What we are reading,writing and backing.

67 entries

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SMEC AI Launches a Free National AI Advice Line for Australian Small Business

SMEC AI, the federally funded AI adoption centre run by Boab AI in partnership with Artesian, has launched the AI Information Line. Australian SMEs can call 1800 517 403, describe a problem in plain language, and receive practical AI options plus a written summary. The service is built and operated in Australia under the Government's AI Adopt program, identifies itself as an AI assistant on every call, and connects callers to a human on request.

Company News22 Jul 2026

Beyond Additionality: A Pragmatic Approach to Green Bonds

As the green bond market approaches its twentieth anniversary, it is timely to reflect not just on the growth of the market, but on the evolving narrative around green finance. The sector has matured from a niche innovation into a cornerstone of sustainable finance.

Debt1 Apr 2026

Collaboration and Innovation on the Menu at APEC Senior Officials' Meeting

Australian officials and Artesian participated in APEC Senior Officials' Meetings in Guangzhou, focusing on activating capital to bolster food security and strengthening agricultural supply chains and public-private partnerships across the Asia-Pacific region.

Company News19 Feb 2026

HBF Launches $25 Million Health Ventures Fund with Artesian

Australia's second-largest member-based health fund HBF has launched HBF Ventures, a $25M corporate venture capital fund in partnership with Artesian to back health-tech startups across digital health, new care delivery models, and preventative health.

Company News18 Feb 2026

Who Owns the Farm When the Farm Has an Operating System?

Who truly owns the farm when the farm operates on an intelligent system? How decisions today shape the future of agriculture, data sovereignty, and farmer autonomy.

Venture16 Feb 2026

Your Farm Will Have an Operating System -The Question Is Who Builds It

AgriLLM, digital twins and agentic AI will turn Australian agriculture into an intelligent system. A look at the stakeholders -from regional development corporations to startups -building this emerging infrastructure.

Venture13 Feb 2026

The Investment Thesis for an AI-Driven Agricultural Operating System

A framework for understanding agricultural technology investment through an operating system lens -the AgriLLM thesis produces a clear investment map spanning perception, data infrastructure, reasoning, robotics, applications and interfaces.

Venture13 Feb 2026

Hort Innovation Venture Fund Backs Second Investment

Agovor, a New Zealand horticultural robotics company, has secured AU$3 million in pre-seed funding through the Hort Innovation Venture Fund -an oversubscribed round backing affordable autonomous robots for horticultural use.

Company News10 Feb 2026

The State of AI in Agrifood: Insights from Yield by Artesian

As we approach the end of 2025, it feels like an appropriate moment to pause and take stock of how far AI has progressed, not in theory, but in practice. Insights from Artesian's inaugural Yield agrifood summit on how AI has shifted from experimental technology to essential infrastructure across the agricultural sector.

Venture17 Dec 2025

When Traditional VC Falls Short: Insights from "Rethinking Venture Capital for the African Market"

A recently released white paper, Rethinking Venture Capital for the African Market, makes an argument that resonates deeply with our work at Artesian: the Silicon Valley playbook for venture capital simply doesn’t translate to operationally intensive, real-economy sectors. What’s striking is how closely the paper’s conclusions align with the structural problems we’ve been designing around for years. The mismatch between traditional VC and sectors like agrifood, health, mining, defence, and clim

Venture11 Dec 2025

VC Initiative Boosts WA's Top Economy Diversity

The Cook Government's $45 million Western Australian Venture Capital Initiative is delivering strong early results, supporting 19 local startups in its first year and helping diversify the nation-leading economy.

Company News10 Dec 2025

Yield by Artesian: Aligning Capital, Capability and Innovation for Australia’s Agrifood Future

Last week in Melbourne, Artesian hosted the inaugural Yield agrifood innovation summit, a working forum designed to bridge capital, research, and on-farm adoption across Australia’s agricultural ecosystem. Over two days, more than 80 leaders from RDCs, DAFF, corporates, growers, universities, startups and investors joined for open, practical and future-focused discussions about the opportunities and challenges shaping Australian agriculture.From the outset, the mission of Yield was clear: it wa

Venture5 Dec 2025

Rewiring Innovation Investment for the Mining Industry

The global race for critical minerals is transforming how the mining industry thinks about growth, capability, and competitiveness. Geopolitical realignments, decarbonisation targets, and rapid technological change are reshaping the sector.

Venture7 Nov 2025

Blue Bond Introduction

Following our engagement piece on Australian Ports, we explore a nascent segment of the labelled bond market -blue bonds -and their role in financing ocean-related and water-infrastructure projects.

