The 10 biggest Aussie startup raises of 2022, from BNPL titans to NFT gaming leaders

There are three ways of reading the publicly available data surrounding Australian startup funding in 2022.

The first is that local founders had one of the most significant calendar years on record, and raises totalling an excess of $866 million made the first quarter the richest single quarter in local startup history.

The second is that the quantity of mega-raises sharply declined as the year moved forward, as spiralling interest rates spooked many VCs away from the growth-at-all-costs approach of 2021.

Ranking Australia’s top funding rounds of the year by valuation exposes this dynamic, with three of the top five confirmed in February alone.

Even so, some mega-raises materialised late this year, heralding the possibility of more VC power moves in 2023 as valuations taper off from dizzying heights.

The third reading, separate from the headline dollar values, is that female founders were significantly underrepresented: of the companies that raked in the largest investments in 2022, Lucy Liu of Airwallex was the only female co-founder.

Here are the biggest capital raises by Australian startups in 2022.

Scalapay: $692 million, February

Buy now, pay later outfit Scalapay secured the biggest Australian startup raise of 2022 in February, booking a Series B round worth an astonishing $692 million.

The raise, joint-led by Chinese juggernaut Tencent and Willoughby Capital, propelled Scalapay firmly into unicorn territory with a valuation soaring past the US$1 billion ($1.45 billion) mark.

The Wollongong-based firm, founded by Johnny Mitrevski and Simone Mancini, focuses on the European market.

Cyara: $495 million, February

Cyara offers automated technology that assesses the quality of customer interactions with call centres, webchats, emails, or SMS systems.

The promise of those solutions for major corporations drove Cyara’s $495 million Series B round in February. The funding came from K1 Investment Management.

The raise further validated the work of co-founders Alok Kulkarni, Luan Tran, and Bonny Malik, who launched Cyara in Melbourne in 2006.

Immutable: $280 million, March

As cryptocurrency valuations tumbled in the early months of 2022 — and well before the high-profile collapse of FTX rattled digital asset markets worldwide — Sydney’s Immutable proved something of an outlier.

The company, which builds NFT integrations for video game companies and operates its own trading platform, secured a $280 million Series C round in March.

The raise propelled Immutable into unicorn territory. But speaking to SmartCompany at the time, co-founder and chief executive Robbie Ferguson said the company was still “small compared to where we want to go”.

Employment Hero: $181 million, February

Employment Hero’s $181 million Series F raise, completed in February, propelled the human resources and people management platform to unicorn status.

The late-stage round was led by Seek Investments, with backing from OneVentures and AirTree Ventures.

That latest influx of investment served as a “testament to our mission or creating as many quality employment opportunities as possible”, founder Ben Thompson said in a statement, some eight years after co-founding the prodigiously successful enterprise.

Airwallex: $159 million, October

Airwallex, the Australian fintech now behind countless cross-border transactions every day, bagged a $159 million Series E funding round in October.

Despite the broad downturn in investor sentiment, Airwallex also held onto its humongous $8.8 billion valuation in the process.

The Melbourne-founded company secured the top-up from Square Peg, Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Lone Pine Capital, Tencent, Hermitage Capital and 1835i Ventures, which all served as existing investors.

Airwallex co-founders Xijing Dai, Jack Zhang, Lucy Liu and Max Li. Source: supplied.

Linktree: $152 million, March

A tiny amount of text can lead to huge valuations. Just ask Melbourne-born Linktree, which in March spun its ‘link in bio’ system into a $152 million Series C round.

It was another capital injection that propelled a startup into unicorn territory, with a valuation of $1.7 billion.

Since then, the company has launched a new smartphone app and marketplace system as it builds beyond its original functionality.

However, in a sign of the toughening market for tech ventures, Linktree laid off 17% of its staff in August.

Splend: $150 million, April

After years of glacial development, Australia is finally accelerating its EV infrastructure and regulatory systems.

One firm taking advantage of that progress, at home and abroad, is Splend, which raised $150 million in April.

Splend hires out vehicles to drivers in the rideshare and delivery sectors and aims to build a fleet of 10,000 EVs by 2024.

The debt-and-equity round was led by Pollen Street Capital, a private capital asset manager targeting ESG-centric investments.

Morse Micro: $140 million, September

A $140 million Series B round for Sydney’s Morse Micro will help the firm scale up the production of its Wi-Fi HaLow chips and modules, which the company states will power the new generation of products in the Internet of Things.

MegaChips Corporation led the round, with contributions from Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Skip Capital, Uniseed, SpringCapital, along with former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Lucy Turnbull, among others.

Go1: $139 million, June

Brisbane’s Go1 brought its valuation above the $2 billion mark in June thanks to a $139 million funding round, led by AirTree Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Five Sigma, Madrona, Salesforce Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

A forward-thinking edtech startup, Go1 provides education and professional development resources to companies, traversing everything from accounting skills to mindfulness at work.

Co-founder and chief executive of Go1, Andrew Barnes. Source: supplied.

Advanced Navigation: $108 million, November

With a cool $108 million Series B funding round, Advanced Navigation secured the biggest raise of the month, and one of the biggest in the back half of 2022.

That capital injection will assist the Sydney-based company in its development of navigation and robotics systems for futuristic tech like flying taxis, driverless vehicles, and autonomous farms, among other innovations.

The round was led by KKR, with input by CSIRO’s Main Sequence, In-Q-Tel, OIF Ventures, AI Capital and, once again, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.