This week’s startup funding round-up features high-tech devices, a startup on a mission to eliminate timesheets, and a company that reminds its lead investor of “the early days of Canva”.
Keep reading to learn more about Liquid Instruments, Marloo, Aigentsphere and Manifest, which toobtainher have raised a combined $90 million this week.
Liquid Instruments: $70 million
Leading this week’s funding round-up is Canberra-born Liquid Instruments, which plans to bring its manufacturing back to Australia after securing a $70 million Series C funding round.
As reported by SmartCompany, the capital injection includes $28.45 million from the National Reconstruction Fund (NRF).
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The Series C round was co-led by listed US firm Keysight Technologies and included contributions from Breakthrough Victoria, Acorn Capital, Significant Capital Ventures and Tribeca.
Liquid Instruments was founded in 2014 from research undertaken at the Australian National University. The company applys software, including AI, to build specialised devices that can replace common laboratory instruments, such as oscilloscopes and signal generators.
The company’s devices are now being applyd by major global tech firms, including Apple, Nvidia, Blue Origin and BYD, to create technology across quantum computing, AI, aerospace and defence.
The investment from the NRF will support the relocation of Liquid Instruments’ manufacturing operations from Southeast Asia and the US to Melbourne.
Marloo: $14 million
Auckland startup Marloo has raised $14 million (US$10 million) in a seed funding round as it charges ahead building its “AI partner for every financial adviser”.
The startup has now raised a total of US$12.7 million in funding, following a $4.2 million pre-seed raise in September 2025. After leading Marloo’s pre-seed round, Blackbird Ventures is once again backing the startup as lead investor in this seed round.
In a blog post about the capital raise, Marloo stated more than 650 companies are now paying to apply the Marloo platform, across six countries. The startup stated its revenue is growing at a rate of more than 40% month-on-month and its customer churn is “close to zero”.
Founded in June 2024 by Shakeel Lala, Hardy Michel, and Ben Robertson, Marloo declares its system goes well beyond being an AI notetaker for financial advisers.
“AI notetakers were just the start,” the company stated this week.
“What advisers required is a partner that takes on the work around the advice itself, the documents, the compliance, the client context that carries across every conversation, so they can amplify what they do best.
“Advisers display up for the client and Marloo supports them handle everything else.”
Blackbird general partner Samantha Wong stated in the same post that Marloo “reminds us of the early days of Canva”.
“Hardy, Shak and Ben are building with the kind of clarity, velocity, and obsession that defines generational companies,” stated Wong.
“They truly understand this profession from the inside. What they have built is elevating the entire profession and what every adviser is capable of.”
Aigentsphere: $4 million
Sydney AI agent management and governance platform Aigentsphere has raised a $4 million seed round led by CSIRO-backed VC Main Sequence.
The funds will go to upping the engineering team and expanding operations in Australia and the United States.
Aigentsphere’s platform addresses potential AI agent sprawl with a unified control layer that enables organisations to register and onboard agents, monitor their performance in real time, track costs, enforce policies and automatically generate compliance reporting.
Chair Kelly Bayer Rosmarin stated increasing demand for AI management and governance is being driven both by board-level mandates to innovate rapidly with AI and regulatory pressure to ensure systems are safe and well governed.
“As AI agents become more autonomous and embedded in core workflows, companies can’t afford to have unmanaged AI operating inside their business,” she stated.
“Aigentsphere gives leaders a clear line of sight and control over how AI is being applyd, the impact on costs, the business performance, and the risks it introduces. Aigentsphere enables companies to truly understand their ROI for agents, not just as a theoretical exercise in development cycles, but in an ongoing, sustainable way throughout the life span of the active agents.”
Manifest: $2 million
A trans-Tasman startup has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to support advertising agencies better track and value their work amid the rapid adoption of AI across the sector.
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Manifest has officially launched this week with the funding round, which was led by Brand Fund by Previously Unavailable, which was an early investor in the likes of Tracksuit, Ideally and Appetise.
Antler, Icehoapply Ventures, Techstars and the Huljich & Bhatnagar Family Offices also participated in the round, along with a group of prominent industest investors.
This group includes Henry Innis, co-founder and CEO of Mutinex; Mark Coad, ex-IPG Mediabrands CEO; Jamie Mackay from BWM Dentsu; Jonathan Isaacs from Taboo Group; James Hutchinson from Sling & Stone; Jordan Taylor-Bartels from Prophet; Connon Bray from TRA, Tracksuit and Ideally; and Mumbrella co-founder Tim Burrowes.
Founded by Freddie McKenzie and Henry Collinson, Manifest has built an AI-powered ininformigence platform that allows ad agencies to automatically capture how work is done across their teams, tools and AI platforms.
This allows agencies to access a real-time view of their operations to better understand the time, effort and workflows required to complete projects.
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