Cheque

Keep reading to learn more about Buildkite, Medow Health AI, ReFresh, Elita and Evatto.

Melbourne developer tools scaleup Buildkite raised $21 million through a convertible note in January this year, in the wake of rising losses and leadership changes, including the ousting of its CEO-cofounder 18 months ago.

Capital Brief reports that ASIC accounts show the company burnt through $23.4 million in operating cash during FY25, compared with $4.9m the previous year.

The accounts did not disclose the convertible note’s investor, pricing or conversion terms. Convertible notes do what the packet says, and can subsequently convert into company shares.

Buildkite provides the infrastructure developers use to test software and prepare it for release, and potentially has a new lease of life amid the AI coding boom.

Capital Brief reported that in a May recruitment ad, the veteran DevOps scaleup said workloads had doubled over three months. Customers were seeking capacity for five to 10 times more work during 2026 as AI agents generated more code.

Its customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, Canva, Uber, Airbnb and Cursor.

A Sydney medtech has raised a further $3.5 million from existing investors to launch an AI receptionist for specialist medical practices.

The round for Medow Health AI follows a $3m raise in November last year, plus $2m in January 2025.

The AI platform, which began as an AI scribe for medical reports for specialist doctors, was founded in 2023 by Joel Freiberg, who has Crohn’s disease, and his brother Josh, inspired by their father, a respiratory physician, and the time he spent doing admin after work.

The three raises have been lumped together as an $8.5m Seed round.

Returning investors include Chris O’Brien Lifehouse CEO Professor Michael Boyer and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Michael Solomon.

Medow’s new AI Front Desk answers incoming calls, manages appointments through a clinic’s existing practice management system and sends patient messages to clinical staff. Calls can be redirected to receptionists when human assistance is required.

Workplace psychosocial operating platform ReFresh has raised $2.5 million in seed funding.

The round was led by Black Nova Venture Capital, supported by follow-on investments from Antler and Archangel Ventures.

The raise is timely. It closed a fortnight before People at Work, the free survey that around 5,000 organisations and 160,000 workers have used to assess psychosocial risk since 2020, is shut down after Safe Work Australia and state regulators claimed it no longer reflects current requirements.

Harrison Kennedy and Taylor Laing founded ReFresh in 2025 and built it from opposite sides of the Pacific after a mutual contact introduced them. The startup was six months old, with employees, a pre-Seed round in December that year and customers onboarded before they met in person.

ReFresh has clients in financial services, government and ASX-listed tech companies. It’s now raised more than $4 million.

Dog health startup Elita has raised $1.9 million to expand its preventative care platform from genetic banking to a 24/7 veterinary telehealth service.

The round was led by US VC Boost, with support from locals Gandel Invest, Artesian’s Female Leaders Fund, Touch Ventures and M8 Ventures.

Elita is developing technology called Blueprint to track changes in a dog’s health over time using medical history, biological test results and information provided by owners.

The Victorian startup, founded in December 2024 by Paloma Newton and Jackson Gritching, will use the new capital to develop Blueprint360, an at-home biological testing product being built in-house and launching later this year.

It previously raised a $1.1m pre-Seed round in July 2025, which included investment from the Alice Anderson fund for female founders, to build a stem cell bank for Australian pets.

Now Elita has partnered with Australian veterinary telehealth company VetChat to offer 24/7 access to local vets, who’ll have access to the dog’s Blueprint history before a consultation.

Events management startup Evatto has staged a $1.02 million pre-seed round as it looks to expand offshore.

The raise was led by Perth VC Purpose Ventures and will go towards product development, international expansion and fresh faces on the team.

The year-old Sydney startup is building an AI-powered enterprise platform for managing complex event programs, replacing the spreadsheets, emails and recycled templates that still are standard practice in the sector.

Evatto is already working with organisations including the Invictus Games and Canada Snowboard for events such as World Cups and the X Games, and is currently working on pilot programs with several other enterprise customers.

The platform handles event scoping, stakeholder coordination, approval workflows, documentation and operational readiness. Its AI agents are designed to automate a lot of the administrative work needed to deliver large events.

Cofounder and CEO Hailey Mason spent more than 20 years producing large-scale events for the likes of Red Bull, Casio, and FIFA. She teamed up with COO Chris Toward, a top Australian events industry leader, in 2025 to launch Evatto (known then as Wiingman). And after joining Startmate’s Summer 26 program earlier this year, still as Wiingman, they crossed the finish line at top speed for Demo Day at Blackbird’s Sunrise.