Capital Brief

A hacker who has claimed responsibility for an attack on Fortinet, the cybersecurity vendor which says it helps secure Australia's "most critical infrastructure", is attempting to hold the $90 billion company to ransom. Using the moniker "Fortibitch", the hacker claimed on an internet forum that they had stolen 440 gigabytes of data from the $90 billion cybersecurity giant. They put the data online, where it's being accessed by the forum's users, claiming to have tried to extort Fortinet into paying a ransom. The company refused to pay, they said. Read the full story 👇

Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic is looking to follow Europe’s lead when it comes to regulating AI. But one of Europe's foremost AI policy advisers warns against following the bloc completely. Husic last week proposed 10 guardrails for AI development and deployment in the country. What is yet to be determined is whether that should be policed via existing regulation or whether AI-specific laws should be passed. Kai Zenner, digital policy adviser to influential MEP Axel Voss, told Capital Brief that Australia should learn from Europe’s mistake and use existing laws where possible. “We as the European Union failed a little bit because we were carried away by this narrative that ‘oh wow, everything is new and we need to change everything... and not checking what those 116 other laws were already addressing," Zenner said during his visit to Parliament House in Canberra this week. Read the full story from Daniel Van Boom and Anthony Galloway: https://lnkd.in/gPR7k_qB

SCOOP: Global cybersecurity company Fortinet, which says it helps secure Australia's "most critical infrastructure", has experienced a breach in its network, affecting the data of customers across its Asia-Pacific arm. Fortinet, valued at around $90 billion, is the world’s third-largest cybersecurity firm. The company has confirmed the incident, saying an individual actor gained access to files on an "instance of a third-party cloud-based shared file drive" containing “limited data related to a small number of Fortinet customers". The Department of Home Affairs and the Australian Cyber Security Centre are aware of the breach, which security sources believe occurred last month. Read the full story from Anthony Galloway and Daniel Van Boom 👇

Australian venture capital firms have significant room for improvement when it comes to transparency with their investors, with only a few doing it well. That's according Vincent Lu from Boman Group, a global limited partner (LP) involved with multiple Australian funds. He told Bronwen Clune that the last thing it wants to do is investigate an investment made by a venture partner but warned there were times when it had no choice. "It is rare," Lu said. "But this can sadly be the case when we feel the information given to us is insufficient and a lack of clarity won’t be tolerated by our investors." Read the full story 👉 https://lnkd.in/gU8h8kgv

Nick Hazell, the former founder and CEO of plant-based meat company v2food, has set his sights on a new frontier in sustainable technology: algae. His latest venture, Algenie, is developing a novel growth platform that he hopes can produce algae in quantities large enough to potentially replace fossil fuels in the production of plastics and other materials. The startup has just raised $1.1 million in early funding from investors including Better Bite Ventures and the University of Technology Sydney. Read the full story from Bronwen Clune 👇

BREAKING: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that Australia will impose a minimum age for social media and other websites to protect children from mental and physical harms. Albanese vowed to introduce legislation before the next election to set a minimum age for social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok and X. Key details — including the specific minimum age — are yet to be worked out, but Albanese declared “enough is enough”. The details will be informed by negotiations in national cabinet as well as the federal government’s age assurance trial. Read the full story 👉 https://lnkd.in/gEYb86nZ

Silicon Valley’s DCVC sees growing opportunity in Australia's deep tech startups. The VC firm's James Hardiman told Bronwen Clune the global venture capital landscape is shifting and has become increasingly willing to seek opportunities beyond traditional tech hubs. "Startups have gotten more democratised over time, and capital has been willing to go elsewhere to find good companies," he says. He points to Australia’s cultural shift towards entrepreneurship and its high-quality education system as crucial elements fostering a vibrant deep tech ecosystem. “Australia has a strong enough ecosystem to get things started,” Hardiman says, adding that the country’s universities serve as important incubators for innovative ideas and research. Read the full story 👉 https://lnkd.in/gqbc246V

Harrison.ai this week became only the second Australian startup to unveil a proprietary foundational AI model, which it named Harrison.rad.1. But that is not the only big move Harrison.ai co-founder Dimitry Tran is making. The startup has begun the process of raising a Series C, Tran told Daniel Van Boom, while also taking a leap into the US market. “We now have passed most of the hurdles so we are building up a team [in America],” Tran said. “I’m spending a lot of my time in the US at the moment to really drive the adoption.” Read the full story 👇

In Australian venture capital, three firms stand tall: Square Peg, Airtree and Blackbird. But Square Peg has charted a different course to its peers, one that stretches beyond Australia's shores. In this week's Sweat Equity newsletter, Bronwen Clune speaks to Square Peg co-founder and partner Tony Holt about why the VC made an early decision to bet on global diversification. “Our multi-geo footprint means we can compound our knowledge across regions over time, which helps us develop global expertise across our investment themes and provide a depth of support to our portfolio companies, no matter from which region they originate,” says Holt. Also in this week's Sweat Equity: - The 'Founder mode' frenzy - Amazon's AI winners - NightCafe in the spotlight Read more 👇

PsiQuantum is not a startup starved of resources. In this year alone it has announced a $940 million investment from the federal and Queensland governments, and tax incentives from US governments worth $760 million. But it's going to need more capital to reach its goal of building the world's first commercially viable quantum computer in Brisbane by 2027, says co-founder and chief scientific officer Pete Shadbolt. "We'll need more money," he says. "We will, as a company, spend more money than the sum total of those two packages." Speaking Tuesday at an Australian Strategic Policy Institute event, he also called building a useful quantum computer a "species-level challenge" and "one of the hardest things humans have ever tried to do." Read the full story by Daniel Van Boom 👉 https://lnkd.in/g-ui9-Qi