A new crop of founders is sprouting in Australia, working to innovate solutions for space, healthcare, energy independence, and our natural resources sectors.
A record number of startups applied to be a part of Cicada Innovations Tech23 cohort this year. Five of the 23 selected are working to strengthen Australia’s sovereign muscle. Another ten are working in advanced manufacturing, AI and semiconductor hardware, and defence to protect our supply chain.
“Australia’s deep tech founders are increasingly focusing on building for national priority areas, and many of these innovations have dual-use potential, strengthening our sovereign capabilities,” Cicada Innovations’ new CEO, Liza Noonan, tells Forbes Australia.
“This shift is a significant milestone and calls for strong strategic support from both industry and government to realise their commercial potential.”
Noonan points to MP Space, UndaTech, ANT61, Forward Deployed, and Stratoship as indicative of the shift.
Stratoship’s managing director Daniel Field founded the company in Brisbane in 2020. COO Jennifer Williams, the world’s first female remote high altitude pilot, joined soon after. Field and Williams went through UNSW Founders program in 2023, and launched our nation’s first high-altitude airship, the SZ-155 into the stratosphere last year.
ANT61, Space CoLAB and MP Space are also working on aerospace solutions. The buzzy sector of AI semiconductors is represented by gallium refining startup Gega Elements and ultra-low-power-EDGE processing firm Cortisonic.
Forward Deployed, Dentroid, Armatide Pharmaceuticals, and Arelis are tackling critical resilience, healthcare, and defence tech.
“This year’s Tech23 are once again a special group of founders whose success has the potential to have an outsized impact beyond their own company. From improving the quality of healthcare, putting Australian technology in space, securing our energy independence or maximising the economic and social value of our natural resources,” says Noonan.
Circular economy solutions
Other founders are working on advancing Australia’s circular economy. Hydro Harvester is aiming to procure drinkable water from thin air and Clean and Recover is innovating acid mine drainage solutions and water recovery for the mining industry.
Sydney-based biotech firm Albon was founded in 2023 at the University of Sydney and is developing innovative wastewater treatment solutions for the meat processing, dairy, and agri-food manufacturing sectors. Founders Tom Bessell, Dr Andrea Gonzalez, and John Phipps were frustrated that there was no commerical retrofitting solution available to farmers.
Their solution removes nitrogen and phosphorus from algae, which is then transformed into biochar that can be used for revitalising soils and carbon sequestration. The end-product is a complement to fertiliser – which is heavily impacted by geopolitics and experiencing price spikes and volatility.
“Most farms budget for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium across the next rotation. Far fewer can budget for the slower decline in soil structure, water retention, microbial health, and micronutrient availability over the next 5-10 years,” says Albon COO Tom Bessell.
“Biochar is not a replacement for fertiliser. It is a complement. It helps hold nutrients in the soil, improve water retention, and support healthier soil over time – making every unit of fertiliser work harder.”
The 23, Tech23 startups for 2026
ALBON treats wastewater from agricultural and food processing facilities with a cost effective, low-energy algae, turning it into bio-fertiliser.
ANT61’s Beacon is a ‘hardware guardian’ that recovers failing satellites, reducing the number of spacecraft that fall from the sky and opening the final frontier for all.
Arelis’ non-invasive urine test will reduce endometriosis diagnosis time to days instead of years for the 190 million people affected by the disease, meaning that patients can access answers and care much earlier.
Armatide Pharmaceuticals’ next-generation, targeted therapy could reach and treat cancer cells more effectively than current treatments.
Blue Carbon transforms ocean energy into essential services using autonomous ocean infrastructure to provide abundant water, food and environmental resilience for every coastal community.
Clean & Recover turns mine-contaminated water from a costly waste problem into a revenue stream, recovering metals, clean water and sulphates while lowering treatment costs and protecting surrounding water reserves.
Corellian Technologies’ compressor-less, heat-driven cooling system uses the very same heat that warms a building to drive cooling and dehumidification, reducing the operational footprint of a building by up to 95%.
Cortisonic is introducing a new computational element that brings ultra-low power processing to the edge, while eliminating dependence on centralised data centres.
Dentroid is addressing the needle pain and fear in dentistry and medicine with gentle solutions that could redefine dentistry.
Forward Deployed advanced sensing and robotics for hazardous environments, delivering instant, lab-grade chemical threat identification that keeps personnel out of harm’s way.
Gega Elements refines gallium – the critical mineral foundational to AI hardware – in a cheaper, more sustainable manner than current technologies.
Hydro Harvester creates water from the air, for anyone, anywhere, providing a reliable and sustainable water supply for communities farms and industries regardless of drought, water scarcity or location.
Monadd-AI allows SMEs to ‘skip the data centre’, cutting infrastructure costs by 20 times with its cloud-scale AI that utilises standard desktop hardware but delivers the same capability and quality.
MP Space has adapted EV and volume grid battery technologies for usage in space, making power in space cheaper, more performant and more reliable.
Parking Spotz installs wireless digital infrastructure in building basements that brings 70% of critical building systems online for the first time – unlocking smarter, more sustainable cities.
PremieHealth decodes the bioactive intelligence in marsupial milks to create a new class of neonatal nutrition, reducing death, disease and lifelong developmental disadvantage in pre-term babies.
Space CoLAB is tackling the $10 trillion quantum hacking, harvesting, tapping and jamming threat head on, with its world-first quantum native communications system – HaloCore.
Stratoship fills the data gap between satellites and ground stations with stratospheric infrastructure that detects natural disasters in real time.
Sydekick Robotics provides machines with the human-level dexterity and adaptability required to automate the manufacturing sector worldwide.
SydSol turns everyday surfaces into solar panels, so buildings can generate their own clean energy.
Thermal Dawn utilises thermal batteries to heat and cool homes at the fraction of the cost of a lithium battery, slashing a household’s electricity bills and carbon footprint.
Ultra Bionics is developing a minimally invasive implant that ‘steers’ therapeutic stimulation to precise cortical regions across the entire brain in a manner that is safer and more effective than deep-brain stimulation.
Undatech has developed a certified protective base layer for high-risk industry personnel on the frontline that eliminates preventable injuries and closes the safety gap for women.
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