Patrick Sieb and Tom Kline of Climate Tech Partners raise $50m for their first close of their fund
Investors include
Ludovic TheauCIO of Australian Ethical Investment,
Ian Learmonth, CEO Clean Energy Finance Corporation,
Daniel BESEN Family Office,
Qantas, and
Airbus
The fund will focus on #GridTech, #DER, and #storage #lowcarbonfuels and #climateadaptation,
Patrick andTom led set up a climate tech fund at Investible and grew it to $32 million, before striking out to set up Climate Tech Partners in early 2023.
Alliance Partners and players in the mix include
Emily Bjorklund Drake Juliette Bourgeois Topaz Conway Noga Edelstein Duncan Murray Adam Roberts Malcolm Thornton Zoe Parkin Neil Stanford Fiona Messent Jonathon Curry Harry Jobberns Jorge Caro Terrón Julie Kitcher Fanny Mattens Stephen Forshaw Julian Richman, CFA Adam Lindell Polar 993 PMC Legal Ranya Alkadamani
In 2022 Nik Storonsky , the founder of Revolut launched QuantumLight, an AI-driven investment platform that replaces traditional investors with machine intelligence and not only scaled a $45B fintech company - he’s now raised $250m and is challenging the entire venture capital model.
No coffee meetings.
No partner pitches.
No “gut feel.”
Instead, the system ingests over 10 billion data points across 700,000+ venture-backed startups. It looks for correlations, anomalies, and signals that even the sharpest GPs might miss.
So far?
It’s working. Their AI-led investments are outperforming top-tier VCs by 2x.
We already rely on #AI in trading, underwriting, even diagnosing disease.
So why are we still backing startups with human bias, pattern recognition, and anecdotal conviction?
versus
a system that’s less emotional, more scalable, and possibly more accurate.
“Should we remove humans from the investment decisions entirely.”
Will QuantumLight replace humans or enable humans to make investment decisions
How important is human bias, pattern recognition, and anecdotal conviction?
Can AI truly understand the founder journey?
The vision, resilience, and timing that often live between the data points?
What happens to VC when the pitch deck matters less than the dataset?
Airwallex, founded by Jack Zhang is on track to reach a $1b revenue in 2025, and has just completed a $300 million Series F funding round at a $6.2 billion valuation.
Investors
Series F investors include: Square Peg, DST Global, Lone Pine Capital, Blackbird, Airtree, Salesforce Ventures, and Visa Ventures with participation from several leading pension funds in Australia.
Airwallex has a great Vision
To create the largest money movement network
in the world to completely displace Swift!
(See full podcast with Jack Zhang below)
What Airwallex does
Airwallex is a global payments and financial platform for modern businesses with a mission to redefine global banking, and to empower businesses everywhere to grow without limits.
“The global financial system wasn’t built for today’s borderless economy,” said Jack Zhang, co-founder and CEO of Airwallex. “Too many businesses are held back by legacy infrastructure that’s slow, costly, and fragmented. At Airwallex, we’re building a new foundation for the global economy – one that’s fast, seamless, and built for scale.”
Airwallex has built a tech-led global financial infrastructure from the ground up, with direct integrations into local clearing systems and card networks, and one of the most comprehensive licensing portfolios in fintech.
This proprietary network gives Airwallex’s customers the unique ability to instantly generate local account numbers in 60+ countries and to send and receive funds across more than 150 countries, faster and more efficiently than traditional banks. Today, 95% of Airwallex transactions arrive within a few hours or the same day – 68% are processed instantly.
Global Business Accounts: An all-in-one multi-currency account to manage global banking, FX conversion, and international transfers and to earn competitive rates on stored funds.
Payments: Helping businesses accept online and in-store payments from their customers around the world with cards and 160+ local payment methods, all with alocalized, multi-currency shopping experience.
Spend: Giving customers a single platform to efficiently manage all types of company spend across their global business, including multicurrency corporate and employee cards, expense management, and bill payments – all powered by AI.
Platform APIs & Embedded Finance: Delivering Airwallex’s financial capabilities via API to tech-forward companies and marketplaces that want to embed and monetize financial services on their own platforms.
Rapid Growth and Global Expansion
The company grew its customer base by 50% in 2024 – now serving 150,000 businesses worldwide. In 2025, Airwallex expects to hit $1 billion in annual run rate revenue.
In 2024, Airwallex moved into a permanent U.S. headquarters in San Francisco and recently opened new offices in New York and Toronto.
Following the receipt of a payment institution license in Brazil and approval to close its acquisition of MexPago, a Mexico-based payment service provider, Airwallex is poised to launch services in Latin America’s two largest economies.
In Europe, Airwallex recently opened a new office in Paris and made a series of senior hires in London and Amsterdam. In the Middle East, Airwallex made its first hires in the United Arab Emirates – in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai – and continued to grow strongly in Israel.
Airwallex will use the funding to continue expanding its financial infrastructure into new markets including Japan, Korea, the UAE, and Latin America, and to accelerate go-to-market efforts in Europe, North America, and South East Asia.
Airwallex is well on the way to provide a global financial infrastructure to power the future of banking
Interview with Jack Zhang and Brex by and Marcel van Oost of HD in HD
Exciting things are happening in #Sydney’s tech scene.
Mike Cannon-Brookes shared his vision for Tech Central Sydney in a powerful conversation with Ticky Fullerton at the Australian British Chamber of Commerce event — supported by a stellar panel including:
The Hon Paul Scully, Minister for Planning & Public Spaces (NSW Government)
Chancellor David Thodey, University of Sydney
Amy Glancey, Chief of Staff, Atlassian
Stuart FitzRoy, MD APAC at Rokt
James Tynan, Partner at Square Peg
As Ed Schmidt from Greenhouse noted:
Mike reminded us that physical spaces like Tech Central are not just symbolic—they are essential infrastructure for innovation. When people, ideas, capital, and talent collide, magic happens.
