Companies building tech solutions for retailers, lawyers and even the military are among those that raised fresh funding this week, along with the 19 startups selected for Startmate’s latest cohort.
Keep reading to learn more about the 24 Australian startups that collectively raised $91 million this week.
Fluent Commerce: $46 million
Sydney-based tech company Fluent Commerce has raised $46 million in fresh funding to help it scale its AI-powered retail order management tools.
The funding round was led by Bain Capital and comes nearly seven years after a $33 million Series B raise, which was led by US growth equity fund Arrowroot Capital.
Working with retailers such as JD Sports, L’Oréal, and LVMH, Fluent Commerce helps its customers track their inventory and deliveries.
While it initially focused on cloud-based services for retailers, it is now also integrating artificial intelligence into its offering.
CEO Graham Jackson said the new funding will allow the company to “supercharge our international growth and become the AI powerhouse for global brands”.
“Whether it’s into a new market or launching a new brand or experience, we provide the decision-making engine for AI-ready commerce operations,” he said in a statement provided to SmartCompany.
Affinda: $25 million
Melbourne-based tech startup Affinda has raised $25 million from existing investors in a capital raise that values the company at $220 million.
Founded in 2012 by brothers Tim Toner and Dr Ben Toner, and selected by LaunchVic for its 30×30 program in 2025, Affinda has developed software that helps law firms more easily compare documents, make changes, and organise data from those documents in a uniform way.
The new tranche of funding comes from existing backers, including Toll Group founder Paul Little, Ellerston Capital co-founder Ashok Jacob and former MYOB and REA Group boss Greg Ellis.
It follows a $10 million funding round in mid-2024 that valued the company at $120 million at the time.
More recently, Affinda completed its first acquisition, snapping up AI training consultancy startup Pathfindr in 2025 in a deal worth $15 million.
Breaker: $9 million
Sydney-based defence technology startup Breaker has secured $9 million in seed funding in a round led by global VC outfit Bessemer Venture Partners, which has previously backed the likes of Canva, Rocket Lab, Shopify, Anthropic and Perplexity.
Existing investor Main Sequence, which led a $2 million pre-seed round for Breaker in March 2025, also participated in the round.
The company said it plans to use the seed funding to accelerate the development and adoption of its AI agent software, following the establishment of its US headquarters in Austin, Texas, during the past 12 months.
The startup’s platform-agnostic software is designed to help military operators coordinate teams of drones and other autonomous robots across air, land and sea using only their voice.
Matthew Buffa, who founded Breaker in 2023 with Michael Irwin and Vanja Videnovic, said in the statement that an “operator bottleneck” represents one of the Australian Defence Force’s “most expensive capability gaps”.
“Today, autonomy still means one operator controlling one robot, with remote controls or laptops, which significantly limits the number of autonomous systems that can be deployed,” he said.
Appetise: $7 million
New Zealand meal planning and grocery insights platform Appetise (formerly MenuAid) has raised $7 million in Series A funding less than a year after launching in Australia.
The oversubscribed round was led by Icehouse Ventures with participation from existing investors OIF Ventures, Brand Fund, NZVC and K1W1. It also follows a $3.6 million raise back in 2024.
Appetise operates a free consumer meal planning and shopping app while monetising a separate B2B insights product, Appetise Insights, which analyses how households actually plan and buy food.
The company switched its consumer product to a free model to fuel the data engine behind the insights platform, positioning itself as an alternative to traditional survey-based market research built on reported behaviour rather than observed behaviour.
More than 110,000 active users across Australia and New Zealand now contribute to what the company says is the largest food and beverage behavioural research panel in the region.
Parachute: $1.8 million
Legal AI startup Parachute has raised $1.8 million in a pre-seed round at an $8.5 million valuation to build what it describes as an AI operating system for small- and medium-sized law firms.
The round was led by Rampersand partner Andrew Poesaste, with backing from Maxine Minter of Co Ventures, Aussie Angels’ Cheryl Mack and other strategic investors.
Founded by former Zed Law principal Ryan Zahrai alongside Vivienne Chan, Dave Berner, Reed Li and Peter Phanouvong, the company is targeting the long tail of legal practices it argues have been overlooked by enterprise-focused legal AI vendors.
Parachute’s platform aims to act as a single workspace where firms can draft and review documents, collaborate with clients and white-label AI-assisted legal tools, with lawyers remaining “human in the loop”.
The startup plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand its AI capabilities and grow its go-to-market presence across Australia and New Zealand.
19 startups in Startmate’s accelerator: $2.28 million
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.
The 19 startups in the cohort are: Alloovium, Ascenda, Brainwaves, Cascayd, CheckGen, CrossCourtAI, Deeligence, FlowGo, IBnkVault, Lockii, Neuralindex, Guin, Superstat, Talentsheet, Tendor, Thermal Dawn, Vixia, Wiingman, and Zabidou.
Read more on Startup Daily.
