Megaport

🇦🇺 This Week in Australian Startups #180, 4th October 2026

Weekly roundup reporting Australian startup funding rounds and government grants, a venture fund close, agreed acquisitions, an IPO pricing, a collapse, plus executive hires and AI policy developments.

AI data centre startup Firmus just raised another $2.85 billion at a whopping $15B valuation

Firmus has secured a further US$2bn at a $15bn valuation from Coatue, Nvidia, Blackstone and Jane Street, taking its 12-month capital intake past US$3bn to fund Australian AI data centre projects.

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Megaport raises $594M to build AI inference cloud, secures four US contracts

Megaport, a network-infrastructure firm based in Australia, has won four US contracts for AI computing and plans a shareholder entitlement offer to fund a new GPU inference cloud service.

Leading Edge DC secures $30M for regional network rollout

Leading Edge Data Centres has received a 30 million dollar equity investment from DigitalBridge Group to speed up its regional Australian edge data centre expansion over the next two years.

Bevan Slattery just invested $2.5m in mapping startup Pointerra and its share price skyrocketed

Bevan Slattery's family vehicle took $2.5 million of shares in a Pointerra capital raise, and the geospatial company's ASX-listed share price jumped about 85 percent after trading resumed.

5 things you should know about tech today

Tech roundup covering Apple and Google's contact-tracing API fixing CovidSafe, Afterpay's US user growth, Tesla dropping a lawsuit, and Bevan Slattery selling a third of his Megaport stake for $65 million.

Cloudscene appoints Belle Lajoie as new CEO

Brisbane startup Cloudscene hires Belle Lajoie as CEO from Megaport, with Renee Harper moving to a marketing vice-president role.