Mike’s key reflections:
🔹 “All technology is built by people” – Innovation thrives when we create spaces where ideas and talent connect
🔹 “We’re not competing with other states—we’re competing globally” – Sydney must think big and act fast
🔹 “We’re already exporting ideas at scale” – Australia’s tech talent is a world-class asset
🔹 “We need ecosystems, not silos” – Collaboration is the engine of growth
We’re on the cusp of something amazing. Let’s keep the momentum going.
The momentum is real — with world-class companies like Canva, Afterpay, SafetyCulture, Atlassian already rooted in or moving into the Tech Central district.
We’ve got the bones:
Global players
Brilliant talent
Leading universities
Now we need certainty — in vision and planning — to keep building a precinct that unlocks investment, attracts talent, and secures future jobs.
Here’s to backing what’s working and turning Tech Central into something the whole country can be proud of.
Rippling, founded in 2016 by Parker Conrad and Prasanna Sankar becoming a unicorn in 2020, has just raised $460m at a $16.8 billion valuation
Investors
Rippling has raised a $450 million Series G round. with Y Combinator, Elad Gil, Sands Capital, GIC, and Goldman Sachs Growth, along with other existing investors.
What it does
Rippling is a workforce management platform that unifies HR, IT, and finance operations into one system. It enables companies to manage the entire employee lifecycle — from onboarding and payroll to benefits administration and compliance — all in one place.
The platform also offers IT tools for device management, software access, and security oversight. With its integrated approach, Rippling helps organizations streamline operations, reduce complexity, and improve overall efficiency.
Rippling supports businesses in over 100 countries, offering global payroll and compliance tools designed for modern, distributed teams.
Martian Logic is well placed to ride this wave
In Australia - a story is unfolding with an innovative HRIS ((Human Resources Information System) Company, founded in 2001 by Physicist and Tech Engineer, Anwar Khalil.
Anwar literally started his business from his 2 bedrooms unit in the Inner West - and the blood, sweat and tears from a small group of 5 techsters, and Jeannine Winiata - with desks in his living room and bedrooms.
In 2003 he came to BSI offices, a one stop shop for the entrepreneur - needing funding and support . Anwar reminded me that we invested $50k on a handshake and then - with the help of BSI’s Investor Forum, the Comet Grant and R&D Government Incentives , raised a further $1.5m from strategic Investors .
Fast forward to 2025 - starting as a simple multi- job posting system for recruiters, Martian Logic has slowly building growing its business to a solid comprehensive HRIS Platform (Human Resources Information System) servicing over 200 schools, healthcare , NDIS, Councils and medium sized businesses .
Built cohesively module-by-module and from scratch in Australia | Perfect for the desk-lessworkforce likeschools, healthcare, NDIS... etc.Talent acquisition, onboarding, full employee lifecycle, performance, surveys, compliance & learning, plus more.
Martian Logic is perfectly poised for exponential growth and on its way to becoming a Unicorn in the making me thinks :)
The new round by Rippling underscores the need for companies to manage people, systems, and finances at scale.
I was reading through my blog , venture Capital in Australia (google BSiVC) and I came across this gem of an article by Mick Liubinskas - talking about focus .
This article reminds me of David Shein’s comment that for a Startup to be successful - they need to be as focussed as a one eyed dog in a meat factory :)
Anyway , here is the article
Be laser Focussed
In 100,000 companies will hit that home run - to do that - one of the key things is to be laser focussed
kazaa millions of downloads... but failed because of no focus. too many distractions, 300m downloads, millions of users - but underachieved
facebook - 3 features, 20,000 people - very focussed
there is ++ competition - to be succesful - you need to have laser focus - or get crunched by the competition
customers like the fact that you are laser focussed
there are 3 things that get you focussed -
sacrifice, sequence and focus on the core vs the crap
sacrifices - there are many choices - rather be narrow and deep vs wide and shallow
example - Atlassian - being laser focussed - created a big business in a target area.
Booking angel - pay per booking initially focussing on one market - restaurants
Martian Logic - initially focussing on recruitment companies
social business
1. individual value (wifm)
2. group value
3. community value
If too many balls in the air - too busy juggling - rather focus on your core strength and making that happen
Get your core utility right - the absolute must have - get this cranking and you will win - then the support.
The outer circle mostly crap - but where ++ money is spent
How to Focus:-
1. Know your purpose
guy kawasaki - know your meaning - what you are about
2. test test test test
3. patience and persistance - keep turning the crank and don't give up.
Pollenizer’s claim to fame was investing in Dean McEvoy’s business Spreets - that pivoted with Justus Hammer from Booking Angel (founded in BSI’s offices after a BSI USA trip in 2007 ) - Selling a few years later to Yahoo for $40m .
Pollenizer started in 2007 and closed its doors after 10 years in 2017 when Mick joined Muru D and is now founder of Climate Salad .
Phil Morle is now a Partner at Main Sequence Ventures, an Australian-based venture capital firm attached to the CSIRO
Both Pollenizer and BSI helped 100’s of startups grow - with some of them raising hundreds of millions and becoming unicorns.
Pollenizer and the BSI Investor Forum can be proud that it played an integral part of the birth of the Burgeoning VC industry that it is today - with Square Peg , Blackbird , OiF, EVP and others that has been capitalised and funded by Smart HNI and Superfunds - with Exponential returns .
