The clippings file.
222 things that happened to companies we backed, newest first, drawn from 274 pieces in 134 publications. 164 of them are written up here in our own words, and every masthead that covered a story sits underneath it. Open a masthead to read the original.
Startmate · Mi3 · The Spinoff · a16z speedrun · Accenture Newsroom · Additive Manufacturing · AIN · Antler · Athletech News · Aura Ventures · Australian FinTech · BioSpace · and 79 more
Showing all 222 stories.
2026
-
Generalist was reported at a $3 billion valuation on a $200 million round
Generalist was reported to have raised $200 million at a $3 billion valuation, less than two years after Pete Florence, Andy Zeng and Andrew Barry left Google DeepMind and Boston Dynamics to start it. The company trains one foundation model to drive many kinds of robot hands rather than writing separate control software for each machine.
Covered by Seeking Alpha · Tech Funding News · TechCrunch
-
Bovonic sales rose by half as QuadSense went overseas
Bovonic reported sales up 50 percent as QuadSense moved into herds outside New Zealand. QuadSense is four sensors that sit inside the milking cup liners, compare milk from each quarter of the udder, and flag mastitis with a red light in about a minute.
Reported in ChannelLife
-
Vessev raised $32.6 million to build more electric hydrofoils in Auckland
Vessev raised a Series A reported at $32.6 million to expand production in Auckland and open a United States market. Its nine-meter VS-9 has carried paying passengers with Fullers360 on the Waitemata Harbour since January 2025, one of the first electric hydrofoiling ferries anywhere in commercial service.
Covered by BusinessDesk · NBR · RNZ · NZ Herald
-
First $57m close of GD1 fund shows VC industry gaining momentum
Reported in NBR
-
Andromeda Surgical raised a $15 million Series A for autonomous surgery
Andromeda Surgical raised a $15 million Series A led by Standard Capital to bring autonomy into the operating room. It keeps the robot simple and puts the value in software with the surgeon in the loop, and it has completed the world's first robotic holmium laser enucleation of the prostate.
Covered by Phaze Ventures · Dealroom · The Silicon Valley Post
-
Zenno Astronautics is moving to the United States
Zenno Astronautics, a University of Auckland spin-off, said it will relocate to the United States. Three weeks earlier its shoebox-sized Z01 Supertorquer became the first superconducting magnet to operate in space.
Reported in SpaceNews
-
Alum dreams big with AI-powered mattress cover
Reported in Tulane Freeman News
-
Upper90 committed a facility of up to $400 million to General Compute
Upper90 committed a debt facility of up to $400 million to General Compute, a year after Finn Puklowski and Jason Goodison founded the company. The money scales a fleet of air-cooled inference silicon that drops into existing colocation space in weeks rather than the years a liquid-cooled GPU build takes.
Covered by TechCrunch · Data Center Dynamics · WebWire
-
Accolades for Bay as dairy sensor goes global
Reported in SunLive
-
Zenno flew the first superconducting magnet to operate in space
Zenno's shoebox-sized Z01 Supertorquer became the first superconducting magnet to operate in space, steering Impulse Space's Mira satellite on solar power and the Earth's magnetic field instead of fuel. Zenno also added Andrew Rush to its board.
-
NBR reported New Zealand investors being offered a stake in General Compute
NBR reported that New Zealand investors were being offered access to General Compute, which Finn Puklowski and Jason Goodison founded in 2025. It builds AI compute capacity where none exists yet, with air-cooled inference silicon that drops into existing colocation space in weeks rather than the years a liquid-cooled GPU build takes.
Reported in NBR
-
The entrepreneurial journey from Synthony to Cupla
Reported in NBR
-
Dawn Aerospace reached a $335 million valuation in its latest raise
Dawn Aerospace was valued at $335 million after its latest round. It flies the Aurora, a rocket-powered spaceplane that takes off and lands from an ordinary runway, and in November 2024 Aurora passed Mach 1.1 at 82,500 feet over the Southern Alps, the first civil supersonic flight since Concorde.
Reported in RNZ
-
Orion was reported to have passed eight figures in revenue three months after launch
The founder built the mattress cover after his own sleep problems left him with vertigo, and the product was reported to have passed eight figures in revenue within three months of launch. Square cofounder Jim McKelvey is among the backers.
Reported in Entrepreneur
-
ArchiPro soft-launched in the United States
ArchiPro began a soft launch in the United States, its third market after New Zealand and Australia. Homeowners browse finished projects for inspiration and then buy the materials and hire the professionals to do their own build, and suppliers use the same platform to reach them.
Reported in Business of Home
-
TechCrunch put General Compute among the contenders in AI compute
TechCrunch covered General Compute in a piece on where the next big AI chip company comes from. The company runs an inference cloud on purpose-built accelerators rather than general-purpose GPUs, and separates the prefill and decode stages of inference so each can scale on its own.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Kiwibank turned on open banking for every customer
Kiwibank opened its open banking APIs to all customers and waived the fees it charges fintechs. Wych helped the bank deliver open banking and runs accredited rails that move financial data by customer consent.
Reported in NewsWire
-
Yaroslav Azhnyuk talked drone economics on Latent Space
Latent Space interviewed Yaroslav Azhnyuk about the autonomous drone tech stack and the economics of drones. His company builds autonomy modules and simulation software for drones and other robotic platforms working in GPS-denied environments.
Reported in Latent Space
-
Appetise seeks bite of Trump's America
Reported in NBR
-
Kara's avatars began delivering real-time New Zealand Sign Language translations
Kara moved its avatars to real-time translation of New Zealand Sign Language rather than pre-recorded video. Auckland Transport is the first major rollout, covering train, bus and ferry announcements.
Reported in 1News
-
NPR asked whether parents should screen embryos for specific traits
NPR reported on the laboratories offering trait screening for IVF embryos, Herasight among them. The company combines biopsy DNA with family medical history, and its founders come out of statistical genetics and publish their methods.
Reported in NPR
-
Grocery app saves family of eight up to $150 a shop but comes with Consumer NZ warning
Reported in NZ Herald
-
DroneXL profiled Yaroslav Azhnyuk and The Fourth Law
DroneXL wrote about Yaroslav Azhnyuk, who built Petcube before founding The Fourth Law in Kyiv in 2023. His TFL-1 module hands the final 500 meters of a drone's flight to onboard AI, and Ukrainian manufacturers including Vyriy now mass-produce drones with it built in.
Reported in DroneXL
-
SynBioBeta described how Herasight's embryo screening works
SynBioBeta walked through the genetic tests Herasight runs on embryos created through IVF. They estimate risk across thousands of conditions, from single-gene disorders to common diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Reported in SynBioBeta
-
The Fourth Law unveiled an anti-Shahed drone
The Fourth Law showed an anti-Shahed drone, taking its autonomy work into interception. The company builds AI modules that let a drone finish its flight without a pilot when the control link is jammed, and it also sells autonomy simulation for training and testing.
