Australia’s technology news in August 2023 touched on issues and items including: Australian tech developments allowing lithium extraction from mining waste; news around autonomous trucking in Australia’s freight transport industry; slingshot space launches in Western Australia; hydrogen power developments; and many more.
And also available here is New Zealand’s tech news in August 2023.
You can also get Asia tech daily, and weekly – daily updates go out via social media, and our weekly newsletters go out via Substack and LinkedIn.
Tech Council of Australia: US Tech workers boost Australia’s tech ecosystem
- Australia: Report finds tech industry outside major capital cities is key to job creation, with 60 metro suburbs and 36 regional towns making up 62% of tech jobs created in Australia
- Australia: Fishburners Services Hub launches to provide a one-stop marketplace for startups to connect with high-quality, vetted and affordable providers to help build businesses and products
- South by SouthWest – SXSW – to take place for a second time this year, in Sydney from October 15-22
- Available now: ‘The geography of Australia’s digital industries’ from CSIRO and the Tech Council on Australia, mapping and analyzing the nation’s digital technology clusters
- Australia: Applications open for Social Impact Pre-Accelerator Program, seeking 60 participants with intakes in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong
Australia: SXSW Sydney 2023 – October 15-22
- Australia: CSIRO Tech Industry Map is online, providing detail on concentrations of tech workers across the country
- Australia: An intro to 8 startups that raised a total of Au$85.6M in the first week of August, with solutions in mining tech, cybersecurity, wellness, food waste and medical tech
- Australia: Women in Technology Bootcamp 2023 applications are now open for university students in STEM subjects, a 4-day program set to run in 6 cities
- Australia: MGA Thermal secures $5.39M to prep commercial-scale production for thermal long-duration storage solutions featuring aluminium-graphite alloy to hold heat for later dispatch as energy
“In 2022, malicious cyber actors exploited older software vulnerabilities more frequently than recently disclosed vulnerabilities and targeted unpatched, internet-facing systems“
- Australia: MinRes commits $4.5M for plant to extract lithium from mining waste using tech developed by Lithium Australia and gov’t ANSTO, aiming to test towards full commercialization
- Australian Competition & Consumer Commission opens consumer data right portal to guide on technical requirements, with features including CDR Sandbox and CDR Mock Solutions for developers
- Amazon’s Australian branch to move into country’s largest warehouse, spanning 209K square metres across 4 levels outside Melbourne
- Australia: CSIRO Digital Infrastructure Energy Flexibility pilot to use software to control power usage of up to 200 buildings in New South Wales, seeing potential for new ecosystem of enargy tech solutions
Indo-Pacific Space-Earth Conference – October 23-24 – Australia
- Australia: EnergyLab 2023 Climate Solutions Accelerator unveils 10 startups selected, working on solutions in batteries tech, solar panels, minerals recovery and more
- Australian Broadcasting Corp’n, country’s public broadcaster, announces closure of most Twitter / X accounts, citing the platform’s ‘toxic’ interactions and erosion of X’s trust and safety teams
- Australia: Next intake for the 8 micro-credential course ‘Australia and the Indo-Pacific – Understanding our strategic connections to Asia’ is set for September, from Perth USAsia Centre
- South Asian Australian Startup Founders List and Insights Report is now available, featuring 101 individuals who have collectively raised over $1.1BN and employ over 2200 people
- Australia: University of Canberra, ACT Gov’t and NetApp launch Open Source Institute to boost research, collaboration and innovation in open source technologies
- Australia: evokeAG Future Young Leaders Program applications are open to September 4, seeking 5 agri-tech innovators
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency to invest AU$20M in Hysata to build out hydrogen electrolyser tech at commercial scale, with approach producing hydrogen with 95% efficiency
“Ninety per cent of Victorian government agencies were targeted in cyberattacks last year, exposing critical services to serious disruption, the state’s auditor-general has found.”
