We could solely be a few weeks into January, however the Australian startup funding faucet is already beginning to trickle.
This week noticed $25.85 million raised throughout startups in deceased property administration and health areas, whereas we additionally report on an unique increase by an AI safety platform.
EstateXchange: $12.5 million
A startup addressing the challenges of deceased property administration, co-founded by childhood pals, has banked $12.5 million in its first increase.
Backing EstateXchange are Macquarie Capital, OIF Ventures, and billionaire Paul Little’s household workplace, with enterprise exec Carol Schwartz and Pier 12 Capital chair Christine Christian additionally on board as angel traders.
The net platform digitises deceased property administration companies for skilled companies corporations coping with executor administration, resembling doc sharing and verification.
It connects legal professionals, accountants and trustees with monetary establishments, insurers, and others holding property belongings or offering companies, resembling a telecommunications firm or share registry, providing the afterlife model of a knowledge room, to save lots of property managers from the duplication of getting to submit the identical kinds repeatedly to totally different organisations.
Learn extra on Startup Daily.
Hapana: $7.25 million
A software program platform utilized by gyms and health studios globally to handle memberships has raised $7.25 million.
The spherical for Hapana, based in 2014, was led by veteran Sydney asset supervisor Microequities, with follow-on funding from OIF Ventures.
OIF backed Hapana’s 2024’s $17 million raise alongside ASX-listed Bailador Applied sciences.
Hapana’s platform is a white-label CRM answer for membership funds, retention and loyalty for health manufacturers.
Founder and CEO Jarron Aizen mentioned the funding will help the following technology of the platform with AI-powered instruments, increase its international group and help development in key worldwide markets.
“Our prospects aren’t simply rising; they’re scaling at a tempo that calls for a complete rethink of health tech,” he mentioned.
Learn extra on Startup Daily.
Dam Safe: $6.1 million
AI safety startup Dam Safe has raised $6.1 million in seed funding to deal with the safety dangers created by AI-generated code coming into manufacturing at scale, with the spherical led by Washington DC-based cybersecurity and AI investor Paladin Capital Group.
The oversubscribed spherical additionally attracted backing from Safe Code Warrior CEO Pieter Danhieux, RecordPoint CEO Anthony Woodward, Innovation Bay founder Phaedon Stough and Tyro Funds chief product officer Steen Andersson. Paladin Capital managing director Mourad Yesayan will be part of the corporate’s board.
The increase comes as enterprises quickly roll out AI coding assistants, accelerating software program output whereas introducing new courses of safety threat that present instruments battle to catch.
Based by former Zip Co and Safe Code Warrior executives Patrick Collins and Simon Harloff, Dam Safe is constructing an AI-native utility safety platform designed to catch “logic gaps” in code. These are logic flaws the place code capabilities appropriately however fails fundamental safety expectations, which Dam Safe says conventional code scanners typically miss.
Collins, who can also be the corporate’s CEO, instructed SmartCompany solely that enterprises are “dashing to undertake AI to extend developer velocity”, however present utility safety instruments are struggling to maintain tempo.
“Present safety instruments generate an excessive amount of noise to work successfully on this new atmosphere,” he mentioned.
In contrast to conventional scanners that search for identified vulnerability patterns, Dam Safe permits organisations to outline safety necessities in plain English and mechanically enforces these guidelines throughout giant codebases throughout growth. The corporate positions itself as complementary to present utility safety tooling, specializing in logic-level flaws reasonably than identified vulnerability signatures.
For example, Collins pointed to a logic flaw disclosed in Volkswagen’s linked automobile APIs in Could 2025, the place the absence of price limiting on a four-digit entry code enabled brute-force assaults and publicity of car location knowledge.
“Dam Safe would have merely prevented this by mechanically implementing the logical rule: ‘All authentication endpoints should implement price limiting,’” Collins mentioned, blocking the flawed code within the developer’s IDE earlier than it shipped.
Below the hood, the platform builds what the corporate calls a proprietary “Safety Data Graph” for every codebase, mapping relationships, knowledge flows and logic paths throughout all the system. This permits the platform to purpose about how code behaves in context, reasonably than scanning particular person recordsdata in isolation.
The platform presently helps Java, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, Python and Go, and acts as a safety wrapper round AI coding instruments resembling GitHub Copilot, Claude and Cursor, whatever the underlying mannequin.
Dam Safe is presently deployed with six main know-how organisations on a non-public, invite-only foundation, operating alongside present utility safety instruments reasonably than changing them. Collins mentioned early outcomes present false positives under 10%, evaluating this with trade averages, which he says are round 50%, by catching logic errors earlier within the growth lifecycle.
The funding shall be used to develop Dam Safe’s Australian R&D group to 13 individuals and construct a US-based gross sales and advertising presence as the corporate prepares for a broader business rollout in 2026.
- This story first appeared on SmartCompany. You possibly can read the original here.