Reported in Resilience Media
-
Coinrule trained AI on 1.7 million trading strategies and added stocks and ETFs
Coinrule announced that it had trained AI on 1.7 million trading strategies and extended the platform to stocks and ETFs through seven new brokers. The company started as a no-code way to automate crypto trades, letting a trader set a rule such as buying bitcoin if the price drops three percent.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
Hypercore raised a $13.5 million Series A led by Insight Partners
Hypercore raised a $13.5 million Series A led by Insight Partners to build an admin agent for private credit. Its four cofounders served together in the Israeli Defense Forces, and the platform now manages more than 10,000 loans worth over $20 billion.
Covered by FinTech Global · Calcalist / CTech · Insight Partners · Hypercore · PR Newswire
-
A Bovonic study put QuadSense at $29,547 a season for New Zealand dairy farmers
Bovonic published a study putting the seasonal benefit of QuadSense at $29,547 for New Zealand dairy farmers. The sensors flag both clinical and subclinical infection early, which lowers somatic cell counts and reduces the antibiotics and manual checking a herd needs.
Reported in Rural News
-
Appetise raised $7 million to sell grocery insights to food brands
A $7 million round funded the next stage of the insights business, eighteen months after the rebrand from MenuAid. Toby and Elise Hilliam run one of the region's largest food and beverage insights panels, built from a free app that sends priced shopping lists straight to New World, PAK'nSAVE, Coles and Woolworths.
Covered by Forbes Australia · SmartCompany
-
The Fourth Law raised funding with Axon among the investors
The Fourth Law secured funding, with Axon among the investors. Its autonomy modules let drones and other robotic platforms keep working in GPS-denied conditions and under electronic interference, using onboard AI in place of a remote pilot for the final stage of a flight.
Reported in Vestbee
-
Positron jumps up to the big-league investment circle
Reported in Jon Peddie Research
-
Positron raised $230 million at a valuation above $1 billion
Positron raised a $230 million Series B at a valuation above $1 billion to scale production of its Atlas accelerator. Atlas is memory-optimized silicon that serves production models on about a third of the power a top GPU draws.
Covered by TechCrunch · FinSMEs · Yahoo Finance (Business Wire)
-
Parrot Analytics and the Next Narrative Africa Fund began a study of African entertainment
The Next Narrative Africa Fund and Parrot Analytics started a first-of-its-kind study of the African entertainment market. Parrot measures global audience demand for television, film and talent across streaming, social and other platforms, spanning 2 billion audiences globally.
Reported in Deadline
-
Core Memory published the first account of Becoming Bio's lab-grown placenta
Core Memory ran an exclusive on Becoming Bio, which has engineered a lab-grown placenta that can nurture a mouse embryo outside the body. That opens a way to watch development happen rather than infer it after the fact. Divya Dhar Cohen, a New Zealand-trained medical doctor with a Wharton MBA and a Harvard MPA, founded the company, which otherwise operates largely in stealth.
Reported in Core Memory
2025
-
Orion launched its next mattress cover after an $18 million seed
Orion launched the next generation of its water-cooled smart mattress cover, following an $18 million seed round. The cover holds a sleeper's core temperature through the night, and Square cofounder Jim McKelvey is among the backers.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
RiskAverse became PromptWell
RiskAverse rebranded as PromptWell with a new identity and website. Its HIPAA-compliant platform personalizes the message, channel and timing of member outreach for payers and providers.
Covered by MarTech Cube · PromptWell · Yahoo Finance (Business Wire)
-
How Puralink are saving Australia's pipe network with a 'ferret' - and a $2 million boost
Reported in Forbes Australia
-
Marama Labs won at a European deep tech demo day
Marama Labs took the top spot at a European deep tech demo day in Dublin. Its CloudSpec instrument measures the optical properties of cloudy liquids without clarifying the sample first, for customers in wine, biopharma, food and materials.
Reported in Silicon Republic
-
Kara's sign language avatars added te reo Māori concepts
Kara's avatars became the first anywhere to carry te reo Māori concepts and signs. The company built its New Zealand Sign Language system with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Foundation, working from a library of more than 10,000 captured signs.
Reported in 1News
-
Sorcero raised a $42.5 million Series B led by NewSpring Capital
NewSpring Capital led a $42.5 million Series B to expand the platform across life sciences. Medical affairs, safety and scientific communications teams at large pharmaceutical companies use its medically tuned AI to surface evidence and capture insights.
Covered by Drug & Device World · Pulse 2.0 · PR Newswire
-
Sleep tech mattress cover startup 'Orion' takes on Eight Sleep
Reported in Mugglehead
-
Forbes Australia reported Esper building satellites from off-the-shelf parts
Forbes Australia profiled Esper, which has flown four satellites built partly from consumer electronics parts. The company has been developing its Over The Rainbow hyperspectral payloads since 2019 and is working toward a constellation with frequent global coverage.
Reported in Forbes Australia
-
The X-factor behind Sharesies' leadership success
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Orion raised $18 million for its cooling mattress cover
Orion raised $18 million to build a water-cooled mattress cover that holds a sleeper's core temperature through the night. It senses body temperature and heart rate, gives each side of the bed its own zone, and charges no subscription for core temperature control.
Reported in Forbes
-
Zenno Astronautics and Portal announced a partnership for a 2026 mission
Zenno Astronautics and Portal said they would fly together on a space mission in 2026. Zenno's Z01 Supertorquer uses cryogenically cooled high-temperature superconductors to generate magnetic fields that push against the Earth's magnetic field for attitude control.
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Filed accounts put the Swyftx purchase of Easy Crypto at A$32.97 million
Accounts filed after the merger showed Swyftx paid A$32.97 million for Easy Crypto. The sale was an exit for NZVC I, and the combined business is one of Australasia's largest crypto platforms by trading volume.
Reported in NBR
-
Sharesies founders sold down part of their holdings
BusinessDesk reported that Sharesies founders had sold down some of their shares. Six people started work on the platform in Wellington in October 2016, and it now lets people invest from as little as a few cents across three sharemarkets as well as KiwiSaver and savings products.
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Curve Biosciences raised $40 million for blood tests that monitor chronic disease
Curve Biosciences raised $40 million to take liquid biopsy beyond cancer and into chronic disease. The Stanford spin-out reads DNA methylation patterns in cell-free blood DNA and maps them back to the organ they came from, so one blood draw can track the progression of a liver condition such as MASH or cirrhosis without a biopsy or a scan.
Covered by Dallas Innovates · Inside Precision Medicine · BioSpace
-
Bovonic raised funding to take QuadSense into the United Kingdom and Ireland
New funding took the mastitis sensor into herds in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Liam Kampshof started prototyping QuadSense in his parents' garage in 2021, after five years in London building automated blood-testing devices for hospitals.
Reported in IT Brief UK
-
Lula Commerce raised an $8 million Series A
An $8 million Series A funded wider digital tools for convenience stores. Lula partnered with Core-Mark, a Performance Food Group subsidiary, to roll online delivery and food service out across Core-Mark's convenience store network.
Covered by Technical.ly · CSP Daily News
-
Swan said it will attempt a listing again
Fifteen months after dropping its first attempt, Swan said it will try to go public again. The announcement followed its Series C and the launch of Swan International.
