Led · Seed · Dec 2023

Mist, founded by John Crutchley and Dave Malcolm, offers a one-stop mobile marketplace where international students can complete a single KYC process and secure essential banking, payments, SIM cards, insurance and lifestyle services pre-departure. By aggregating multiple service providers inside an easy-to-use app, Mist removes the fragmented, in-person onboarding that typically awaits students after arrival. The company has locked in exclusive infrastructure partnerships with Novatti (banking/payments), Xtreme Communications (telco) and ISIC (student ID), and distribution agreements with leading education consultants such as Global Study Partners, StudyLink, MSM Unify and StudyMe that collectively touch roughly 227,000 Australia-bound students annually. Management believes it has first-mover advantage in a market where >90% of students express demand for a single financial-and-lifestyle platform. The addressable market in Australia alone rebounded to 577,295 student visas granted in FY23, a 119% YoY increase, with similar trends expected in the UK, Canada and the US. Backed by founders with deep experience in international banking (Volt Bank, ANZ) and D2C marketing (Marley Spoon, Rockstar Games, Banxa), Mist aims to scale its B2B2C go-to-market model globally. The newly secured pre-seed funding provides the capital base to execute its Australian launch and prepare for expansion into other major study destinations.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2023

Q-CTRL is a leading quantum infrastructure software company that develops and sells software for quantum systems. The company emphasizes that it already builds and sells software products, which it cites as a differentiator in a sector that remains largely research-focused. Q-CTRL has long positioned itself as a player in quantum infrastructure software. It recently secured an $86.3 million Series B extension, bringing the total Series B to $166 million. The company named GP Bullhound as the lead on the extension and noted participation from prior backers and several new investors. The articles frame the funding as growth capital tied to its commercial software activities. Q-CTRL develops quantum control infrastructure and performance-management software that delivers error‑correcting and suppressing techniques for quantum computers and sensors. The company operates a quantum sensing division and offers an edtech platform called Black Opal. Its performance-management software runs natively on IBM quantum computers and Q-CTRL has been an inaugural member of the IBM Quantum Network since 2018. Founded by Michael J. Biercuk in 2017, Q-CTRL lists international headquarters in Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Oxford. The company has applied its capabilities in logistics and transport with customers including Transport for NSW and the Australian Army. Near-term plans described in the article include delivering quantum-hardware‑optimized algorithmic solvers for train scheduling to UK transport authorities and prototyping solutions with Oxford Quantum Circuits. Q-CTRL builds AI-enhanced quantum infrastructure software that stabilizes quantum hardware and reduces algorithm errors by over 1,000x. The company sells solutions to end-users, researchers, and platform vendors and is deploying performance management software natively on all IBM cloud-connected quantum computers. Q-CTRL is also commercializing "software-ruggedized" quantum sensors, which have been adopted by Australian Defence for GPS-denied navigation. The team entered the year with over $15 million in bookings and closed the first half of 2023 cash-flow positive (ignoring equity investments), while growing to more than 100 staff and adding new offices in the UK and Berlin. Management says it has preserved large cash reserves and plans to use the Series B to fund technical innovation through its quantum research division, expand the product portfolio, and scale operations. Q-CTRL develops quantum-sensing software intended to reduce errors and optimize both hardware and algorithms for quantum computers. Its product suite includes Black Opal, Boulder Opal, Fire Opal and Open Controls; the company launched Black Opal Enterprise in October and released Black Opal for individuals in April 2022. Q-CTRL reported demonstrations achieving up to approximately 9,000 times improvement in the likelihood that a quantum algorithm would give the correct answer. Commercial traction followed those breakthroughs: sales bookings grew threefold to over $15 million in calendar year 2022 and the company has more than 8,000 users. Customers and partners include U.S. government contracts, Australian defense agencies, quantum hardware firms (Rigetti, IonQ, IBM, Atom Computing, Alice & Bob, Nord Quantique, Pasqal), universities, national labs and corporate partners such as EY, KPMG, Capgemini, Quanscient, Xerox PARC and Classiq. Q-CTRL says it will use new funding to continue product engineering, expand sales and marketing capacity, and grow its headcount from about 80 to roughly 120 across Sydney, Los Angeles and Berlin. Q-CTRL builds quantum control infrastructure software that addresses hardware error and instability to improve quantum computing performance. The company is also developing quantum sensing technologies for acceleration, gravity and magnetic fields and working on space‑qualified sensors with a consortium led by Fleet Space Technologies. Clients and partners include Advanced Navigation, the Australian Department of Defense, the Air Force Research Lab and the Australian Space Agency. Recent technical demonstrations using Q-CTRL’s quantum logic gate technology improved quantum algorithm performance on real machines by 2,680%. Q-CTRL has been expanding commercially: revenue in fiscal 2020–2021 was up 3X year‑over‑year and the nascent quantum sensor business generated over $9 million in sales and bookings after launching in late 2020. The company has grown its team from about 20 to 60 since January 2020 and employs more than 30 Ph.D.-level researchers.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