Debt11 Aug 2025

Australian Ports Integrated Risk Analysis

Over the past 14 months, Artesian has engaged with Australia's four largest ports: Port of Melbourne, Flinders Ports, NSW Ports, and Port of Brisbane. The engagement stemmed from analysing new bond issuance while pursuing appropriately labelled securities, with a focus on climate impact risks affecting ports and their implications for bond pricing.

Debt18 Jun 2025

Rethinking Innovation Investment

Governments, corporations, research institutes, family offices and institutional investors are increasingly seeking a more integrated VC approach -one that delivers both financial returns and strategic impact.

Venture27 May 2025

Rethinking Venture Capital: Tailored VC Funds for Strategic LPs

For strategic investors, the traditional VC model falls short.

Venture7 Mar 2025

Unlocking Innovation: How VCaaS is Revolutionizing R&D and Commercialization in Australia by Activating Strategic Capital

Introduction The Australian Government's Strategic Examination of R&D Discussion Paper (released today) aims to evaluate and enhance the country’s research and development (R&D) system. It highlights the importance of R&D in fostering innovation, economic growth, and global competitiveness. Despite Australia’s strong research output, the translation of research into commercial applications remains weak, leading to economic stagnation and reduced innovation-driven growth.The Discussion Paper con

Venture12 Feb 2025

Artesian and Hort Innovation Launch A$60M Horticulture Fund

The Hort Innovation Venture Fund represents a new investment partnership, following Artesian's previously established A$50 million collaboration with the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

Company News18 Dec 2024

Hort Innovation Venture Fund

Hort Innovation and Artesian collaborate to launch a world-first $60M venture capital co-investment fund to advance fruit, vegetable, nut, turf and nursery farming through breakthrough innovation in Australian horticulture.

Venture24 Nov 2024

Embracing VC as a Service: A Strategic Solution for Corporate Innovation

Discover the crucial differences between Corporate Venture Capital and Traditional VC, and how VCaaS offers a flexible, strategic solution that enables corporations to build a venture capital function with lower operational burden and greater control.

Venture31 Oct 2024

Uncovering the Untapped Outliers: Why Female Founders are the Hidden Gems of Venture Capital

Venture capital is fundamentally about identifying outliers - those rare, high-potential founders and their startups that defy the norm and

Venture8 Oct 2024

"The VC Investor’s Dilemma: Portfolio Construction Strategies for Every Distribution"

In venture capital (VC), the power law distribution is commonly used to model returns because it reflects the reality that a few investments generate the majority of returns. However, other return distributions can also be considered to analyse risk and understand portfolio construction. Each distribution has different implications for how VCs might structure their portfolios. Here are some alternatives:1. Normal (Gaussian) Distribution: • Characteristics: • Returns are symmetrically distribu

Venture24 Aug 2024

Insights from the 2022/23 Artesian Impact Report

Artesian has released our Impact Report for 2022/23 to provide context and reflection on the outcomes of our investment strategies beyond financials. The report endeavours to broaden the field of view on our work as capital allocators, and strives to build objective and data driven insights on the impact Artesian (and our investors) have on all our stakeholders.We’ve always been driven to take a unique approach to asset allocation, and the same goes for our impact approach. We’re committed to

Impact27 Sep 2023

Creating a Scalable VC Technology Stack

How Artesian streamlined its venture capital deal flow and portfolio management by building a scalable technology stack, with lessons for other fund managers navigating rapid growth.

Venture8 Mar 2023

Japanese Banking Giant MUFG Signs Alliance with Artesian

MUFG Bank has struck an alliance with Artesian as it seeks to boost the presence of its corporate customers in the startup ecosystem and align with Japan's goal to achieve a ten-fold increase in startups over five years.

Company News1 Feb 2023

Clinical Trials Without Tribulations

Australian medtech startup Evrima Technologies is working to accelerate clinical trials by connecting patients, clinicians, and researchers. In 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccine was developed, tested and approved in less than a year, but this efficiency is atypical for most medical treatments.