Reported in Los Angeles Business Journal
-
MIT Technology Review examined the ethics of screening embryos
MIT Technology Review wrote about the ethical questions running through embryo selection, a field Herasight works in. Its ImputePGTA method genotypes embryos and computes polygenic scores at higher accuracy than earlier approaches, giving prospective parents information to help rank embryos for implantation.
Reported in MIT Technology Review
-
Swan closed a Series C and launched Swan International
Swan announced Swan International, closed a Series C round and hired a head of private wealth. The company sells Bitcoin savings and custody products to long-term holders rather than to traders.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
Wych raised NZ$1.5 million for open banking in New Zealand and Australia
Wych raised NZ$1.5 million from NZVC, the NZ Fintech Fund and Booster after hundreds of investor meetings. The company is connected to more than 115 Consumer Data Right data providers and helped Kiwibank deliver open banking.
Covered by Startup Daily · Australian FinTech
-
Cheque-in: 5 Australian startups banked $340.2 million this week
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Puralink raised a $2.3 million seed round for its pipe robots
Puralink raised a $2.3 million seed round to build the Ferret, a 40 centimeter autonomous robot that inspects pipes as small as six inches. It works through corners, intersections and vertical stacks, and travels up to a kilometer in one run while capturing HD CCTV, LiDAR and mapping data.
Covered by SmartCompany · Forbes Australia
-
Looking Glass showed hololuminescent monitors from 16 to 85 inches
Looking Glass demonstrated a line of hololuminescent display monitors running from 16 to 85 inches and starting at $1,500. These add a fixed sense of depth behind a high-resolution 2D panel, which is a different product from the light field displays the company is known for.
Covered by New Atlas · Tom's Hardware
-
TFL-1 and Lupynis received NATO codes
The Fourth Law's TFL-1 autonomy module and its Lupynis system received NATO codes. TFL-1 takes over the last stage of a drone's flight with onboard AI, which keeps the drone on target when the link to its pilot is jammed.
Reported in The Defender
-
Innovation Underground: Puralink Are Redefining Pipe Inspections with Autonomous Robotics
Reported in Startmate
-
How Venu is bringing sophisticated marketing tech to independent hospitality businesses
Reported in Startmate
-
Simfuni closed a $3 million oversubscribed round
Simfuni closed an oversubscribed $3 million round, two years on from its Series A. Its software handles premium billing, payments, reconciliation and arrears for life insurers, and its portal lets policyholders pay and renew across cards, direct debit and digital wallets.
Reported in NBR
-
Popular Mechanics questioned the science behind predicting IQ before birth
Popular Mechanics examined the claims made for predicting a baby's IQ before birth, with Herasight among the companies discussed. Herasight combines DNA from embryo biopsies with family medical history to estimate the risk of thousands of conditions, and it publishes its methods rather than keeping them behind marketing.
Reported in Popular Mechanics (via Yahoo News)
-
Building VXT: Luke Campbell on Pivoting, Growth, and NZ Startup Success
Reported in NZ Tech Podcast
-
Positron raised an oversubscribed $51.6 million Series A
Positron closed a $51.6 million Series A, oversubscribed, to speed up its inference-optimized hardware. Atlas is memory-optimized silicon that serves production models on about a third of the power a top GPU draws.
Reported in Yahoo Finance (Business Wire)
-
Sahha raised $1.2 million to scale its health data API
Sahha said it raised $1.2 million to scale the API. It connects apps to more than 500 health and wearable data sources, including Apple Health, Oura, Garmin and Whoop.
Reported in Sahha
-
Business of Tech: From Auckland to orbit: Zenno's bold bet on magnetic space tech
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
The Fourth Law announced its first funding round and released the TFL-1 autonomy module
The Fourth Law announced its first round of funding and released the TFL-1 autonomy module for drones. TFL-1 hands the final 500 meters of an FPV drone's flight to onboard AI, so the drone can hit static, moving and camouflaged targets through jamming and signal loss.
Reported in dev.ua
-
Startmate wrote up how River builds a voice agent from a website
Startmate profiled the company then called DuoHub, now River. It points its tool at a business's own website, builds a voice agent out of what it finds there, and the agent handles calls and bookings over phone and WhatsApp in the caller's own language.
Reported in Startmate
-
Kiki relaunched in London after leaving New York
Six days after confirming it had left New York, Kiki named London as its new home. Toby Thomas-Smith moved there alone and rebuilt the mid-term rental marketplace from scratch.
Reported in SmartCompany
-
4th time lucky? After shutting down in New York, Blackbird-backed Kiki is moving to London
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Lula brings mom-and-pop stores into the online delivery age
Reported in Technical.ly
-
Kiki shut down in New York
Kiki closed the New York operation it had opened in answer to that city's short-term rental crackdown, and called the regulatory position there a grey area. The marketplace matches people leaving home for a period with renters who have been vouched for, for stays of up to about six months.
Reported in SmartCompany
-
Dawn Aerospace sold its first spaceplane
RNZ reported the first sale of a Dawn Aerospace spaceplane. Aurora is rocket-powered, takes off and lands from an ordinary runway, and flew supersonic from Glentanner Aerodrome in November 2024. Selling the aircraft is a different business from selling a ride to orbit.
Reported in RNZ
-
Kiwibank waived its open banking fees, starting with Wych
Kiwibank dropped the fees it charges fintechs for open banking access, with Wych the first to benefit. Wych builds the pipes that let people share financial data by consent through accredited APIs instead of handing a bank login to a screen scraper.
Covered by NZ Adviser · Kiwibank (media release)
-
VXT made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list
Forbes named VXT in its 30 Under 30 Asia list for artificial intelligence. Luke Campbell and Lucy Turner started the company as University of Canterbury students in 2018 and rebuilt it around legal, accounting and recruitment firms.
Covered by ChristchurchNZ · Forbes
-
VXT raised $2.5 million at a $45 million valuation
Silicon Valley backers put $2.5 million into VXT at a $45 million valuation. The rebuilt product transcribes calls, files notes and records billable time into a firm's practice management system, and firms across New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom use it.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
River pitched at Startmate demo day under its founding name
Startup Daily previewed the 16 companies pitching at Startmate's demo day, including DuoHub, now River. Oseh Mathias, Jason Beck and Jennisha Arnanta founded it, and it sells voice agents to enterprise real estate companies.
Reported in Startup Daily
-
EdTech in the Spotlight: SquareOne Empowers Financial Literacy for Kiwi Kids
Reported in EdTechNZ
-
Marama Labs's CloudSpec could set 'new gold standard', CEO says
Reported in Silicon Republic
-
Andromeda Surgical Expands its Market Reach
Reported in Medical Product Outsourcing
-
Easy Crypto merged with the Australian exchange Swyftx
New Zealand's largest crypto exchange agreed to merge with Brisbane-based Swyftx, creating one of Australasia's largest platforms by trading volume. The combination gave customers a larger platform and delivered an exit for NZVC I.