- Australia: AO StartUps unveils 7 startups selected, working on aspects of tennis, sports-tech and sporting events
- Australia: Woolworths partners Goterra startup to use Black Soldier Fly larvae to reduce food waste on-site by 95% in just 24 hours, producing fertiliser and protein meal
- Indo-Pacific Space and Earth Conference set for October 23-24 in Perth, Western Australia
- Australia: Victorian state gov’t announces $3M support focused on regional agriculture-tech startup businesses
- Australia: 7-Eleven Australia to trial Grabango computer vision-based system in some stores allowing customers to purchase as they browse
- Australia: NeedleCalm founder awarded The Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers with tech minimizing fear and discomfort in needle procedures
- Australia: auDA internet domain administrator hit by 15GB data breach, with hackers threatening to sell access to auDA user bank account details
CSIRO: Australian Tech Industry Map
- Australia: Update – auDA concludes investigation and finds no evidence that cyber criminals accessed auDA systems or have auDA user data
- Australia: The Hugh Victor McKay Fund launches to invest $100K-200K in at least 5 early-stage startups over 12 months, focusing on tech and innovations in the agricultural sector
- Australia: HEO Robotics raises $12M Series A with satellite and space debris monitoring, using software to redirect the cameras of existing satellites
- The Weeknd to bring ‘After Hours Til Dawn’ world tour to Australia and New Zealand, powered by Binance crypto exchange and featuring Souvenir NFTs
- Australia: Transurban toll-road operator partners Plus, US autonomous driving software firm, to advance Level 4 autonomous trucks for automated freight transport
- Australia: Fintech Pitch Night from The Startup Network set for August 29th in Melbourne
Australia and digital currency:
“…it is likely that any serious policy consideration of issuing a CBDC in Australia is still some years away…”
- Australia: Hadean Energy launches to commercialize CSIRO tech to reduce hydrogen production costs, at the same time allowing industry to decarbonise
- Australia: An intro to MyBrix, blockchain platform facilitating ‘fractionalisation’ of property enabling owners to sell shares of their properties as units of value to investors
- Australia: US space launch firm, Spinlaunch, conducting feasibility study on two possible launch sites for its orbital ‘slingshot’ accelerator in WA
- Malaysia’s iPrice ecommerce platform, backed by Indonesia’s Bukalapak, launches product price comparison site for Australian market
- Australia: An overview of the Dell for Startups program, free to join and running in Australia
- ICYMI: Australian gov’t sets $50M to back Indonesia’s clean-tech and renewables startups, building on $200M Australia-Indonesia Climate and Infrastructure Partnership
- South Korea’s Innospace and Equatorial Launch Australia ink multi-launch contract for orbital launches in north-east Arnhem Land
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: AUKUS and critical minerals
New Zealand tech: August 2023
- New Zealand: Aquila startup unveils potentially game-changing drone using solar power to charge as the vehicle flies, removing need to land for recharging
- New Zealand: Security Intelligence Service published Security Threat Environment 2023 report, bringing to light foreign interference activities by China, Iran and Russia
- New Zealand: Kiki peer-to-peer subletting platform gains Au$7M seed funding with sights on New York launch
- “Icehouse Ventures annual Showcase has become New Zealand’s most important night for startups. It’s also a strange, enjoyable piece of quasi-pop culture in its own right”
- India enters talks to bring UPI – Unified Payments Interface – to New Zealand to streamline business payments, boost trade and lift tourism between the two
Tech Council of Australia: Australia’s Generative AI opportunity
ASIA TECH DAILY
All-day tech news updates from across South & Southeast Asia and the broad Indo-Pacific region:
Unfortunately, our mobile app updates are currently offline, ‘thanks’ to the ongoing devolution of what was Twitter (now X); we pulled our content feed directly from Twitter to the app, but tech changes at X have closed this down for the time being.
Asia tech weekly
Startup News Asia’s weekly newsletters go out via Substack and LinkedIn, giving you a single snapshot of the past week’s tech news headlines from across Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
