Led · Seed · Apr 2026

Manifest is focused on helping marketing and creative agencies adapt to shifts driven by AI in the industry. The team includes founders such as Freddie Mckenzie and has attracted a group of notable supporters and backers. The company has started onboarding clients, with ABEL specifically mentioned as being brought on board. Manifest raised $2M in a pre-seed round to scale those efforts and accelerate client onboarding. Public commentary on the company highlights the team’s conviction and timing relative to market changes. The articles do not provide revenue, user metrics, geographic location, or a founding year.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2026

Appetise (formerly MenuAid) runs a two-sided business: a free meal-planning and shopping app used by households, and Appetise Insights, a subscription analytics product sold to FMCG brands. By making the consumer tool free, the company sacrificed roughly NZ$400 k in subscription revenue to amass behavioural data across the entire shopping journey, creating what it claims is the largest food and beverage behavioural panel in Australia and New Zealand. The platform now has more than 110,000 active users, whose anonymised data underpins a B2B revenue stream that has reached NZ$3.5 million and tripled in the last six months. Around 70% of current growth comes from Australia, where over 70 brands—including Kraft Heinz and Lee Kum Kee—license the insights. The dataset enables brands to identify whitespace, refine category management and understand purchase drivers earlier than sales-scan or survey methods. Fresh capital will fund deeper Australian penetration, further development of the insights platform and preparatory work for a U.S. launch, which requires localisation for imperial measurements, retail structure and terminology. Management believes the free-utility/paid-data model can continue to scale as brands seek real-time intent signals.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2025

Aether is an AI-powered platform that transforms presentations and institutional knowledge into connected, always-up-to-date assets by syncing directly with live data sources. The product can generate branded presentations in minutes, auto-refresh content when data changes, and supports use cases including board packs, quarterly business reviews, campaign reports, agency briefs and knowledge management. The company launched from the New+Improved venture studio and is led by co-founders Carsten Grueber, Ursula von Keisenberg and Daniel Alexander-Head. Aether has secured enterprise contracts in Australia, New Zealand and the US and is generating more than $600,000 in annual recurring revenue. Headquartered between Auckland and Melbourne and founded in 2025, the company is positioning itself as a trans-Tasman venture with plans to scale globally. The seed funding will be used to accelerate product development and grow the global team across Australia and New Zealand.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2025

Cuttable is an AI creative agency built specifically for growing online businesses, offering a fully automated platform that can generate hundreds of on‑brand, performance‑ready ads in minutes. Powered by AI and creative expertise, the platform aims to speed up ad production for brands and agencies. Since launching in early 2025, the company reports more than 50 e‑commerce brands have adopted the platform. Cuttable says it will use the new funding to expand its AI platform and scale product capabilities. Financially, the company completed a seed extension of A$4.5M, bringing total seed funding to A$10M. Augur provides a predictive threat prevention platform that uses AI to monitor global internet activity, profile attacker behaviors, and map attack infrastructure. The system analyzes global internet infrastructure and detects early signs of malicious intent months before attacks go live. Augur reports a near-zero false positive rate (0.007%), and its solution integrates into customer environments to automate enforcement or surface intelligence for human review. The platform is in use by financial institutions, global energy providers, healthcare, telecommunications and critical infrastructure operators. Led by CEO Joe Lea, the company intends to use the new funding to expand development of its platform.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2023

Ideally is an AI-powered market research platform founded in August 2023 out of venture studio TRA Labs. The platform lets brands run fast, iterative tests and validations across product and marketing lifecycles, reportedly reducing some research cycles from nine months to 90 days. Ideally serves more than 250 brands across APAC and the US, including clients such as DoorDash, Telstra, Google, Burger King and Asahi. The company recently opened a New York office and has seen US revenue grow 350% since that expansion. Ideally is launching Ideally Canvas to provide continuously updated consumer, category and competitor insights for marketing teams. The startup has raised prior rounds of $2.15 million in November 2023 and $5.5 million in August 2024 and most recently closed an A$13.4 million Series A at an A$83 million valuation.