-
Air New Zealand began trialing Pyper Vision's fog forecasting
Air New Zealand joined Pyper Vision to trial its fog-casting technology. The Christchurch company forecasts low-visibility conditions so airlines and airports can plan around them, after starting with a method that disperses fog directly.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Venu
Reported in Enterprise Angels
-
Esper raised $5 million to map minerals from orbit
Esper raised $5 million to expand its hyperspectral satellite work, which reads the chemical composition of the Earth's surface from orbit. Mining and exploration companies use the imagery to find critical mineral deposits, and the same data serves agriculture, environmental monitoring and archaeology.
Covered by Metal Tech News · SmartCompany
-
a16z speedrun wrote about in-person social apps, with Plots among them
a16z speedrun published a piece on the return of apps that get people together in person, and named Plots. The app pairs local events with visible guest lists, and hosts earned more than $3M in ticket sales through it in 2024.
Reported in a16z speedrun
-
Startmate picked River, then called DuoHub, for its Summer 2025 accelerator
Startup Daily listed the 16 startups Startmate chose for its Summer 2025 accelerator, DuoHub among them. The company now trades as River, and it builds a voice agent by reading a business's own website, then answers customers and books appointments over phone and WhatsApp in the caller's own language.
Reported in Startup Daily
-
SquareOne + Thinkerbell Aotearoa explore what happens when kids don't learn financial literacy
Reported in Campaign Brief NZ
-
The VS-9 took its first paying passengers
Vessev's VS-9 Kermadec started carrying paying passengers with Fullers360 on Auckland's Waitemata Harbour in January 2025, one of the world's first electric hydrofoiling ferries in commercial service. It flies above the water at up to 25 knots with a 50 nautical mile range.
Reported in Electrek
-
Cupla passed 100,000 downloads within months of launch
The shared calendar reached more than 100,000 downloads within months. It adds weekly date goals, anniversary reminders and an assistant that helps partners plan time together, and more than 500,000 couples now use it.
Reported in Starter Story
2024
-
Andromeda Surgical completed the world's first robotic-assisted HoLEP procedure
Andromeda Surgical announced the first robotic-assisted holmium laser enucleation of the prostate, a standard treatment for an enlarged prostate. The surgeon drove the procedure through a tablet interface while the software handled spatial navigation through the anatomy.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
Marama Labs opened a Dublin lab and raised 2 million euros
A new lab at DCU Alpha in Dublin opened alongside a raise of 2 million euros. CloudSpec places a sample in a highly reflective spherical chamber to separate absorption from scattering, which is what lets it measure liquids too cloudy for a conventional spectrophotometer.
Reported in Silicon Republic
-
Dunedin Airport signed on to Pyper Vision's fog forecasting
Dunedin Airport partnered with Pyper Vision on fog forecasting to improve aviation safety. Emily Blythe started the company with a fog dispersal method and grew it into a forecasting platform, and Dunedin and Hamilton airports, Air New Zealand and London City Airport are among its partners.
Reported in Dunedin Airport
-
Pyper Vision moved from clearing fog to forecasting it
Pyper Vision put a fog forecasting product in front of airlines and airports, aiming to save them the cost of fog-related delays. Fog causes close to a third of weather-related airport delays, and the platform lets operators plan around visibility in real time instead of only reacting to it.
Covered by Newstalk ZB · NZ Herald
-
NZ Entrepreneur reported MACSO's AI detecting respiratory illness in pigs
NZ Entrepreneur covered MACSO's system picking up respiratory illness in swine. It reads audio from the shed rather than the animal, so a farmer gets an early signal without handling or testing anything.
Reported in NZ Entrepreneur
-
Christchurch company's aircraft goes supersonic
Reported in RNZ
-
Dawn Aerospace flew the first civil supersonic flight since Concorde
Dawn's Mk-II Aurora climbed out of Glentanner Aerodrome under rocket power on 12 November 2024 and passed Mach 1.1 at 82,500 feet. No civil aircraft had broken the sound barrier since Concorde, and none had ever done it from New Zealand. Aurora takes off and lands from an ordinary runway, which is what lets it fly again the same day.
Covered by Popular Science · New Atlas
-
HealthNow rebranded as Extraordinary
HealthNow took the name Extraordinary in October 2024, three years after Steve Zinsli founded it, and widened from health spending into an employee benefits card.
Reported in RNZ
-
Auckland company Extraordinary develops work benefits card
Reported in RNZ
-
Extraordinary replaced benefits reimbursements with a card staff spend as they go
The company rebuilt its benefits platform so employees stop claiming money back after the fact. Employers set a contribution and the categories it covers, and each employee gets an app and a personalized Mastercard that only works in the approved sectors.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Simfuni signaled a funding push for 2025
insuranceNEWS.com.au reported Simfuni preparing to raise in 2025. The Auckland company sells insurers cloud software for premium billing, payments and reconciliation, and a policyholder portal for self-service and renewals.
Reported in insuranceNEWS.com.au
-
RNZ covered Bonnet's growth from a consumer app into fleet management
RNZ covered Bonnet's move into fleet management. The app started as a free way for drivers to track WOF, registration and road user charges, and it now sells GPS tracking, digital inspection checklists and automated payments to businesses running whole fleets. Bonnet oversees more than 75,000 vehicles, roughly one in every hundred on New Zealand roads.
Reported in RNZ
-
Stickybeak raised $1.2 million to take its consumer testing platform global
Stickybeak raised $1.2 million to expand its consumer testing platform beyond New Zealand. NZVC co-invested alongside NZGCP, Hoku Group and Brisbane Angels. The platform returns consumer feedback in hours by recruiting real people through social channels rather than a standing research panel.
Reported in Mi3
-
Democraticising stocks: Brooke Roberts leads an investment platform valued at $500 million
Reported in RNZ
-
Sharesies was reported to be raising another $5 million at cashflow breakeven
Sharesies was reported to be raising a further $5 million, and to have reached cashflow breakeven. The platform lets people invest from as little as a few cents across the New Zealand, Australian and United States sharemarkets, and has since expanded into KiwiSaver, savings and other wealth products.
Reported in NBR
-
Simfuni won an ANZIIF accolade
insuranceNEWS.com.au reported that Simfuni had won an ANZIIF accolade. Its cloud software runs premium billing, payments, reconciliation and arrears for life insurers, with a white-label portal for policyholders.
Reported in insuranceNEWS.com.au
-
Harakeke moved from traditional taonga into engineered composites
RNZ and Newsroom both covered KiwiFibre in August 2024, on harakeke crossing from a traditional taonga into an engineered material. The Christchurch company grew out of University of Canterbury research, and its composites carry a carbon footprint far below that of glass and carbon fiber.
-
MenuAid became Appetise after a NZ$4 million pre-Series A
MenuAid renamed itself Appetise following a NZ$4 million pre-Series A backed by Icehouse Ventures and OIF. The consumer meal-planning app is free, and the company sells aggregated grocery-basket insights to food and beverage brands across Australia and New Zealand.
