This week’s funding round-up includes six Australian or Australian-founded startups that have together raised $62.2 million to scale their operations.
With two shorter working weeks in a row, we’ve broadened our scope and included startups that have revealed new funding deals in the past few weeks.
Keep reading to learn more about Superpower, WeMoney, InsightWise, Umps, Vively Health and Eugene Labs.
Superpower: $47 million
Australian entrepreneur Max Marchione and his US co-founders have raised $47 million (US$30 million) in a Series A funding round that values their health startup Superpower at more than $300 million.
Marchione moved to San Francisco in 2023 to found Superpower with US entrepreneurs Jacob Peters and Kevin Unkrich.
Related Article Block Placeholder
Article ID: 315331
This week, the trio launched their health “super app” publicly and revealed the company’s latest funding deal.
San Francisco-based Forerunner Ventures led the Series A round, which also included participation from Day One Ventures, Susa Ventures, Long Journey Ventures Family Fund, Opal Ventures, Valia Ventures, Visible Ventures, and Winklevoss Capital.
The startup has also enticed celebrity investors onto its cap table, including acting star Vanessa Hudgens, DJ Steve Aoki, wrestler Logan Paul and NBA player Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Superpower wants to bring about a health “revolution” and has created what it describes as “the world’s most comprehensive and convenient longevity system on the planet” to do just that.
This personal healthcare “super app” offers users biannual lab blood tests to give a snapshot of a person’s health in real time. The results of the tests are analysed and combined with other health data, to allow the AI-driven platform to produce a personalised overview of a user’s health and an action plan to change it.
The Superpower app, which is available in the US for US$499 a year, has a number of early customers on board and a waitlist of 150,000 interested users.
WeMoney: $12 million
Financial wellness platform WeMoney also revealed fresh funding this week, with the company having raised $12 million in a Series A round.
The funding round was led by Lance East Office, the family office of billionaire Laurence Escalante, with Mastercard also coming on board as a new investor in WeMoney.
Related Article Block Placeholder
Article ID: 304490
This is the third time that Escalante has invested in WeMoney, following participation in a $3 million round in May 2024 and a $7 million round in mid-2022.
Existing investors BetterLabs, Dorado Capital and Eastcourt Capital also participated in the fintech’s latest round, which was supported by an additional $1 million debt funding facility by Mighty Partners.
Launched in 2020 by founder and CEO Dan Jovevski, WeMoney aims to empower Australians through financial literacy, open banking and AI-based behavioural science.
The WeMoney app recently passed the milestone of 1 million downloads and the fintech says the development of its “game changer” BrightMatch by WeMoney will set it up for further growth.
BrightMatch by WeMoney is a platform for banks, non-bank lenders, financial institutions and utility providers that removes the friction often involved in switching financial products.
In a statement provided to SmartCompany, Jovevski said BrightMatch will allow WeMoney members to “effortlessly switch to cheaper alternatives by seeing relevant options in our product marketplace”.
“Australians now have the ability to see pre-filtered products that match their eligibility,” he explained.
“For lenders, it allows streamlined direct applications, lifting the approval rate significantly, and saving on costly management of applications for products — we’ve dubbed this Comparison 2.0 or programmatic switching.”
WeMoney plans to direct a significant amount of the new funding towards research and development, as it works towards a potential IPO “in coming years”, added Jovevski.
InsightWise: $1 million
Earlier in April, AI consulting startup InsightWise revealed it has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round.
InsightWise was founded by me&u and KPMG alumnus Katherine Tobias and software developer Matthew Bailey. It is seeking to upend the traditional consulting business model by building a tool specifically for consultants to help them save time and eliminate manual labour.
According to the Australian Financial Review (AFR), the oversubscribed round was led by US venture capital outfit Aliavia Ventures and No Brand Holdings, the private investment company co-founded by entrepreneur and investor Ari Klinger.
Also participating in the round was Robyn Denholm’s Wollemi Capital Group, angel investor syndicate FB10X and a number of strategic angel investors in Australia and the US.
InsightWise was launched in 2024 and is reportedly already working with leading global consultancies and the New South Wales government.
“Our platform creates a clear path from raw data to high-impact decision-making in minutes,” Tobias told the AFR.
“With this investment, we’re not just scaling a platform, we’re creating a new landscape where strategic intelligence drives decisions at a speed and scale previously unimaginable.”
Bupa invests in three health startups: $2.2 million
Health insurer Bupa has invested around $2.2 million in three healthtech companies, in the first early-stage investments to be made from its Ventures Fund.
The three startups to share in the funding are Umps Health, Vively Health and Eugene Labs, which are each at either their seed or Series A funding stages.
Umps uses in-house sensors to provide users with proactive insights to support wellbeing, while Eugene Labs provides at-home medical-grade genetic testing and counselling. Vively Health offers a wellness platform to help users understand the relationship between their lifestyle choices and glucose levels.
In a statement on Tuesday, Bupa Asia Pacific chief customer and transformation officer Danielle Handley said the insurer sees “huge potential in these growing startups” as they share Bupa’s “strategic goal of enabling preventative healthcare that is more connected and customer-centric”.
“Despite our scale as an international health and care organisation, we know we cannot develop the future of healthcare on our own,” Handley added.
“That’s why we are excited to be able to leverage the creativity and agility of the startup community while offering them working access to Bupa teams and resources with the ambition of piloting their offerings into our customer base.”
Bupa recently conducted a pilot program with Vively Health, which involved a group Bupa members being given subsidised access to the startup’s platform, while customer-facing programs with Umps and Eugene Labs are also in development.
Bupa announced the creation of the Bupa Ventures Fund in February 2024 with plans to invest $20 million in local healthcare innovations.
Never miss a story: sign up to SmartCompany’s free daily newsletter and find our best stories on LinkedIn.
