Eight ANZ startups that raised $67.4 million this week

From agtech to medtech, robotics and more, this week has been a busy one for local startup funding deals.

We’ve counted eight Australian and New Zealand startups with millions in fresh capital to deploy.

Keep reading to learn more about Farmbot, Atmo Biosciences, Alloy Robotics, Vexev, Fabulate, Kantoko, Sterling and Enrola.

Sydney-born agtech Farmbot has raised $22 million (US$15 million) in a Series B round to ramp up its global ambitions.

The round for the farmland remote water and asset monitoring platform for livestock farms was led by Lewis & Clark Partners, with participation from Fulcrum Global Capital, Builders VC, Level VC, Meat & Livestock Australia’s Cultiv8 Livestock Technology Fund, and long-time investor Macdoch Ventures.

Having launched in 2014, Farmbot now has more than 12,000 customers across Australia, North America, and other global markets, managing around 10 million cattle and 15 million sheep.

The company, which operates as Ranchbot in the US, is now headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. The raise will support a corporate “flip-up” to make Ranchbot Technology Holdings Inc., a Delaware corporation, the group’s new global parent company. An evolution into broader agricultural and water management for the farm sector is also on the drawing board.

“This investment means we can put more people on the ground here at home, keep improving our hardware and software, and give our customers even more value. Together with our investors, we’re investing in the future of farming,” co-founder and chair Andrew Coppin said.

Farmbot’s satellite-connected sensors and platform let farmers monitor tanks, troughs, dams, pumps and rainfall from their phone, cutting out the need for long drives to check water availability for stock.

Atmo Biosciences, a Melbourne-based startup developing ingestible capsules to assess gut health, has raised $12 million in a new funding round that has reportedly dropped its valuation from $70 million to $25 million.

The Australian Financial Review reports Atmo plans to extend the round out to $16.5 million in the coming weeks.

The round has been cornerstoned by an unnamed family office, with participation from existing backers Breakthrough Victoria and former Cochlear CEO Chris Roberts. Atmo also counts Japanese pharmaceutical giant Otsuka as an investor.

The change in the startup’s valuation has been linked to similar downgrades in the valuations of listed life sciences and medtech companies such as Epiminder and Saluda Medical.

Atmo obtained FDA clearance to market and sell its product in the US in mid-2025, and is planning to focus on growing its US sales as demand increases from doctors wanting to use the Atmo capsule to help improve the gut health of patients using GLP-1 weight loss medicines.

A robotics test analysis startup founded in early 2025 has nailed the trifecta of VC investment, with Square Peg, Blackbird and Airtree all chipping into an $11.5 million seed round for Alloy Robotics.

Since Canva, only three other companies have managed to attract the interest of the VC trinity: AI customer support startup Lorikeet, fintech Airwallex and Kiwi auto parts marketplace Partly.

The new raise comes less than 12 months after a $4.5 million pre-seed round led by Blackbird. This time Square Peg signed on as lead, supported by existing backers, including Skip Capital and Tesla and Waymo execs, with more from OpenAI and Anthropic also chipping in.

Former Eucalyptus CCO Joe Harris is behind Alloy, which cuts the time robotics teams spend sifting through data to solve problems and build expensive custom infrastructure from scratch.

Since the startup’s launch late last year, it’s collaborated with other tech companies in agriculture, defence, drones, medical devices, industrial systems, maritime robotics and humanoids. What it brings to the table is turning a full day of robot test analysis into 10 minutes. Advanced Navigation is among Alloy’s clients.

A medtech startup developing robotic imaging for cardiovascular disease has raised $8.6 million (US$6 million) as it looks to expand in the US market.

The round for UNSW spinout Vexev was backed by existing investors Blackbird, Neotribe, Startmate and Horizon, with TreeArc Investment Group, TEN13, Bioshore and Alumni Ventures also joining the cap table.

