Startup funding OG evaluation firm Techboard has gone to the darkish aspect of startup funding in Australia and found a literal goldmine.
The WA startup knowledge agency’s just lately launched report: Unannounced investments in Australian Startup and Tech Companies 2025 means that solely a 3rd of Australian startup funding is revealed publicly, with greater than 750 unannounced investments going unreported.
Techboard has been accumulating knowledge on Australian startups since 2015 and constructing a nationwide funding dataset for since mid-2017.
Founder and CEO Peter van Bruchem mentioned they estimated 1100 Australian startup and tech firms acquired exterior funding in 2025, whereas the publicly introduced offers featured 379 raises by 361 firms, collectively price $5.2 billion. The problem, he mentioned, is that the dimensions of the investments stays unknown.
“I discover it fairly fascinating that the traits seen from analysing attainable unannounced investments don’t immediately match the traits we see from taking a look at introduced offers. It truly seems probably that the unannounced investments could inform a really totally different story,” vam Bruchem mentioned.
“I think that these variations are attributable to various components comparable to precise or perceived newsworthiness of capital raises contemplating their measurement, valuation or sector the corporate operates in. The extent of publicity might also be linked to a founders’ entry or perceived entry to journalists or press protection.
“It should even be mentioned that firms aren’t at all times keen on getting protection of capital elevating actions and typically they’ve an lively need to maintain a increase out of the general public area.”
Whereas Startup Each day does its finest to cowl all raises, together with it a weekly wrap up in partnership with sister publication SmartCompany, known as Cheque in, many stay unreported, and typically, it could actually take months, and even years, earlier than funding is revealed.
ASIC insights
In a bid to create a greater image of total funding exercise Techboard started analysing filings with the company regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Fee (ASIC) cross-referencing it with introduced deal knowledge within the context of share issuances.
Techboard has tracked greater than 8300 firms and initially examined the speculation with the fintech sector.
van Bruchem mentioned they realised th share issuance knowledge can present some probative worth they usually’re not trying to purchase further ASIC knowledge to verify unannounced investments, the dimensions of every funding, the valuation and particulars of unannounced buyers.
“Till we’ve the complete funding knowledge service operational we’re engaged on a service to offer entry to our share issuance knowledge which underlies this report in order that our prospects can see which firms are exhibiting indicators that they’ve raised capital,” he mentioned.
They checked out share issuance knowledge over the eight years from 2018 to 2025, and recognized 3547
firms with attainable investments. In complete, 1021 or 29% of that determine had beforehand introduced investments, with 2526 (71%) having no funding announcement.
Quantum of transparency
van Bruchem’s report discovered “marked variations between exercise ranges by class” between introduced and attainable unannounced investments.
“For instance, the first class that led with introduced offers was AI firms with 165 introduced investments in comparison with 79 introduced Medtech investments,” the report says.
“Once we have a look at attainable unannounced investments we recognized a further 274 for AI firms, in comparison with 302 for Medtech, indicating {that a} larger proportion of AI investments seem like introduced, or that there’s a larger stage of funding transparency for AI funding in comparison with Medtech.
“In our major classes AI firms had the very best fee of funding transparency (the proportion of
attainable investments that have been introduced) at 38%.”
van Bruchem suspects that fintechs have the bottom transparency stage with solely 15% of all attainable investments being introduced.
The classes with the very best ranges of funding transparency have been area and satellites with 39%, legaltech with 44%, robotics with 43% and quantum with 83% of attainable investments being introduced.
You possibly can download the full report here.