Venture13 Sep 2022

Criticism of Super Funds private/illiquid market investments reveals impatience & short-sightedness

Superannuation’s purpose should be to help all Australians save for their retirement. The defining advantage of superannuation funds should be that they have patient capital and are investing for 20, 30 and even 40-year time horizons. As a result, they can be the perfect vehicle to monetise the long-term beta returns of traditional asset classes and harvest the illiquidity premium offered by alternative asset classes including infrastructure, private equity, venture capital, private credit, and

Venture24 Aug 2022

Artesian’s 2021/22 Impact Report

Our team is proud to share Artesian’s 2021/22 Impact Annual Report outlining our metrics and highlights, as well as, our roadmap for future impact. This year’s report builds upon the commitments we made last year:1. Creating a sustainable future;2. Advancing gender equity;3. Moving capital for purpose; and 4. Taking a proactive approach to engagement.At Artesian, we view risk/return and impact as inherently linked, and have equipped our business to track and collate the impact that our investmen

Impact2 Aug 2022

Analytics in Action

How Seer is helping people use data to drive changeFor the past decade, the rural town of Bourke in New South Wales, Australia, has struggled with juvenile crime. A cycle of expulsions, jail time and broken families is leading to greater social disadvantages, and has taken a particular toll on Bourke’s Indigenous population. For the past few years, however, Bourke’s community has been using data to help divert young people from the criminal justice system. And they are seeing results.The data pl

Venture3 May 2022

Artesian is Now a Certified B Corp

Artesian has been successfully certified as a B Corporation. The rigorous verification process was an opportunity to turn our impact approach on ourselves, demonstrating our corporate operations are as committed to social and environmental sustainability as our investments.Artesian has always invested for impact, but in 2019 we formalised our investment philosophy from the ground up, and committed to impact investing across our venture capital and fixed income strategies. The next step was to lo

Impact7 Apr 2022

Bigger Better Leisure

How AmazingCo crafts leisure experiences worth talking aboutWhat are you doing this weekend? It’s the quintessential question for a Friday afternoon, and Australian startup AmazingCo is intent on giving its customers a good answer. AmazingCo is a leisure experience company that crafts fun and interesting experiences for everyone from couples to colleagues. Already operating in over fifty cities around the world and offering more than a hundred different experiences, AmazingCo is determined to le

Venture4 Apr 2022

The Juice of Life

Nutromics is aiming to revolutionise healthcare by bringing continuous molecular monitoring to marketMedical professionals rely heavily on blood draws for clinical decision making. But often, there is a significant delay between the sample being drawn and the results being returned. Australian MedTech company Nutromics aims to change that by building a biosensing technology platform that offers continuous real-time molecular data to medical professionals, and ultimately, to the patients they ser

Venture4 Apr 2022

Conflict to Climate Change: How Impact is affecting Investing

In conversation with John McCartney, Co-Founding Partner & Head of ESG at Artesian, about impact investing in the midst of conflicts and crises. 2022 is off to quite the start. After two years of dealing with a global pandemic, Vladimir Putin’s recent invasion of Ukraine and the resulting refugee crisis has left the world reeling. So how do investors and institutions position themselves to deal with these volatile times? I sat down to talk to John McCartney, Co-founding Partner and Head of ESG a

Impact17 Mar 2022

Eco-Friendly Groceries Delivered in 15 Minutes or Less

How Voly is revolutionising the grocery game in AustraliaVoly is changing the grocery business forever in Australia - their electric bike delivery employees are bringing customers groceries and alcohol faster while reducing food waste, road traffic, and delivery fees. The company wants to give people hours back to their week so they can spend that time doing things that they want to do. Building Trust with Customers, Employees, and the Community Through InnovationCo-founders Mark Heath and Thiba

Venture8 Mar 2022

Fertility Clinics Are Ripe for Reinvention

In the United States, a single IVF round costs prospective parents more than $10,000, and roughly 40% of American women have limited or no access to nearby fertility treatment facilities. Sama Fertility aims to make fertility processes easier, more affordable and more accessible.

Venture21 Jan 2022

Shaking Up the (Baby) Formula

How Harmony Baby Nutrition is creating a new baby formula using human breast milk proteinsGlobally, only around 38% of babies are exclusively breastfed, with infant formula being a widely used substitute. Most infant formula is made with cow’s milk but roughly one in six babies experience allergic reactions to cow’s milk formulas. Harmony Baby Nutrition aims to change that by providing an allergen-free, breast milk based formula to help serve the millions of babies with food allergies.The path t

Venture20 Dec 2021

Premium Cell-Cultured Meat

How Orbillion Bio plans to bring premium cell-cultured meat to marketBased in San Francisco, Orbillion Bio aims to be the first lab-grown meat company to bring premium heritage meats such as wagyu beef, elk and bison to the market. Founded in 2019 by CEO Patricia Bubner PhD, CTO Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, PhD, and COO Samet Yildirim, MSc, MBS, Orbillion leverages a wealth of experience in product development as well as cell-culture development and scale-up. Artesian became an investor in Orbilli

Venture10 Dec 2021

Cutting a New Path

How CARV is helping skiers better their technique both on and off the slopesCarv is a digital ski coach designed to assist skiers by tracking performance and offering real time feedback. It consists of a wearable device placed inside each ski boot that uses multiple sensors to measure pressure and motion. That data is transferred to the skier’s smartphone via bluetooth, delivering performance analysis and feedback after a ski run, or in real time via headphones. By offering live coaching and aud

Venture7 Dec 2021

Talent Is Equally Distributed but Opportunity Is Not

Artesian has launched the $100 million Female Leaders VC Fund in partnership with Scale Investors. The fund has attracted $45M of cornerstone investment from industry super funds Hostplus and legalsuper.

