Vic
One-liner: CheckGen helps skincare companies and clinics prove results and personalise treatment through molecular skin testing.
Skincare providers rely largely on visual assessment, leaving them unable to prove treatment effectiveness or personalise care beyond trial and error. CheckGen brings molecular evidence to skincare.
CheckGen is developing a device that measures skin biomarkers, enabling clinics to track treatment outcomes over time and deliver personalised recommendations based on biology, not appearance.
Led by Maria Faleeva, a biomedical researcher with a PhD in cellular health and ageing, and Dr. Oliver Wright, a medical doctor, CheckGen aims to make molecular skin analysis the global foundation for personalised and effective skincare.
Founding team: Dr. Maria Faleeva, Dr. Oliver Wright
CrossCourtAI
Sydney, NSW
crosscourtai.com
One-liner: CrossCourtAI delivers investment screening and quarterly reporting for institutional real estate and private credit firms in minutes, not days
Institutional real estate and private credit teams spend up to 70% of their time on screening, reporting, and fund administration. CrossCourtAI gives that time back.
CrossCourtAI’s AI-first platform, Harper, generates investment papers, financial models, and asset updates in minutes. Teams review and refine instead of building from scratch, accelerating decisions and improving capital allocation.
CrossCourtAI is led by Sai (ex-J.P. Morgan, Barrenjoey, Cerberus Capital), James (ex-Product at V-DAQ), and Randula (ex-Optiver). Together, the team combines deep institutional finance experience with strong product and engineering capability to build what they aim to become Australia’s most trusted real estate operating system.
Founding team: Sai Naicker, James Oliver, Randula Ariyawanse
Deeligence
Melbourne, Sydney, London & New York
One-liner: Deeligence uses agentic AI to deliver precise legal due diligence reports for law firms and investors in hours, not weeks.
Legal diligence is slow, expensive, and broken. Clients wait weeks and pay hundreds of thousands for reports, while law firms lose money delivering them. Deeligence is reimagining diligence from the ground up.
Using specialised AI agents and real-time collaboration, Deeligence identifies up to 87% of deal-breaking risks on day one; ensuring teams don’t throw good money after bad deals.
Founded by former top tier lawyers and tech veterans Elena Tsalanidis and Justin Hansky, who lived the 2am spreadsheet hell firsthand. Deeligence is creating a future of AI-generated diligence with senior lawyer oversight; faster, cheaper, and dramatically more effective.
Founding team: Elena Tsalanidis, Justin Hansky
FlowGo
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia & Sydney, NSW
flowgoai.com
One-liner: FlowGo is the AI accounting workforce that runs inside your WhatsApp, Telegram and Email.
Business doesn’t just happen in text. FlowGo’s AI agents understand the chaos of real-world operations, instantly processing voice notes, photos of receipts, PDFs, and spreadsheets directly from chat and email.
They handle the repetitive grunt work from sales order entry and purchase order 3-way matching to supplier account management and reconciliation, acting as the intelligent bridge between business communication channels and accounting systems, automating the entire financial lifecycle without needing to migrate data or replace the systems you trust.
Led by founders who’ve managed $15B+ in transaction volume and scaled workflows for 50,000+ SMEs, FlowGo brings deep operational credibility from day one.
Founding team: Anthony, Jason
iBnkVault
Melbourne, Vic & Wyoming, US
ibnk.xyz
One-liner: iBnkVault helps businesses move money across borders instantly and at lower cost
Today, international payments can take days to settle, with cross-border fees often reaching 3–5%. Businesses are left waiting on funds they can’t track and delays they can’t explain.
iBnkVault replaces this with a faster, more direct way to move money globally. By routing payments through the most efficient paths and using stablecoins behind the scenes, funds that once took days can become available in real-time in select corridors. This cuts settlement friction by up to 80%, replacing slow, fragmented cross-border payments with a simpler, faster way to move money worldwide.
Founded by Yi Zhang, who built blockchain networks, and Ivy Fan, who has managed millions in cross-border capital flows, the team is rebuilding financial infrastructure for modern commerce; starting with e-commerce merchants.