Vexev was founded in Sydney in 2018 by John Carroll and Eamonn Colley, after studying the links between blood flow in veins and arteries and the development of vascular disease.

They set out to develop advanced vascular imaging tech designed to make high-quality scanning more accessible, consistent and scalable. The result is a product called VxWave, a robotic tomographic ultrasound platform.

The startup has now raised $27 million in total, including $8.5 million in 2022. The new funds will support a push for FDA regulatory approval in the US as well as manufacturing scale-up and commercialisation in that market.

Marketing startup Fabulate has raised $4.5 million at a valuation of $84.5 million, as it looks to expand across the Asia-Pacific region.

Key investors include Centerstone Capital and Nightingale Partners, with around 90% of the raise from existing shareholders.

Fabulate was founded in 2019 by Toby Kennett, former Nine execs Ben Gunn and Nathan Powell, and Sachin Singh.

Kennett, the CEO, said the company is profitable and that roughly 90% of the raise came from existing shareholders.

“The funds raised will be used to further drive our growth through the region,” he said, adding Fabulate has firmly established itself as a clear leader in the APAC region.

An online platform for ADHD care – the third startup for founder Zac Altman after two successful exits – has raised $3.5 million in seed funding.

The round for Kantoko was led by Side Stage Venture and Tenmile, supported by angel investors including the Go1 founders.

Altman, whose most recent company LoungeBuddy was acquired by American Express, launched Kantoko in 2023 to give Australians a clinical-grade pathway to long-term ADHD assessment, treatment and support.

This one is personal. Altman has ADHD.

In Australia, an estimated 75% of adults with ADHD are undiagnosed due to long wait times and the high upfront costs of testing. Altman experienced the challenges firsthand when trying to get re-diagnosed after moving back to Australia from the US.

“I had no choice but to build this company,” he said.

“I went through re-diagnosis as an adult and saw how broken the system is at every step. Nobody should have to fight that hard for care that changes their life, so we built the system that should have existed all along.”

A New Zealand AI startup developing what it calls an ‘autopilot’ for finance teams has raised $3.15 million (NZ$3.8 million).

The round for Sterling was led by Blackbird, supported by the next generation of Kiwi founders-investors, including Rowan Simpson, Eliot Crowther and others from Trade Me, Pushpay, Xero and Vend.

Founded in 2025 by Nik Wakelin and Ludwig Wendzich, Sterling lets finance and accounting teams deploy AI workflows in minutes for tasks such as invoice processing, bank reconciliation and month-end routines. It plugs into the tools finance teams already use, from ERPs to the accounts inbox, and makes it documented and explainable.

Ludwig Wendzich, who worked at Vend, Lightspeed and Apple, said almost everyone at Sterling, including their investors, “cut their teeth” at companies such as Vend and Xero.

“We’re the ones who learned how to build world-class software from New Zealand — now we’re doing it again, for the people who keep every business running,” he said.

Enrola, a three-year-old women-founded startup that pivoted in 2025 from education to sales tech, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding.

The round was led by Purpose Ventures, with support from existing backers Antler, AfterWork Ventures and Skalata.

As an education comparison platform, it previously raised $800,000 in a pre-seed round in late 2024, having initially launched as part of the Antler program.

The shift is one of those classic discovery moments for co-founders Jo Thomas and Yvette Quinby.

They built an AI sales agent to convert Enrola’s leads, and in that moment saw the real opportunity: not the marketplace idea, but the agent itself, tackling a far larger problem in any business selling high-value services to consumers.

So in September last year, Enrola 1.0’s marketplace was parked to focus on the AI sales agents side to engage and convert customers in the moments they’re making a final decision.

Enrola 2.0’s agent answers customer questions and either hands a sales-ready buyer back to the team or closes the sale itself. In less than 12 months, they’ve signed up 28 customers spanning education, insurance, fintech, legal services, utilities and comparison. Since the pivot, the platform has processed more than 250,000 leads.

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