Australian tech news in December 2024: Digital ID Act comes into force; CyberWest Summit is set for May in Perth, WA; Securities and Investment Commission looks at crypto regulation; limits to social media access for younger Australians; Google’s subsea cable project to connect with Christmas Islands; and many more.
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- Australia: A brief intro to LILA, a startup working on personalized, wearable compression tech for athletes, a company in Tennis Australia’s AO StartUps portfolio / full item
- Australia: Drought Venture Studio, backed by the government’s Future Drought Fund, unveils 8 startups working on climate-focused solutions in agriculture / full item
- Australia: Sydney Startup Hub is to relocate from the CBD out to the Tech Central precinct in 2025, bringing founders closer to researchers and larger companies / full item
- Australia: The Digital ID Act commenced on 1 December 2024 / full item
Australia & big tech:
“The new rules…will require firms that earn more than A$250m in annual revenue to enter into commercial deals with media organisations, or risk being hit with higher taxes.” / full item
- Australia: James Cook University instals Starlink on several remote sites, and student accommodation, in Queensland, providing reliable internet for education access / full item
- Australia: Quantum Brilliance secures Au$13M equity investment for quantum diamond foundry for devices capable of room-temperature operation / full item
Indo-Pacific Insight: Tech, trade, supply, space, geopolitics…
- Australia’s Country Liberal Party in the NT and Indonesia ink first-of-its-kind MOU on critical minerals development between an Australian jurisdiction and Indonesia / full item
- Australia: NAB is to pivot from traditional passwords to passkeys and biometrics for online banking “…the bank was fighting off more than 50 million cybersecurity attacks a month…”: / full item
- Australia: CyberWest Summit 2025 is set for May 28-29 in Perth, WA, delivering cybersec education and awareness for business leaders / full item
- ICYMI: The UK, US, Canada, New Zealand and Australian governments launched the Secure Innovation program to help tech firms and startups improve baseline cybersecurity / full item
- KPMG Fintech Landscape 2024 sees a decline in the number of active firms for the 2nd year in a row, with the crypto and blockchain sector showing the largest YoY drop / full item
“50% are choosing not to buy a product or service because an organisation asked to collect personal information they weren’t comfortable sharing (up from 35% last year)” / full item
Google Cloud Security: Threat Horizons H1 2025 Report
“…without equipping citizens with media literacy, legislation can only have limited impact. Misinformation will remain part of our media diet…” / full item
- Australia: Pilbara Solar, a 50% Aboriginal-controlled startup business and social enterprise, gains Offer to Connect to deliver to Horizon Power’s coastal network / full item
- Australian Securities & Investment Commission issues consultation paper outlining new guidelines for the crypto industry, proposing new licensing requirements / full item
- Australia: UniSA engineers have combined star-based navigation with vision analysis tech for navigation where GPS is out or unreliable / full item
- Australia: Austrade opens EOIs for firms in AI, cybersec and blockchain for upcoming visit to the Philippines in February 2025, looking to boost collaboration and business growth / full item
- Australia: MGA Thermal adds $200K to pre-B fundraise with thermal bricks energy storage technology, building on last year’s container-based demo unit / full item
“The VIC government will invest $150K each to create 50 new startups and pay their salary for the year as part of an entrepreneurship program run by Breakthrough Victoria.” / full item
- Australia: The Digital Currency Reserve rolls out new GLO product, leveraging tokenised real-world assets including gold / full item
- Online ‘Bootstrap Your Brand’ workshop is set for December 12th, delivered by BGain and covering 5 cost-effective marketing strategies for SMEs and tech startups / full item
- Australia: Under new law, under-16s to be prohibited from accounts on some social platforms, with firms responsible for enforcement and facing non-compliance fines up to Au$50M / full item
Deloitte Insights: Tech Trends 2025
- Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island will be connected by subsea cable to Darwin in Australia’s far north in a Google-backed project / full item
- A brief look at the recent 2024 Innovation Leaders Summit in Tokyo, and the Australian tech firms and startups, including Quantum Brilliance and Novalith, that presented / full item
- Space Machines Co, an Australia-India in-space servicing firm, inks agreement with UK’s Lúnasa for space debris imaging systems, and satellite orbit and manoeuvring / full item
- ICYMI: United Kingdom becomes the first European nation to join the Indo-Pacific’s Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc / full item
BloombergNEF: Climatescope 2024 – Emerging Markets Power Factbook
Critical technologies, monthly
- SpaceX launched 30 satellites on December 21st, second in Bandwagon ‘rideshare’ series, delivering payloads from South Korea, Finland, the US and others…
- France’s Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor is now online and connected to the national grid, with electricity production set to develop in line with testing and safety protocols…
- Taiwan: An overview of Taoyuan municipality’s moves towards becoming a new global innovation hub, building on 12000 factories and industrial output over $122BN…
Full report: Critical tech in December >
Critical technologies in the news, globally, in December 2024
Asia’s Tech News, Weekly in December
● From December 15th 2024 to January 4th 2025
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