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Meal planning app proves appetising for Australasian investors
Reported in NBR
-
TechCrunch Space: It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a rocket-powered aircraft!
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Swan dropped its IPO plan, cut staff and closed its managed mining unit
Swan abandoned plans to list, cut staff and shut down its managed mining business. It continues to run the Bitcoin savings products it started with, including automated recurring buys, custody and education for long-term holders.
Covered by CoinDesk (via Yahoo Finance) · CryptoSlate
-
Mi3 covered Stickybeak's bid to scale 60-second consumer testing
Mi3 wrote about Stickybeak's plan to scale a consumer testing platform built on $500, 60-second tests. Around 75 percent of FMCG products miss what their target consumers expect, and Stickybeak recruits real consumers through social channels to test anywhere in the world.
Reported in Mi3
-
Dezeen covered the VS-9, the hydrofoil ferry that flies above the water
Dezeen wrote up the VS-9, Vessev's electric hydrofoiling ferry. It flies above the water at up to 25 knots with a 50 nautical mile range, and Vessev came out of stealth with it in May 2024.
Reported in Dezeen
-
Bovonic raised investor funding in the month QuadSense launched
Bovonic closed an investor round in June 2024, the month QuadSense launched at Fieldays. The system reads milk conductivity inside the milking cup liners to catch clinical and subclinical mastitis early, which cuts antibiotic use and the labor spent checking cows by hand.
Reported in Rural News
-
Vessev and Fullers launched an electric hydrofoiling tourism vessel on Auckland Harbour
Vessev and Fullers put what they described as the world's first electric hydrofoiling tourism vessel on the Waitemata Harbour. The VS-9 is a nine-meter carbon-fiber catamaran that lifts its hulls clear of the water on foils, cutting energy use while making almost no wake and very little noise.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
At Just 28, This Kiwi-Indian Built A Tech Company Worth Millions
Reported in Indian Weekender
-
Venu presented at Startmate demo day
Venu presented its marketing platform for hospitality at a Startmate demo day. Its white-label loyalty app runs on Android payment terminals and links card tokens to consented customer profiles, so venues know the customers behind their payments.
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Electric vehicle owners turned to Bonnet when road user charges arrived
The New Zealand Herald reported electric vehicle owners downloading Bonnet to keep track of road user charges. Bonnet reads NZTA data directly, so a driver sees WOF, registration and RUC status for a plate in one place and can set the payments to run on their own.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Blackbird-backed Kiki's cofounder is now rebuilding the short-term rental startup one coffee at a time
Reported in Startup Daily
-
SquareOne became Emerge and launched a banking offer for small businesses
Emerge brought a banking product to small and medium businesses. The founders started in 2021 with New Zealand's first app, card and account for children, and Mastercard rails carried the company into its second market.
Reported in NBR
-
Variety covered generative AI storyboarding, Lore Machine included
Variety looked at how generative AI tools are used for storyboards and adaptations, with Lore Machine among them. Writers paste in their words, and the platform extracts characters and settings, then holds them consistent across every frame it generates.
Reported in Variety
-
MIT Technology Review turned a short story into a comic with Lore Machine
A writer at MIT Technology Review ran a short story through Lore Machine and got back a comic. The platform extracts characters and settings from the text, then generates consistent visuals for them across a range of styles.
Reported in MIT Technology Review
-
Lore Machine opened its visual storytelling platform to the public
Reuters reported that Lore Machine had rolled out its visual storytelling platform and was in funding talks. More than 25,000 people were on the waitlist when it opened in March 2024, and the tool turns written text into illustrated stories, storyboards, comics and motion graphics.
Reported in Reuters (via Yahoo Finance)
-
TechCrunch covered Esper's plan to build hyperspectral satellites cheaply
TechCrunch wrote about the Australian startup Esper and its plan to put hyperspectral imaging in orbit at low cost. Its Esperesso imager reads the spectrum in narrow contiguous bands, which turns a satellite into a chemical-composition mapper of the surface below.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Simfuni won a New Zealand fintech award
insuranceNEWS.com.au reported Simfuni winning a New Zealand fintech award for its premium payment platform. The software gives insurers billing, payments, reconciliation and arrears management, and gives policyholders a portal to pay and renew.
Reported in insuranceNEWS.com.au
-
Miruku raised $5 million in a pre-Series A for molecular-farmed dairy
Miruku raised $5 million in a pre-Series A to develop dairy proteins and fats in oilseed crops. The team moved off soy to safflower because it avoids allergen and regulatory friction and thrives in the hot, dry conditions of California and Australia.
Covered by Green Queen · vegconomist
-
Miruku grabs more capital as its plant-based dairy tech reaches proof of concept
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Molecular farming startup Miruku secures $8m in cap raise
Reported in NBR
-
From Concept to Metal in Hours: Foundry Lab's Digital Casting
Reported in Fabbaloo
-
Upstock lifted its seed round to $13 million and signed Woolworths
Upstock raised its seed funding to $13 million and signed Woolworths, in a deal a founder said would improve supermarket competition. Buyers place and track orders across all of their suppliers in one app, while suppliers manage catalogs, ordering, payments and logistics in the same place.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Marama Labs raised 1.75 million euros to take CloudSpec from wine into pharmaceuticals
Marama Labs raised 1.75 million euros to move CloudSpec out of winemaking and into drug development. Physicists out of Victoria University of Wellington's Raman Laboratory built the instrument because no UV-Vis spectrophotometer before it could read a cloudy liquid, and a measurement that took two hours of sample preparation now takes about 15 seconds.
Covered by BusinessDesk · NZ Herald
-
A Kiwi startup Blackbird backed with $7 million in its Seed round just pivoted to WTF
Reported in Startup Daily
-
MACSO signed animal respiratory health trials with Chinese farms
MACSO signed trials of its animal respiratory health system with farms in China and set its sights on distribution across the country. The system listens to a shed and flags respiratory illness early from audio alone, with no need to handle or test an animal.
Covered by NZ Entrepreneur · Scoop
-
Elo launched smart gummies and a partnership with Tommy Caldwell
Smart gummies went on sale alongside a new partnership with Tommy Caldwell. The gummies are 3D printed and drawn from 389 million possible formula combinations, so a member's daily mix follows their own biomarkers and goals.
Reported in Fitt Insider
2023
-
Swan deployed more than $200 million in 2023
Swan said it deployed more than $200 million during 2023 as it built out institutional products including Bitcoin-backed lending. The company sells automated recurring buys, a Bitcoin IRA, institutional custody and collaborative self-custody to long-term holders.
Reported in Fortune (via Yahoo Finance)
-
Decrypt covered Lore Machine's pitch to film and television writers
Decrypt wrote about Lore Machine as a tool for film and television writers. It takes a script, a poem or a news article and returns sequenced storyboards whose characters stay consistent frame to frame, using rights-managed image models.
Reported in Decrypt
-
Zenno's first hardware reached orbit on a SpaceX launch
Zenno Astronautics put its first hardware into space on a SpaceX rocket. The University of Auckland spin-off builds superconducting electromagnets that let satellites point, rotate and maneuver without carrying fuel.