Founding team: Ivy Fan, Yi Zhang
Lockii
Melbourne, Vic
lockii.app
One-liner: Lockii is the item rental system that makes contactless hire safe and profitable
Despite being a $300B+ global industry, rentals still rely on staff and manual handovers. Lockii enables 24/7 contactless rentals using smart locks, identity verification, and software.
From trailers to kayaks, Lockii makes physical assets rentable instantly; anywhere, without human involvement.
Founder Bodhi spent 6+ years building bespoke systems for automated rental companies. Lockii productises that experience to power the next generation of scalable rental businesses.
Founding team: Bodhi Hawken
Neuralindex
Melbourne, Vic
neuralindex.ai
One-liner: Neuralindex is the intelligence layer for smarter property purchase decisions
Property portals are rushing to adopt AI search, but listings still lack the insight buyers need to make decisions. Buyers rely on advisors and scattered research, slowing transactions and limiting platform trust.
Neuralindex turns listing data into agentic search and decision intelligence. Portals answer complex buyer questions while helping users understand risk earlier and purchase with greater confidence and faster.
Founded by former aerospace engineer turned AI specialist Naveed Nekoo, proptech veteran Mat Heywood, and machine learning engineer Son Duong, Neuralindex turns property listing portals into trusted decision tools; not just places to browse.
Founding team: Naveed Nekoo, Mat Heywood, Son Duong
Guin
Sydney, NSW
guin.ai
One-liner: Guin is an agentic video editor that turns your company’s video library into on-brand marketing videos in minutes
Most marketing videos are repurposed from existing content but today’s workflows are slow, manual, and expensive. Guin uses video intelligence to make raw footage instantly searchable, editable, and publish-ready.
Search videos for precise moments, tell it what you want, and get an on-brand first cut in minutes. Vibe editing without the learning curve.
Founded by Anish Deenadayalan, a second-time founder whose previous company was acquired by Freshworks, Guin has already onboarded pilot customers and processed over 200 hours of video since launching in stealth.
Founder: Anish Deenadayalan
Superstat
Melbourne, Vic
superstat.com.au
One-liner: Superstat shows sports teams how to win with AI analysis of their games
Sports teams often lack clear, objective insight into how to improve performance. Data is expensive, slow, and hard to interpret. Superstat changes that.
Superstat delivers automated stats and actionable insights, not just numbers, helping teams strengthen what works, fix what doesn’t and giving clubs an unfair, game winning advantage.
Their founders are previous sports tech founders who have worked with local players and clubs in recruitment for the last 4 years. They hear the pain points of these clubs daily, and want to help more clubs get more wins on the board.
Founding team: Cordelia King, Kai Bloomfield, Sam Hung
Talentsheet
Sydney, NSW
talentsheet.xyz
One-liner: Talentsheet finds where your ideal customers already pay attention and how to reach them
Marketing today is a guessing game. Brands are wasting billions of dollars marketing to people who don’t care about their products – with their teams stumbling from “where do I begin” to “did this even move the needle?”
Talentsheet removes the uncertainty by identifying the creators, podcasts, communities, and brands your ideal customers already trust, and how to reach them organically.
Founded by Dexter, Oliver, and Ben, whose backgrounds span consumer behaviour, engineering, and elite performance, Talentsheet is helping brands stop shouting into the void and start showing up where it matters.
Founding team: Dexter Todd, Oliver Bagin, Ben Abbatangelo
Tendor
Sydney, NSW
tendor.ai
One-liner: Tendor automates government tenders from discovery to submission
Government procurement represents a massive opportunity for Australian businesses, but the complexity keeps most SMEs out: opportunities are scattered across dozens of portals, requirements are buried in bureaucratic language, and creating compliant responses demands specialised expertise and countless hours.
Tendor makes government procurement accessible by owning the entire tender process from discovery to submission. It aggregates opportunities into a single platform, uses AI to translate complex requirements into clear criteria, and automates compliance-heavy drafting so businesses can focus on proving they can deliver.