LifeQ is an Atlanta-based provider of business-grade biometrics and health information derived from wearable devices and sensors. The company generates 24/7 biometrics and near-clinical-grade health information to detect health problems earlier, manage chronic and acute conditions, and support prevention. LifeQ uses these data streams to build health and wellness solutions for consumer, business, and clinical applications and offers GDPR-compliant products. LifeQ’s technology is integrated by wearable-device makers, insurers, reinsurers, health-tech companies, clinicians, researchers, and analytics firms. The company has commercial relationships with device and consumer brands including Samsung, Xiaomi, Fossil Group, Montblanc, Motorola, Suunto, and HannoverRe. LifeQ announced it secured $47M in funding to support its continued product and commercial development.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2019

FloodMapp provides real-time, property-specific flood forecasts, inundation maps and analytics through its ForeCast, NowCast and PostCast products to support preparation, response and recovery. The company says it developed a groundbreaking flood model after years of R&D in AI, hydrology and hydraulics and has proven the technology in real flood events. Customers across Australia and the USA are using its products for evacuation planning, real-time road navigation and post-event recovery. FloodMapp was founded in 2018 and is led by Co‑Founder and CEO Juliette Murphy. The startup will use the capital to scale the business model and expand into new markets. Financially, FloodMapp raised US$6 million (A$8.4m) in a seed round that set a new record for an Australian seed. FloodMapp develops flood-prediction technology that combines big data analytics and machine learning with traditional hydrology and hydraulic modelling. Its system measures river height and rainfall in real time and uses elevation and topography to predict how and where water will flow over the land. The company was founded by Juliette Murphy and Ryan Prosser and is based in Brisbane. FloodMapp plans to expand its technology across Australia and into hurricane-prone areas of the United States. The startup recently raised $1.3 million from a group of investors. The funding is intended to support expansion and deployment of its flood-prediction tools.

Led · Series A · Sep 2019

Adarga offers an AI-driven Knowledge Platform that automatically extracts, translates, summarises and connects millions of pieces of in-house and open-source information to enable faster, higher-quality analysis. The platform combines natural language processing, machine learning and network science and provides interrogation tools for analysts, researchers and planners to build dynamic, contextualised risk pictures. Its customer base includes defence and national security organisations such as the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, and it has secured contracts in the wider public sector and with multinational commercial customers. The company is London-based and has nearly doubled in size over the past year, and it has expanded into Australia and the USA in response to growing market demand. Adarga positions its product to help organisations identify threats and opportunities, mitigate risk, and increase resilience amid rising geopolitical uncertainty. The recent funding is intended to support accelerated product development, delivery and continued growth. Adarga builds an AI analytics platform used by financial institutions, intelligence agencies and defence companies to analyze vast volumes of data and surface potential threats, allowing clients to construct Knowledge Graphs about subjects and targets. The company’s proposition is compared to Palantir and is used by the U.K. government, the finance sector and insurance companies. Founded in 2016 and based in London and Bristol, Adarga has 26 employees, including data scientists from top U.K. universities. It has developed a sales pipeline of more than £30 million through strategic collaborations with global industrial partners. The startup closed a £5 million Series A led by Allectus Capital and will use proceeds to expand its data science and software engineering teams and to roll out internationally. Benevolent AI is a minority shareholder that has provided support in kind and technical help but did not provide financial backing for this round.