Sydney-based startup Puralink has secured $2.3 million in pre-seed funding for its robotic ‘ferrets’ that can travel through pipes and detect leaks on their own.
Founded by Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Shyeon Delnawaz and Long Tran, Puralink is on a mission to transform the way businesses and other operators conduct pipe inspections.
The pre-seed round was led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Side Stage Ventures, Startmate, NZVC and Robyn and Victoria Denholm’s Wollemi Capital Group.
High-profile angel investors have also backed the startup, including Deputy co-founder Ashik Ahmed, Four Pillars Gin co-founder Matt Jones, and former NBA player Matthew Dellavedova.
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Puralink previously raised $150,000 from two angel investors in 2025 and participated in both Cicada’s Fast Start program and the Startmate Accelerator.
Crowe-Maxwell notified Forbes Australia he developed the idea for Puralink’s robotic ‘ferrets’ after a pipe leak cautilized a major flood in the street where he lived in Sydney in 2019.
The UTS engineering student spent the following three years working on the concept before teaming up with Delnawaz, who he met while working at Amazon Web Services.
Puralink’s ‘ferrets’ have been designed to travel through, and inspect, complex pipe networks.
In what Puralink declares is an industest-first, the autonomous robot can navigate corners, intersections and vertical stacks, and can travel up to one kilometre in a single run. It is also relatively tiny in size — 40 centimetres long and 150 millimetres thick — which means it can inspect pipes as tiny as six inches in diameter.
The device collects data throughout its inspections, including high definition CCTV, LiDAR and mapping data, which provides operators with comprehensive location and condition records and interactive reports.
According to the startup, the system has wide applications across industries, including wastewater, storm water, energy and mining.
Puralink is currently taking pre-orders for the robots.
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