Melbourne

Cozy houseplants and self-care: How one startup is reimagining mobile gameplay as a healing activity

Mobile well-being apps topped 1.2 billion downloads last year, while leading meditation app Calm alone pulled in $118.2 million in revenue, data from Sensor Tower indicates. That may leave some to thi

Melbourne-based edtech startup Vivi raises $20M to accelerate overseas expansion in race to reach 1M classrooms

Australian edtech startup Vivi has raised $20 million from education investor Quad Partners, funds that it intends to use to improve its platform, upgrade its operational infrastructure and hire more

Airwallex raises $100M at a $5.5B valuation to expand its business banking and payments platform globally

E-commerce and other online businesses are becoming increasingly global in their operations and customer bases, and a startup called Airwallex — which has built a banking solution that addresses

Airwallex raises $200M at a $4B valuation to double down on business banking

Business, now more than ever before, is going digital, and today a startup that’s building a vertically integrated solution to meet business banking needs is announcing a big round of funding to

Customer engagement platform Dixa raises $105M Series C led by General Atlantic

European customer engagement platform Dixa has raised a Series C funding round of $105 million, led by growth equity investor General Atlantic. Existing investors Notion Capital, Project A and Seed Ca

Australian fintech Zeller lands $50M AUD led by Spark Capital at a $400M AUD valuation

Zeller, a Melbourne-based fintech founded by former Square executives to serve small- to mid-sized businesses, has raised $50 million AUD (about $37.5 million USD) led by Spark Capital, the investment

Fashion wholesale marketplace JOOR opens China office

JOOR, an online marketplace that connects fashion brands and retailers around the world, has opened its first China office in downtown Shanghai as it eyes growth in the region. The 11-year-old New Yor

Dixa acquires Elevio, the ‘knowledge management’ platform helping brands improve customer support

Dixa, the Danish customer support platform promising more personalised customer support, has acquired Melbourne-based “knowledge management” SaaS Elevio to bolster its product and technolo

Six favorite Techstars startups ahead of its next rush of demo days

With TechCrunch Disrupt happening last month, I fell behind on watching accelerator demo days. It’s time to correct that oversight. In August and September, the Techstars network of startup acce

Researchers ready world-first vision restoration device for human clinical trials

Over a decade’s worth of work by scientists working at Melbourne, Australia’s Monash University has produced a first-of-its-kind device that can restore vision to the blind, using a combin

Investors cozy up to LA-based ettitude’s bamboo bedding and sleep wear with $1.6 million

Ettitude, the Los Angeles-based, direct-to-consumer startup making sustainable bedding and sleepwear from bamboo fibers, has raised a sustainably sized round that should keep the company going even in

Replacing plastic with plant pulp for sustainable packaging attracts a billionaire backer

In a small suburb of Melbourne, two entrepreneurs are developing a technology that could mean big changes for the packaging industry. Stuart Gordon and Mark Appleford are the co-founders of Varden, a

New study of COVID-19 patient’s immune response could inform future treatment

A new study published in science journal Nature Medicine (via Bloomberg) examines the case of a patient who contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan and fell ill in Melbourne, Australia could provide a more compr

Here’s our pick of the top six startups from Pause Fest

We’ve been dropping into the Australian startup scene increasingly over the years as the ecosystem has been building at an increasingly faster pace, most notably at our own TechCrunch Battlefield Au

Omio buys Rome2rio to build out its global travel aggregator business

Omio (née GoEuro) has acquired multimodal travel veteran Rome2rio as it works on building out a global travel aggregator business, having taken the decision to zoom out from its home market of Europe

Why am I seeing this ad? AI, ML & human error in advertising

Ad platforms create equal opportunities for businesses but not equal outcomes. They’re mostly marketed as self-service and easy to use, however, there are new features added regularly and...

Uber Air picks Melbourne as its first international launch city

When Uber first announced Uber Air, it intended for Dubai to be its first international city. That changed last year when Uber put out an open call to interested cities to describe the clear need for

‘Crypto exchange’ Goxtrade caught using other people’s photos on its staff page

Alleged cryptocurrency exchange Goxtrade bills itself as a “trusted platform for trading bitcoins,” but its staff page is filled with photos of people pulled seemingly at random from the i

Cross-border fintech startup Airwallex raises $100M at a valuation of over $1B

Australia-based Airwallex is the latest tech startup to enter the billion-dollar “unicorn” club. The company announced today that it has closed a $100 million Series C round that values it

Hong Kong co-working startup Campfire pulls in $18M ahead of global expansion

WeWork may be doubling down on Asia, having initially focused its efforts on China, but that isn’t stopping local players from hatching ambitious expansion plans of their own. One of those eying
Load More