This week saw more $24 million in VC funding go towards AI onboarding tools, seaweed tech and more.
Keep reading to learn more about the six Australian startups with fresh capital to deploy.
Bodd: $15 million
Bodd cofounders Rob Fisher and Dave McLaughlin. Source: supplied
3D body scanning platform Bodd has raised $15 million as it looks to expand globally.
The round was led by US-based strategic investor Blue Sky Capital, with support from Ellerston Capital. Existing investors, including chairman Tim Allison, director Peter Leonard, Sydney Swans director John Gerahty and his family office Liangrove Group, commodities trader Ken Loughnan, and fashion retailers Nick and Candice Hirons, also chipped in.
The raise had an initial target of $10 million, but increased by 50% due to investor demand, increasing Bodd’s valuation to $110 million.
The capital is for expansion into the US, where the company will open an office, as well as the UK and Middle East, plus increasing the headcount to 40, up from 15 when Bodd last raised $5 million in early 2023.
Bodd’s customers include United Airlines and Brooks Brothers in North America and workwear manufacturer Portwest in Dublin, as well as Australian Defence Apparel, the New Zealand Defence Force, and uniform manufacturer Stewart & Heaton.
Bodd began life in 2016 as a clothing tech startup co-founded by Rob Fisher and David McLaughlin. Its 3D body scanning technology collects the data needed for clothing fittings – dubbed a body “passport” – in just 60 seconds, reducing sizing times for organisations with large workforce uniform or equipment requirements.
Hachiko: $2.5 million
Hachiko founder Rakhesh Martyn and Archangel’s Rayn Ong. Source: supplied
Hachiko, an optimisation software startup for industrial battery energy storage systems (BESS), has raised $2.5 million in a seed round.
The round was led by Archangel Ventures, with support from Twynam, Investible, Motion Capital, Electrifi Ventures, and Wattle Hill Capital.
The funding will be used to help build Hachiko’s technical and go-to-market teams as well as deepen and expand platform capabilities.
While large-scale battery projects can take up to six years from concept to charge-up to develop, commercial and industrial (C&I) BESS developments can be built in around two years, and in the last three, more than $4.5 billion has been earmarked for these kinds of projects.
Hachiko’s software, designed for C&I and similar-sized battery storage projects, is an optimisation portfolio management platform that enables users to double portfolio viability and deliver a 75% revenue uplift across multiple energy markets.
Fremantle Seaweed: $2.2 million
Another startup looking to deal with cattle methane emissions using seaweed has raised $2.176 million in seed funding.
The round for Fremantle Seaweed, at an $11 million pre-money valuation, comes a week after the seven-year-old Sea Forest listed on the ASX. The Tasmanian startup raised $20.5 million at $2 per share for a $112 million market cap. Since last Wednesday, Sea Forest’s share price soared, rising more than 72% to $3.88 in Monday morning trade.
Like Sea Forest, Fremantle Seaweed is focused on a native red seaweed, asparagopsis, as a solution to enteric (ie, caused by digestion) methane emissions from livestock, which are responsible for around 10% of Australia’s total emissions. CSIRO-backed FutureFeed is working on a similar solution, having raised $13 million from five of the biggest names in agriculture.
The WA startup spent the past four years building the tech, engineering, and ocean-based infrastructure to grow and process asparagopsis at scale, designing and building longline cultivation systems (ropes in the ocean to grow the seaweed), modular, containerised hatcheries, and even a purpose-built harvesting vessel.
The raise came from 676 investors via an OnMarket crowdfunding campaign, which closed in October.
The startup is hoping to raise another $4.32 million from sophisticated investors, to take the total funds raised from the seed round to $6.5 million.
Cor: $2 million
Melbourne-based Cor has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to continue developing its AI coach ‘Obi’, which helps companies onboard new software users.
Obi, which is already being used by SMEs in the construction sector, uses generative video AI to create interactive agents, which can then onboard new users in real time while watching their screens.
The funding round was led by Rampersand, with Archangel, Skalata, and Black Sheep Capital also participating.
It represents the first formal financing round for Cor, which was founded and bootstrapped by former Google employee Mantas Aleksiejevas and Uptick chief technology officer Luke Hodkinson.
“We built Obi because we saw companies struggling with a fundamental problem: existing AI tools can’t maintain context long enough to guide someone through complex product workflows,” Aleksiejevas said in a statement provided to SmartCompany.
Cor plans to use its new funding to scale its operations, focusing on sales and growth investments.
Detail Earth: $1.5 million
Detail Earth has raised $1.5 million in seed funding to build what it calls the next generation of ultra-high-resolution imagery across the Asia–Pacific. The round was led by Perth-based VC FundWA, with additional backing from private investors in Australia and Southeast Asia.
The relatively new aerial mapping startup is led by veterans of Nearmap, Aerometrex, and Soar Atlas.
Detail Earth aims to disrupt the $6 billion global mapping market with a new distribution model, AI-enhanced features, and imagery designed specifically for the agentic era. It’s building a platform that claims to offer unprecedented resolution, accessible through Soar — a mapping atlas with more than one million maps already available.
The startup is currently developing its tech in Australia, targeting ultra-high-resolution coverage of Australia and Southeast Asia by 2027. It already has a waitlist across government, insurance, real estate, and AI companies, and plans to release its first imagery for free later this year, spanning at least three metro areas in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Recovr: $1 million
AI fitness platform Recovr has closed a $1 million seed round led by JWW Capital’s Jordan Walsh.
Recovr builds AI tools to help fitness studios identify early behavioural patterns that indicate a member may be at risk of churning. Over the past year, the platform has reportedly grown rapidly in Australia, with the founders arguing that retention remains one of the industry’s biggest and most universal challenges.
The new round will be used to hire, add further product capabilities, and lay the foundation for a US launch next year.
“It’s a huge step forward for Recovr as we continue to scale our AI member retention platform across the fitness industry… The problem we’re solving is universal,” the company said on LinkedIn.
- This story first appeared on SmartCompany. You can read the original here.