Reported in Stuff
-
Kara Technologies pioneering inclusive emergency Sign Language success for the Deaf
Reported in NZ Entrepreneur
-
Easy Crypto launched a New Zealand dollar stablecoin
The exchange launched NZDD, a stablecoin backed by the New Zealand dollar. Easy Crypto served hundreds of thousands of customers across New Zealand and Australia at the time.
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Foundry Lab began a development effort with Eaton
Eaton and Foundry Lab announced a joint development effort. Foundry Lab casts metal parts on demand from 3D-printed ceramic molds and a proprietary microwave furnace, and delivers the same material properties as conventional casting rather than a prototype substitute.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
Mental health-improving startup gains funding
Reported in Otago Daily Times
-
Sahha raised an A$1.75 million seed led by Aura Ventures
Aura Ventures led an A$1.75 million seed in Sahha, with Antler joining. Aleksander Dahlberg and Douglas MacDonald built an API that turns passive smartphone and wearable data into explainable behavioral, physical and mental health scores.
-
Motoring app proving a hit
Reported in SunLive
-
Humata raised $3.5 million led by Google's Gradient Ventures
Gradient Ventures led a $3.5 million round in Humata, with M13 and ARK Investment Management joining. Cyrus Khajvandi and Dan Rasmuson founded the company in Austin in 2022 to answer questions across long PDFs and technical documents, citing the source file for every answer.
-
Humata answers questions about a user's own documents
Humata lets people ask natural-language questions of their own files and get answers grounded in those files. Researchers, analysts, students and compliance teams use it to summarize, compare and search long PDFs, and every answer cites the passage it came from.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Bonnet
Reported in NZ Entrepreneur
-
Hong Kong Wholesale Marketplace Aims to Bring Western Wares to Asia Shoppers
Reported in Sourcing Journal (WWD)
-
Foundry Lab: How Casting in a Day Will Improve the Design of Metal Parts
Reported in Additive Manufacturing
-
Markato opened its wholesale marketplace in Hong Kong
The marketplace launched in Hong Kong, connecting independent brands from the United States, Europe and Australia with retailers across Asia. It handles the international payments, logistics and buy now pay later terms that usually keep brands out of new markets.
Covered by Inside Retail Asia · TechNode Global
-
Blackbird led a A$9.5 million seed round in Kiki
Blackbird Ventures led Kiki's A$9.5 million seed. Toby Thomas-Smith started the marketplace in Bondi as an invite-only way to sublet a room to a friend of a friend while traveling.
Reported in Capital Brief
-
Lightspeed led a $5 million seed in Markato, its first investment in Hong Kong
Lightspeed led Markato's $5 million seed round, the firm's first investment in Hong Kong. Brian Lo and Martin Li scaled Deliveroo and Uber across Asia before founding the wholesale marketplace in 2023.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Simfuni raised a NZ$2.8 million Series A
Simfuni raised NZ$2.8 million in a Series A, days after launching its premium payment platform in New Zealand. The software runs billing, payments, reconciliation and arrears for insurers, with a portal where policyholders pay and renew across cards, direct debit and digital wallets.
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Simfuni launched its insurance premium payment platform in New Zealand
Simfuni launched in New Zealand with software that lets people pay for insurance in installments, the way they pay for everything else. The Auckland company sells insurers premium billing, payments, reconciliation and arrears management, plus a white-label portal policyholders use to pay and renew.
Reported in Insurance Business
-
Upstock launched in Australia after a $5.5 million raise
Upstock took its wholesale ordering platform into Australia on the back of a $5.5 million raise. The app cut order processing for cafes, bars and their suppliers from hours to minutes a day, replacing the phone calls, texts and spreadsheets most hospitality wholesale still runs on.
Covered by Dynamic Business · Startup Daily
-
RNZ called harakeke a world-class alternative to carbon fiber
RNZ covered harakeke composites as a replacement for carbon fiber. KiwiFibre's material offers high strength and stiffness, low density, vibration absorption and radio transparency, and it appears in products from race cars to snowboards and boats.
Reported in RNZ
-
Te Ao Māori News covered the high-tech uses KiwiFibre is finding for harakeke
Te Ao Māori News reported on the work of turning harakeke into an engineered material. Harakeke is a taonga, and Ben Scales and William Murrell started KiwiFibre on a bet that it could stand in for carbon fiber and fiberglass on performance rather than on goodwill.
Reported in Te Ao Māori News
-
NZ Entrepreneur interviewed MACSO founder Saba Samiei
NZ Entrepreneur interviewed Saba Samiei about MACSO. She worked at IBM, Westpac and Microsoft, holds a master's in AI ethics from AUT, and started the company in Auckland in April 2021, naming it after MACS0647-JD, then the furthest known galaxy from the Milky Way.
Reported in NZ Entrepreneur
-
Bonnet launched an app that reads WOF, rego and road user charges from a plate number
Steph Kennard and Dave Webb launched Bonnet in March 2023 from Mount Maunganui. A driver types in a plate and the app pulls WOF, registration and road user charge status straight from NZTA data, then sends a reminder before each one falls due. It went on to reach number one on the New Zealand App Store within three weeks and registered 20,000 vehicles in its first fortnight.
Reported in 1News
-
Elo raised $10 million and launched a smart protein product
A $10 million raise came alongside the launch of Elo's smart protein product. The company builds nutrition plans around a member's own blood biomarkers and measured results, adjusting the formula at every retest rather than selling one generic product to everyone.
Reported in Athletech News
-
Lula rebranded and updated its software to cover more of a store's sales
Lula Convenience took a new name and shipped a software update aimed at the full scope of retail sales rather than delivery alone. The company runs digital ordering and delivery for chains including Jacksons Food Stores and Par Mar Stores.
Reported in Technical.ly
-
Accenture invested in Looking Glass
Accenture invested in Looking Glass to speed the move from 2D to 3D content. Looking Glass builds displays that groups view together in 3D with no headset, glasses or eye tracking, for enterprise, medical, retail, museum and developer use.
Reported in Accenture Newsroom
-
CarbonCrop thinks AI could fix carbon offsets
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Kara Technologies raised $1.3 million in seed funding
Kara Technologies raised $1.3 million in seed funding for its sign language avatars. The Auckland company spent more than two years digitizing New Zealand Sign Language with the motion capture rigs used for Avatar and The Lord of the Rings, capturing over 10,000 individual signs that an AI stitches into full sentences.
Reported in University of Auckland
-
Whakarongorau Aotearoa invested in oVRcome
Whakarongorau Aotearoa took a stake in oVRcome. People in more than 60 countries use the app, and partners including the NHS have adopted it.
Reported in New Zealand Doctor
2022
-
Foundry Lab showed its microwave casting machine at Formnext 2022
Foundry Lab debuted its microwave casting technology at Formnext 2022, pitching quicker and cheaper metal casting. The system turns a CAD file into a cast aluminum, magnesium, zinc or stainless steel part the same day, against the one to six weeks that investment, sand and die casting take.