Impact29 Nov 2021

Women-Only VC Fund Banks $45M and Targets $100M Fund

Artesian has launched the $100 million Female Leaders VC Fund in partnership with Scale Investors, with $45 million of cornerstone investment from industry super funds Hostplus and legalsuper to back female-led ventures across Asia Pacific.

Impact26 Nov 2021

How Venture Capital As a Service (VCaaS) Complements Corporate Innovation and Venturing Activities

We recently talked to Guy Newton, Director of Artesian’s VCaaS business, about how Corporate Venture Capital and innovation is providing financial and strategic returns to both corporations and startups.Guy Newton, the Director of Artesian’s VC-as-a-Service business, has had a varied career in innovation. From running commercial operations at an Indonesian fintech scale-up, to working as Google’s Head of Monetisation Partnerships in Southeast Asia, Guy has been seated at both sides of the innova

Venture8 Oct 2021

Future Super and CEFC Backing Artesian's Green & Sustainable Bond Fund

The CEFC is increasing its investment in Australia's emerging clean energy fixed income sector, backing the first corporate-focused green bond fund developed by Artesian.

Company News28 Sep 2021

The Importance of Empathy, and the Artesian Approach to Impact Investing

In this episode of the Good Future podcast, John Treadgold interviews Vicky Lay, partner and Head of Impact at Artesian, on the firm's approach to impact investing across fixed income and venture capital, and how they engage institutional investors including superannuation funds.

Impact22 Jul 2021

Timeline History: The Evolution of Startup Incubators & Accelerators

An overview of the evolution of startup incubators and accelerators across the globe and in the Australian market, tracing how modern startup acceleration began with Y Combinator's 2005 launch as a response to limited early-stage funding following the dotcom bubble.

Venture28 Jun 2021

How a Female Founder Turned VC Is Expanding Opportunities for Others

Artesian Partner Vicky Lay joins the UNCDF Capital Musings podcast to discuss gender equality in investing and the financial advantages of supporting women entrepreneurs and leaders.

Impact17 Jun 2021

The Australian CleanTech Investor Ecosystem

Artesian has played a key role since 2016, in partnership with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Innovation Fund, to invest in early-stage cleantech startups driving Australia's energy transition.

Impact26 Apr 2021

The 'Greenium'

The premium for green bonds reflects both scarcity and investor demand. We examine what the greenium means for portfolio construction and whether it represents fair value for sustainability-aligned fixed income.

Debt24 Apr 2021

Artesian Named Climate50 Leading Investor in Sustainable Energy Transition

Being named by Climate50 as one of the most impactful global climate investors is recognition for our innovative portfolio startups, supportive investors, and Artesian's broader commitment to achieving both impact and financial returns.

Impact25 Jan 2021

The Sustainable Finance Podcast Ep. 88

Vicky Lay discusses co-created investment strategies focused on women's economic empowerment, exploring how Artesian integrates capital and innovation to advance women's financial inclusion through partnerships with global organisations.

Impact16 Jul 2020

Seed Portfolio Performance Increases with the Number of Investments

Investors who treat early-stage VC as an asset class and invest systematically tend to do much better than investors with only a few deals. Data-driven analysis of why portfolio breadth matters at the seed stage.

Venture3 May 2020

Superannuation Should Not Be an ATM for Every Financial Crisis

The Australian superannuation system should not be an ATM for financial crises. Conflating the issues of long-term saving and short-term liquidity inside one vehicle leads to poor outcomes now and in the future. There needs to be a separate mechanism for providing financial relief for those suffering hardship.

Venture3 May 2020

Startup Survey Results: COVID-19 Government Incentives & Grants

Artesian surveyed 103 Australian portfolio startups on 6 April 2020 to gather feedback on available government assistance programs during the COVID-19 crisis. The top three grants and incentives that startups utilised were the R&D Tax Incentive, JobKeeper payment, and PAYG Variation.

