Dynamic Business rounds up this week’s biggest startup funding wins across Australia, New Zealand, and the world.
Welcome to this week’s funding roundup, where Dynamic Business brings you the freshest raises from across the startup ecosystem, local and global. Here is who raised, how much, and what they are building.
Appetise raises AU$7 million Series A
Sydney-based insights platform Appetise has closed an AU$7 million Series A round, less than a year after launching in Australia. The round was oversubscribed and led by New Zealand-based VC Icehouse Ventures, with all existing investors returning including OIF Ventures, Brand Fund, NZVC, and K1W1, alongside new participation from Ten13. The raise follows a AU$3.6 million round in 2024.
Appetise operates a free meal planning and shopping app for consumers across Australia and New Zealand. Its B2B arm, Appetise Insights, monetises the behavioural data generated by that app, translating real shopper activity into actionable intelligence for food and beverage brands. The model is built on revealed behaviour rather than survey responses, positioning it as an alternative to traditional market research.
Since switching its consumer app to a free model to fuel the data engine, Appetise has grown to more than 110,000 active users, creating what it describes as the largest food and beverage behavioural insights panel in Australia. Comparable research panels in Australia average around 18,000 users, according to the company. The Australian market now accounts for approximately 70% of overall company growth, with revenue tripling in the past six months. Seventy Australian brands have signed on to the insights product, including Kraft Heinz and Lee Kum Kee.
UNSW commits AU$35 million to 50 new spinouts
UNSW Sydney has committed AU$35 million to research commercialisation, with an ambition to launch 50 new spinout companies over the next five years. The strategy includes a AU$25 million pre-seed fund for early-stage spinouts and a AU$10 million investment into VC firm High Street Ventures for follow-on support as those companies scale.
The pre-seed fund will offer individual spinouts up to AU$500,000 each, targeting the funding gap between early research validation and external capital. It sits alongside UNSW’s existing Proof-of-Concept Fund, launched in 2024, which invests AU$3 million annually in market testing, prototype development, and efficacy testing to ready ideas for licensing or spin-out.
High Street Ventures is separately targeting more than AU$100 million in investor commitments to focus on Series A and later rounds, helping take the spinouts through to commercialisation and market launch.
OpenAI closes in on US$100 billion raise
San Francisco-based AI company OpenAI is finalising the first phase of a funding round expected to exceed US$100 billion, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The deal has not yet been officially confirmed.
The overall valuation of the company, including the eventual funding, could exceed US$850 billion, with the pre-money value remaining at US$730 billion, according to Bloomberg. The first phase is being led by strategic corporate investors including Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft. A second phase involving venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, and other financial investors is expected to follow.
The raise comes as OpenAI continues to scale its AI infrastructure investment and expand ChatGPT’s commercial reach globally.
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