Founded by Jason Cai, a technical founder with deep expertise in AI agent systems and cloud infrastructure, Tendor is built from firsthand insight into how broken government tendering really is, enabling businesses to compete on merit, not paperwork.
Founder: Jason Cai
Thermal Dawn
Sydney, NSW
thermaldawn.com
One-liner: Thermal Dawn makes home heating and cooling cheaper using thermal storage
Heating and cooling is expensive. Australian households spend over $1,400 a year just to stay comfortable, and as more homes install air conditioners, the pressure on the electricity grid keeps growing.
Thermal Dawn makes heating and cooling cheaper. Their system uses solar power or cheaper off-peak electricity and can run heating and cooling at up to 10× lower cost than traditional batteries. This helps families save money while also reducing strain on the grid during peak times.
Founded by Nick and Linda Zeniou, who bring over a decade of experience designing heating systems, building smart controls, and manufacturing reliable consumer hardware. They’re building in Australia with a clear goal: to make comfortable homes affordable for families everywhere, and help transition energy systems toward renewables.
Founding team: Nick Zeniou, Linda Zeniou
Vixia
Sydney, NSW
vixia.ai
One-liner: Vixia prevents manufacturing downtime and defects using AI-powered cameras
Unplanned downtime costs global manufacturers $1.4 trillion each year, with 23% caused by human error. Modern production lines are too fast, variable, and complex for manual monitoring, and traditional machine vision systems are expensive, brittle, and take months to deploy.
Vixia’s AI-powered camera system monitors production lines in real time, detecting emerging issues so operators can intervene before defects cascade into downtime or scrap. The system deploys in under an hour and continuously improves through human feedback, maintaining performance despite changes in lighting, materials, and environments.
Vixia is founded by Storm and Matt, both manufacturing engineers who have led teams to design, build, scale, and optimise production lines firsthand. Their vision is to create the real-time perception layer that enables factories to become self-correcting systems, autonomously preventing critical issues before they occur.
Founding team: Matthew Eyles, Storm Drury
Wiingman
Sydney, NSW
wiingman.io
One-liner: Wiingman is the enterprise AI system automating admin and decision-making for major events
More than 30 million major enterprise events are organised globally each year, supported by an estimated $900 billion in administrative spend. Despite growing scrutiny and compliance requirements, most events are still planned using Word documents, slide decks, shared drives, and meetings; creating rework, delays, and unnecessary risk.
Wiingman replaces this fragmented approach with an end-to-end enterprise system that generates event documentation and guides planning, risk management, delivery, and approvals in one place. By structuring decisions early, Wiingman reduces admin overhead, eliminates rework, and accelerates delivery without compromising governance.
Led by a founding team with over 50 years of combined experience across enterprise event operations, risk and compliance, stakeholder management, and approval-heavy environments, Wiingman aims to modernise how major events are organised and executed.
Founder: Hailey Mason
Zabidou
Sydney, NSW
zabidou.com
One-liner: Zabidou enables low-cost, AI inspection on industrial production lines to catch defects in real time
Most manufacturers know they have quality control gaps but effective end-of-line inspection remains out of reach. Existing systems are expensive, disruptive to install, and difficult to integrate, so plants fall back on manual checks that are slow, inconsistent, and easy to miss. When defects slip through, entire shipments can be rejected, resulting in major financial loss and reputational damage.
Zabidou delivers automated, in-line quality assurance at 1/10th the cost and 10× the speed of existing systems. It retrofits directly into existing production lines and uses AI-powered, laser-enhanced vision to spot surface defects and contamination in real time — without slowing or stopping production.
Founded by Cibby Pulikkaseril (prev. founded Baraja), with Nathan Kirchner as VP of Product and Evangeline Sturges as Forward Deployed Engineer, Zabidou is unlocking scalable, retrofit quality control for high-volume manufacturing worldwide.
Founding team: Cibby Pulikkaseril (CEO), Nathan Kirchner (VP of Product), Evangeline Sturges (Forward Deployed Engineer)
