The Dell AI Innovation Day 2025 brought together top global AI leaders and trailblazing local scaleups – Airspeeder, Fleet Space Technologies and Relevance.AI among them – to give founders a peek beneath the hood of successful AI strategies.
Global tech giant Dell Technologies, along with Startup Daily, kicked off the first-ever Dell AI Innovation Day in Sydney on September 3, unpacking the AI roadmaps of those at the forefront of the current innovation boom.
Sessions tackled scaling AI globally, the growth of agentic AI, sovereign AI, AI innovation in healthcare and AI workforce deployment. A common thread emerged: enterprise needs AI solutions and Australian AI startups need enterprise to grow.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
1. The big guys want your solutions
When big and small collaborate, the impact can be powerful. Startups are moving much faster than a lot of enterprises on AI, so big tech needs to be a “fast follower”, noted Angela Fox, senior VP and MD, Dell Technologies Australia and New Zealand.
From Dell’s San Francisco office, Satish Iyer, VP of innovation and ecosystem at CTO/AI John Roese’s office, delivered the news local founders wanted to hear: enterprises want your AI solutions. But they need to be measurable to be a good investment. Iyer shared the four criteria Dell uses to measure AI investments:
- DRIVE GROWTH: “How can I have AI hit more and more use cases and scenarios where we can actually allow us to differentiate?”
- ENHANCE EXPERIENCES: “It applies to everybody from customers, partners all the way to internal employees.”
- OPTIMISE PRODUCTIVITY: “Any big enterprises have very, very complex workflows… how do I basically untangle the workflow I do and how do I make sure that AI actually is helping me?”
- ACCELERATE INNOVATION: “These are innovations, these are not things which are there today, but applying some of these technologies can actually drive future progress.”
2. Enterprises need simplicity
From enterprise needs to futuristic tech, the event showcased a wide spectrum of AI applications and some key challenges and opportunities on the horizon for startups.
“One of the biggest challenges for enterprise AI adoption is managing it internally,” said Iyer, giving an example of a hardware problem on the field that could take at least 18 steps to problem-solve, and more steps and people to fix and replace.
Working for both an AI cloud computing leader and enterprise itself, Iyer stressed that startups coming to enterprise with AI solutions need to adapt to the complicated business processes of enterprise – and use their nimble thinking to simplify those workflows.
Iyer’s definition of how to activate AI in enterprise spells it out: “Applying AI to their most impactful processes in the most important areas to improve the productivity of their organisation.”
Keynote speaker Satish Iyer gave AI founders insights into making their solutions enterprise-ready. Image: Startup Daily.
3. Build for the future with the tech we have today
Iyer spoke of accelerating innovation with AI, but it was the Aussie scaleups who pulled off a thrilling show and tell. From Adelaide, Airspeeder is pioneering the future of flying cars with its eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) vehicles – having just received their first experimental license for a piloted flying car.
Jack Withinshaw, cofounder and CCO, said that collaboration with Dell and Intel is allowing them to create AI forcefields where flying cars can digitally bump each other, rather than crash.
“We’ve always had this idea that flying cars are coming,” said Withinshaw.
“But the technology is with us now… testing on the racetrack will eventually enable us to all have flying cars. It’ll be like R2-D2 to Luke Skywalker.”
Airspeeder’s CXO and CEO Matthew Pearson is also the founder of AI mineral discovery and space exploration company Fleet Space Technologies. “We do giant ultrasounds looking for resources on earth – we’re now looking for water ice on the moon,” Pearson shared. “We’re in the early stages of looking at planet-killing asteroids – basically following the plot of Armageddon.”
It sounds far-fetched, but the acceleration of AI is allowing big ideas to move at pace.
“We had to bootstrap our way to the stars with the strengths that our nation has,” Pearson added.
“It’s turning into a massive competitive advantage compared to international rivals.”
Airspeeder cofounder and CCO Jack Withinshaw and Intel’s enterprise and government sales director ANZ, Andrew Ridley. Image: Startup Daily.
4. From copilot AI to autonomous AI
A key highlight from the sessions was the idea that it’s time for a mindset shift in all aspects of AI introduction across the workforce.
When ChatGPT launched, AI was just a tool. Now, it’s becoming a workforce that can automate the most menial tasks.
Jacky Koh, founder of AI agent builder Relevance.AI, explained this as the jump in thinking from “copilot” to “autopilot agent”.
“In copilot, it’s ‘how can you bring agents into your process?’ [For] autopilot, it’s ‘who can do the task more end to end?’ And you’re more of a human in the loop of the AI process, instead of the other way around,” Koh said.
His business, which recently raised $37 million from US investors, is primarily servicing large tech companies using AI agents in labour-intensive areas like sales and marketing.
“Ultimately our mission is for anyone to delegate work to the AI workforce. We need to make it easier and more useable for anyone of any background. There is a learning curve but once you get there, the ROI is huge,” he said.
5. Investors can sniff out half-baked AI
An important key takeaway for all startups was that investors have become exceptionally savvy at weeding out which startups truly walk the talk with AI.
Carolyn Breeze, CEO of Scalare Partners, warned startups of thinking they can win investment with a ‘wrapper of AI’.
“You can’t just have .ai on your email address,” Breeze said.
“It’s getting harder to work out your differentiator… We’re seeing better return for those automating back-office tasks and operational processes – AI is really good at that. With consumer-facing tasks like sales and marketing, we’re still wary and think there is a bubble and there will be some consolidation.”
To weed out the half-baked AI startups from those that add real value, Breeze has a question that tells her whether a startup has a true strategy or not: “Can you talk about your AI partner?”
“Who are you collaborating with to build and scale this?” she added.
“If that’s not set in stone, then you know the foundation of growth just isn’t there.”
6. Keep focused on the real world
A session exploring how AI is transforming global health laid bare the challenges and opportunities for real-world applications.
Dr David Stevens, head of medical and research at VR brain health company Neuroflex, said there’s still elements of technophobia in the medical field – but their work in early intervention is gaining traction.
Suneeta Mall, head of engineering at medical diagnostics platform Harrison.ai, said that while industry education and slow-moving regulation are currently some of their key barriers for scalability, the success comes from constantly testing scenarios that make the most impact.
“AI is not just a lab concept, it’s a frontline tool,” Mall said.
“The lab is very limited and the real world is very messy… [it’s about] thinking about the feedback loop and what the solution is doing in the real world.”
From flying cars to frontline healthcare, Dell AI Innovation Day spotlighted how Australian innovation, backed by global collaboration, is turning bold ideas into real-world impact. As AI continues to evolve from concept to capability, events like this show that Australia isn’t just keeping pace – it’s helping shape the future.
Look out for more highlights from Dell AI Innovation Day on Startup Daily soon.
Find out more about Dell Technologies’ AI solutions here.
This article is brought to you by Startup Daily in partnership with Dell Technologies and Intel.