Reported in PR Newswire
-
NZ Entrepreneur covered MACSO's use of AI to catch illness in animals
NZ Entrepreneur wrote about MACSO's sensory AI for livestock health. The system listens to animals in a shed and picks up respiratory illness early from audio alone, without handling or testing the animal.
Reported in NZ Entrepreneur
-
Newsroom wrote up harakeke as an alternative to fiberglass
Newsroom covered KiwiFibre's case that New Zealand flax can stand in for fiberglass. The company grew out of University of Canterbury research into local plant fibers, and its composites turn up in rally car bodywork, a Formula Student race car and snowboards.
Reported in Newsroom
-
The company that turned murky water samples into wine
Reported in The Spinoff
-
Thousands downloaded Sugar Wallet's set-and-forget paycheck investing app
Thousands of New Zealanders downloaded Sugar Wallet, reported as the country's first set-and-forget paycheck investing app. Users start from one dollar and set weekly, fortnightly or monthly contributions, and the app grew with no marketing spend.
Covered by Newstalk ZB · Scoop
-
Kiwi fintech Sugar Wallet turns everyone into an investor in less than 5 minutes
Reported in Startup Daily
-
Tech for good: Using your phone to predict mental health; Doug MacDonald; Aleks Dahlberg, Sahha
Reported in Talking HealthTech
-
#145: Ari Tulla, Co-founder & CEO of Elo
Reported in Fitt Insider Podcast
-
NZ study finds mobile app able to alleviate symptoms of common phobias
Reported in MobiHealthNews
-
An Otago trial found oVRcome cut phobia symptoms by three quarters
A University of Otago randomized trial found a 75 percent reduction in phobia symptoms after six weeks of using oVRcome. The app pairs cognitive behavioral therapy modules with a VR content library covering fears of flying, needles, heights, spiders and public speaking.
Covered by Stuff · University of Otago
-
Got a phobia? Help is on the way through virtual reality
Reported in NZ Herald
-
CarbonCrop issued New Zealand's first AI-verified carbon credits for native forest
CarbonCrop launched voluntary carbon credits granted only for native New Zealand forest, the first in the country to be issued with AI verification. Machine learning and satellite imagery map and verify biodiverse native bush that the Emissions Trading Scheme overlooks, which gives landowners a native option where the credit market has mostly meant pine.
Reported in IT Brief
-
Cashing in on carbon
Reported in NZBusiness
-
CarbonCrop issued New Zealand's first AI-verified carbon credits for native forest
CarbonCrop launched voluntary carbon credits granted only for native New Zealand forest, the first in the country to be issued with AI verification. Machine learning and satellite imagery map and verify biodiverse native bush that the Emissions Trading Scheme overlooks, which gives landowners a native option where the credit market has mostly meant pine.
-
Upstock raised $5 million and made its case on supermarket competition
A $5 million raise came with Upstock's argument that its wholesale ordering data could help the government take on the supermarket duopoly. Cafes, bars, restaurants and grocers use the app to place and track orders with all of their suppliers at negotiated prices.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Looking Glass launched the world's largest holographic display
Looking Glass launched what it described as the world's largest holographic display. The company's light field technology gives a group depth and realism without headsets, in sizes that now run from desktop units to large wall-mounted screens.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
Anna Henwood became chief executive of Stickybeak
Stickybeak announced Anna Henwood as chief executive in May 2022. She leads a six-person founding team drawn from market research, engineering and branding, built on the argument that consumer feedback should not take weeks or cost thousands.
Reported in Stickybeak (press release)
-
Sugar Wallet launched its investing app in New Zealand
Sugar Wallet launched an investing app aimed at New Zealanders who are struggling to get ahead. Dev Soni started it after finding his mother had been paying into a default KiwiSaver fund earning barely 1 percent a year, and built it with former Xero engineer Sophia Ritchie.
Reported in Stuff
-
ArchiPro opened in Australia
The building and design marketplace launched in Australia, six weeks after its Series A. Homeowners and specifiers there can browse completed projects and then source the materials, furnishings and professionals to carry out their own work, while suppliers use the same platform as an ecommerce and lead generation channel.
Reported in Yellowtrace
-
CarbonCrop named a new chief executive
CarbonCrop appointed a new chief executive to lead its next stage of growth. The company uses AI and satellite imagery to find forest that qualifies for carbon credits, including native bush that is hard to assess, and handles the monitoring and compliance the Emissions Trading Scheme requires.
Reported in NBR
-
Pyper Vision won government backing for its airport fog clearing technology
The government backed Pyper Vision to develop fog clearing technology for airports. The Christchurch company spreads a safe, water-absorbing product to clear the air, and Emily Blythe has led it through more than 200 drone-dispersed tests across New Zealand and Australia, clearing a critical patch of sky in as little as 10 minutes.
Covered by Newstalk ZB · Otago Daily Times
-
Cupla launched a shared calendar built for couples
Erika and Will Palmer launched Cupla, which pulls both partners' Google, Apple and Outlook calendars into one color-coded view alongside shared to-dos, key dates and wishlists. The Auckland founders are a couple themselves.
Reported in FashioNZ
-
Miruku raised $2.4 million in seed funding
Miruku raised a $2.4 million seed round for molecular farming. Amos Palfreyman is a fourth-generation dairy farmer who set out to make dairy without the cow, engineering oilseed plants to grow casein and dairy fats in their seeds.
Reported in FoodBev Media
-
ArchiPro said it was preparing to expand into Australia
In the same week as its capital raise, ArchiPro said it was looking at taking its building and design marketplace into Australia. The platform brings architects, designers, builders, suppliers and product brands together in one place, and suppliers use it to reach people who are actively planning a project.
Reported in RNZ
-
ArchiPro raised $35 million with Tiger Global among the backers
ArchiPro raised a Series A reported at $35 million, with New York fund manager Tiger Global among the backers. The company runs an online marketplace for the building and design industry, where homeowners and specifiers browse completed projects for inspiration and then source the products, materials and professionals to carry out their own build.
Covered by Startup Daily · BusinessDesk · NZ Herald
-
Elo raised a $5 million seed round for personalized nutrition
Elo raised $5 million in seed funding from a group that included professional athletes. The company builds personalized supplement plans from at-home blood testing, health questionnaires and wearable activity data, then ships a monthly custom mix and retests to adjust it.
Reported in Elo Health
-
Two Northland fathers built New Zealand's first money app for children
Jamie Jermain and Jovan Pavlicevic have five children between them, and they built a prepaid card and in-app savings balance that parents monitor. Children earn through chores and set savings goals, and parents can lock or unlock the card at any time.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Lula raised $5.5 million to expand across the United States
A $5.5 million round funded expansion across the United States. Lula puts convenience stores, pharmacies and other small-format retailers online, with branded ordering alongside tools that handle inventory, refunds and day-to-day store operations.