Venture8 Apr 2020

Survey of 197 early stage startups: Expected effect of COVID-19 on Revenue, Costs & Runway

The following charts show the results of a survey with responses from 197 early stage startups from Artesian's portfolio across Australia an

Venture29 Mar 2020

Historical Perspective - Effect of the Financial Crisis on VC Market

In the research report "Venture Capital and the Financial Crisis: An Empirical Study across Industries and Countries" by Joern Hendrich Block, Geertjan DeVries and Philipp G. Sandner (January 2010), results showed the following key impacts of the financial crisis on the VC market:1. Lower number of deals: This effect was primarily observed in early stage deals. The number of first round deals fell by 37.8% (before and during the financial crisis - Table 1) while the number of later rounds fell b

Venture24 Mar 2020

Artesian appointed as manager of the South Australian VC Fund

The Marshall Liberal Government has announced Artesian Venture Partners has been appointed as the new venture capital fund manager to oversee investments of the $50 million SA Venture Capital Fund (SAVCF).The appointment of Artesian Venture Partners was recommended by the independent SAVCF Management Committee, chaired by respected businessman Raymond Spencer.This committee considered an extensive evaluation of responses received under an Expression of Interest and Proposal process.Artesian is o

Company News5 Mar 2020

VC, Antifragility & Collaborative Innovation

How venture capital financing, collaborative structures, and decentralised organisation create resilient innovation systems. If an economy has multiple Collaborative Innovation Blocs that are robust or antifragile, the supersystem is also likely antifragile.

Venture25 Feb 2020

Student IP is critical for developing startup companies in universities

This article by James Alexander (Twitter: @jamesasydney) was previously published in "The Australian - Higher Education section"How a university should foster innovation from its teaching and research used to be an incomplete picture. Parts of it were grainy, hard to define or just plain missing.To be more specific, the old picture of university-fostered innovation consisted primarily of what a university could patent and license. We gauged innovation output mostly by measuring industry dollars

Venture30 Jan 2020

Sustainable Finance Podcast

Paul Ellis interviews Artesian's Managing Partner John McCartney on how the firm is tackling the $800 billion climate infrastructure deficit with green bonds and venture debt for clean energy companies.

Impact16 Jan 2020

Venture Capital as a Service (VCaaS) for Corporates, Government Organisations & Family Offices

Venture capital, particularly at the early stage, stands apart from other asset classes because it delivers not only financial benefits but also strategic advantages. Organisations are drawn to startups as part of their innovation strategies, seeking distributed R&D, potential partnerships, and competitive insights into emerging market threats.

Venture19 Dec 2019

Gender Equality in Australian VC

45% of new Australian VC investments completed by Artesian over the last 12 months have a female co-founder. However, little progress has been made in attracting female startup investors to the ecosystem, with less than 5% of active seed and angel investors being women.

Impact8 Oct 2019

Harvesting Optionality in Early Stage Venture Capital

“CONVEXITY IS EASIER TO ATTAIN THAN KNOWLEDGE” Nicholas Nassim Taleb (Antifragility)MISPRICED (CHEAP) OPTIONALITY: • Financial options may be expensive because people know they are options and someone is selling them and charging a price.Optionality of early stage VC is misunderstood & mispriced (cheap). • Traditional VC has relied upon a stock-picking investment philosophy for investing at later-stage (when metrics/traction apparent) but has not adapted to the new paradigm of low barriers to e

Venture26 Aug 2019

The Impact Accelerator & the Power of Collaborative Innovation Partnerships

Artesian believes: 1. innovation, with technology as a key facilitator, can have a sustainable deflationary effect on the cost of infrastructure required to address critical global social and environmental issues2. that collaborative partnerships are necessary to achieve sustainable outcomes at scale.UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs)The achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals will require all hands on deck. It will require different

Impact20 Aug 2019

An Investor's Guide to Evaluating Green Bonds: GBP vs CBS

Mobilisation of private capital to combat climate change has been led by the green bond market. The World Bank issued the first green bond in 2008 and the market has now grown to over $660 billion outstanding.

Debt12 Aug 2019

GRDC Launches $50M GrainInnovate Fund with Artesian

The Grains Research and Development Corporation and Artesian have established the $50 million GrainInnovate fund to nurture innovation and technological adaptation across the grains production and processing chain.

Company News20 Feb 2019

Hostplus Puts $50M into Artesian China Venture Capital Fund

Industry super fund Hostplus has committed $50 million to Artesian's China VC Fund, expanding the partnership beyond an $85 million commitment to Australian ventures to identify and invest in startups across China.

Company News20 Sep 2017

CEFC Cornerstone Investment Helps Artesian Raise $26M for Clean Energy Seed Fund

Artesian has completed a $26 million capital raise for the Clean Energy Seed Fund, with $10 million commitments from cornerstone investors the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Australian Ethical Investment to back Australian clean energy startups.

Impact24 May 2017