Reported in Technical.ly
-
Three tech startups to watch in 2022
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Why Janine Grainger gave up her corporate job for a crypto career
Reported in NZ Herald
2021
-
Foundry Lab raised a Series A of about $12 million with Peter Beck backing it
Foundry Lab raised a Series A reported at $12 million, with Peter Beck among its backers. Industrial designer David Moodie started the company because he could not get castings made fast enough to iterate on his own designs, and the process 3D prints a ceramic mold and melts metal into it inside a microwave furnace.
Covered by Startup Daily · NZ Herald
-
Sharesies raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation
Sharesies raised $50 million at a valuation of $500 million, which BusinessDesk noted was more than the NZX was worth. Six founders started work on the platform in Wellington in October 2016 so that someone with $5 would get the same investment options as someone with $5 million.
Covered by BusinessDesk · Stuff
-
Easy Crypto raised $17 million and talked up a possible listing
Easy Crypto raised $17 million and said a public listing was possible. Siblings Janine and Alan Grainger founded the exchange in December 2017 to give New Zealanders a simple, trusted way to buy and sell digital assets, and it grew into the country's largest.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
Coinrule brought in well-known investors for its no-code trading platform
Forbes reported that Coinrule had added well-known investors to its automated crypto trading platform. The founder wanted to trade more actively and could not code, so he built an if-this-then-that builder that automates dollar-cost averaging, stop-losses and rebalancing without a line of code.
Reported in Forbes
-
Lula partnered with Uber to reach convenience stores in all 50 states
Lula and Uber agreed to take its delivery technology to convenience stores across all 50 states. The platform connects independent stores to on-demand delivery services through a single dashboard, giving retailers who ran on foot traffic alone a second sales channel.
Reported in Technical.ly
-
Sorcero raised $10 million for its language intelligence platform
Sorcero raised $10 million. The platform reads across publications, congress sessions, safety cases and medical inquiries so life sciences teams can query scattered evidence in one place.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
TechCrunch listed Coinrule in its Y Combinator Summer 2021 demo day roundup
TechCrunch included Coinrule in its rundown of the Y Combinator Summer 2021 demo day. Coinrule is a no-code trading platform where a trader sets a rule such as buying bitcoin if the price drops three percent, and the platform runs it against exchanges including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
oVRcome was cleared to run a clinical trial
The Christchurch company got the green light for a clinical trial of its smartphone VR exposure therapy. Adam Hutchinson started oVRcome as a lockdown side project and worked with clinical psychologists to put exposure therapy for phobias on a phone.
Reported in Scoop
2020
-
Stickybeak pulls in half a million of 'smart' money
Reported in BusinessDesk
-
Stickybeak raised seed funding for its survey business
Stickybeak raised a seed round in October 2020, reported at about half a million dollars. The platform tests products, campaigns, packaging and concepts with real consumers recruited through social channels, and returns results in hours rather than weeks.
Reported in NZ Herald
-
DeckRobot raised a $1.5 million seed round for AI slide formatting
DeckRobot raised $1.5 million in seed funding for software that formats PowerPoint slides to a company's brand standard in one click. Tony Urban built it after almost five years at McKinsey drawing thousands of slides by hand, and it runs as an add-in inside PowerPoint, where the work already happens.
-
VXT raised $600,000 while its founders were still students
Luke Campbell and Lucy Turner raised $600,000 for a voicemail-to-text app they had started at the University of Canterbury in 2018. Phone makers later shipped visual voicemail and killed that wedge, so Campbell went and sat with law firms instead.
Covered by Otago Daily Times · NZ Herald
-
Upstock raised $3.5 million and grew across New Zealand hospitality
Upstock raised $3.5 million as it expanded across the New Zealand hospitality sector. Philip Fierlinger, Duncan Ritchie and others from the team behind Xero built it for wholesale ordering, which still ran on scraps of paper, texts and phone calls, and launched it during the first COVID lockdown.
Reported in Scoop
-
Looking Glass started shipping its 8K holographic display
The company began shipping the world's first 8K glasses-free holographic display, after a decade spent making holograms that a group can look at with no headset at all. The display projects many perspectives of a scene at once, giving depth to content for enterprise, medical, retail and museum work.
Reported in TechCrunch
-
ZeFi joined Y Combinator's Winter 2020 batch
ZeFi, now Finlens, was one of the Indian startups in Y Combinator's Winter 2020 batch. Saurav Tomar and Md Halim founded the company in San Francisco to build financial tracking software for early-stage startups.
Reported in Inc42
-
Spoke Phone raised $7 million to migrate companies off legacy phone systems
A $7 million raise funded Spoke Phone's work moving companies off legacy phone systems. Spoke brings call recording, transcription and monitoring to mobile devices as well as desktops, which is where regulated teams in healthcare, financial services and insurance have had a blind spot.
Reported in Scoop
2019
-
Looking Glass Factory launched an oversize holographic display
Looking Glass Factory launched a large-format version of its holographic display. Its light field technology projects many perspectives of a scene at once, so a group of people can see the same 3D image together with no headset, glasses or eye tracking.
Reported in Digital Engineering
-
Behind the TV Demand data with Parrot Analytics CEO Wared Seger
Reported in Mediaweek
-
The AI-powered avatar making content accessible to the deaf
Reported in The Spinoff
2018
-
Spoke Phone raised $1.3 million to take business calling off the landline
Spoke Phone raised $1.3 million in Auckland with the aim of ending the office landline. The system gives mobile and field workers the same call handling, recording and controls that desk-based staff have always had.
Reported in NBR
-
Small Business: Spoke Phone founder Jason Kerr wants to unshackle workers
Reported in NZ Herald
2017
-
Innovation series: NZ firm Parrot Analytics a high flier in global TV ratings industry
Reported in Stuff
2016
-
Exclusive new partnership with Parrot Analytics to uncover the best digital originals
Reported in The Drum
2013
-
Start-up firm Parrot keeps artists in the digital picture
Reported in NZ Herald
Undated
-
The Silver Lining profiled Positron and its Reno chip operation
The Silver Lining profiled Positron, which designs memory-optimized silicon for AI inference. Thomas Sohmers, Barrett Woodside and Edward Kmett founded it in 2023, and its Atlas accelerator serves production models on about a third of the power a top GPU draws.
Reported in The Silver Lining
-
Why We Invested in Sahha AI
Reported in Aura Ventures
-
SquareOne moved from children's pocket money to small business banking
SquareOne became Emerge, an SME challenger bank, after seed investment from Altered Capital. Jamie Jermain and Jovan Pavlicevic had built New Zealand's first app, card and account for children in 2021.
Reported in Caffeine (via Emerge)
-
Rebrand puts founder on path to build Extraordinary legacy
Reported in NBR
-
KiwiFibre and Aotearoa Ocean Racing took harakeke composites into an Ocean Race yacht
Boating New Zealand reported a partnership between KiwiFibre Innovations and Aotearoa Ocean Racing to use harakeke-based composites in an Ocean Race yacht. Ben Scales and William Murrell engineer New Zealand flax into a material with high strength and stiffness, low density, and a carbon footprint far below glass and carbon fiber.
Reported in Boating New Zealand
Nothing filed under that masthead yet.
Each company’s own coverage also sits on its page in the portfolio.