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Sydney Startups to Watch in 2027: 9 Verified Companies in Frontline Software, AI Web Design, Cultured Meat, Grid Tech, Telehealth, Chips and Quantum, Where Founders Get Support and Lessons to Copy

Sydney Startups to Watch in 2027: Verified Companies in Frontline Software, AI Web Design, Cultured Meat, Grid Tech, Telehealth, Chips and Quantum

Sydney is Australia's largest city and home to many of its best-known tech companies, from workplace software to quantum computing. In this article, Sydney means Greater Sydney: the city centre, inner suburbs such as Surry Hills and Eveleigh, and the wider metro area. The 2026 version of this article listed ten names, most of them linked to third-party startup directories rather than to the companies. When we checked them, one had been bought, one had renamed itself, one website now forwards to a different product, and two gave no Sydney address. For this 2027 edition we started again: in November 2026 we checked each company on its own website or in its own press releases to confirm that it still operates, that it is based in Sydney, what it sells and what it publishes about its funding. What happened to the old names is listed near the end.

Quick answer: the Sydney startups to watch in 2027 are Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture, frontline operations software), Relume (AI website builder), Vow (cultured meat), Neara (digital twins for power grids), Eucalyptus (telehealth brands), Servicely (AI service management), Morse Micro (Wi-Fi HaLow chips), Q-CTRL (quantum control software) and Diraq (silicon quantum chips). Neara has the most recent published round: an AUD 90 million Series D led by TCV in February 2026. For support, start with Cicada Innovations in Eveleigh, the Tech Central Innovation Hub at 477 Pitt Street, UNSW Founders and the University of Sydney's Genesis programme.

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Why Sydney Matters for Founders in 2027

Sydney mixes two kinds of startups. One group sells software worldwide from day one: Mitti, Relume, Eucalyptus and Servicely. The other builds hard technology that grew out of the city's universities and labs: Morse Micro's wireless chips, Q-CTRL's quantum software, Diraq's silicon qubits and Vow's cultured meat. Neara sits in between, selling software to the power grid, one of the slowest-moving customers there is. Much of the city's startup support sits in and around Tech Central, the NSW Government's innovation district near Central Station, home to the Tech Central Innovation Hub, with the deep tech incubator Cicada Innovations nearby in Eveleigh.

To compare Sydney with other cities in the region, read our lists of Brisbane startups to watch, Auckland startups across the Tasman, Fukuoka, Bangkok, Cebu and Honolulu, and our overview of startup cities in Asia.

Sydney Startups to Watch in 2027 Compared

Company	What it does	Sydney base	Latest funding we cite
Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture)	Operations app for frontline teams: inspections, tasks, training	Sydney headquarters in Surry Hills since 2014	Not published on its site
Relume	AI website builder with a 1,000+ component library	Sydney, NSW (its company data)	Not published on its site
Vow	Cultured meat, sold under the Forged brand	Made in Sydney	Not published on its site
Neara	Physics-enabled digital twin for electricity networks	Press releases issued from Sydney	AUD 90M Series D led by TCV, February 2026
Eucalyptus	Telehealth clinics: Pilot, Kin, Juniper, Software, Compound	HQ in Sydney	Not published on its site
Servicely	AI-native service management for IT, HR, finance and legal	31 Alfred Street, Sydney	Not published on its site
Morse Micro	Wi-Fi HaLow (802.11ah) chips	10-14 Waterloo Street, Surry Hills	Not published as an amount on its site
Q-CTRL	Quantum control and navigation software	Sydney (also Santa Monica, San Francisco)	Investors shown by name, no amounts
Diraq	Quantum chips built from silicon transistors	Australia head office and lab in Sydney	Not published on its site

Sources: each company's official website, company data, careers or contact page, or own press release, checked 8 November 2026.

The Sydney Startups to Watch in 2027

1. Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture): from checklists to frontline operations

Mitti is the new name of SafetyCulture, the company behind one of the best-known inspection checklist apps. Its about page says Mitti, formerly SafetyCulture, started in 2004 and has grown from a safety and inspections app into an operations system for running sites, shifts and standards, used by more than two million workers across 80,000 organisations, with customers in 190 countries. Its company timeline says it opened its Sydney headquarters, its first Sydney office, in Surry Hills in 2014. It no longer counts as an early-stage startup, but it is the Sydney software company many local founders study first. It does not publish funding figures on its site, so we cite none, and we removed the old article's valuation claim, which had no source.

Lesson for founders: Mitti began with one narrow job, replacing paper safety checklists, and only later widened into a full operations platform. A small, frequent task can be the door into a much larger product.

Best for: founders building B2B SaaS for workers who do not sit at a desk.

2. Relume: an AI website builder for marketing sites

Relume is an AI website builder for marketing sites. You give it an old website, a document or a few notes, and it assembles a site from a library of more than 1,000 human-designed components, which you can publish on Relume or export to Figma, Webflow or React. Its homepage says it is trusted by more than a million freelancers and agencies and that you can build for free, with hosting on a relume.live subdomain; custom domains need paid hosting. The company data on its site gives 2021 as its founding year and Sydney, New South Wales, as its location. It does not publish funding figures.

Lesson for founders: Relume started with a component library for designers, then put AI on top of it. Owning a trusted library made its AI output more predictable than tools that generate everything from scratch.

Best for: founders in design tools, no-code and AI products for agencies.

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3. Vow: cultured meat made in Sydney

Vow grows meat from animal cells in large tanks. Its site says its cultured Japanese quail is served in venues around the world and gives its manufacturing platform's current capacity as 40,000 litres. Its restaurant brand, Forged, says all its meat is made locally in Sydney and describes itself as now in Australia and still in Singapore. Vow does not publish funding figures on its site.

Lesson for founders: Vow sells to chefs and restaurants first, not supermarkets. For a new kind of food, a small number of respected restaurants can build trust faster than mass retail.

Best for: founders in food tech, biotech and climate tech.

4. Neara: digital twins for power grids

Neara builds what it calls a physics-enabled digital twin: a 3D model of a utility's network, its surroundings and its workflows, used to plan, harden and operate the grid against storms, wildfire and rising demand. Its press release of 10 February 2026, issued from Sydney, announced an AUD 90 million Series D led by the growth equity firm TCV. The same release names customers including Southern California Edison and CenterPoint Energy in the US, ESB Networks, Scottish Power and Hedno in Europe, and Essential Energy, Endeavour Energy, Ausgrid, Ausnet, Powercor and SA Power Networks in Australia, and says it works with close to 90% of all network utilities in Australia. In October 2026 Neara announced that it had acquired Zepben, an Australian company that models electrical networks.

Lesson for founders: Neara sells to utilities, which buy slowly but stay for years. Winning almost every local utility gave it the references it needed to sell abroad.

Best for: founders in climate tech, energy software and infrastructure.

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5. Eucalyptus: a group of telehealth clinics

Eucalyptus runs a group of online clinics: Pilot for men's health, Kin for reproductive health, Juniper for women's medical weight management, Software for skincare and Compound. Its site says Pilot has provided care to over 100,000 men, Kin has more than 50,000 subscribers to its contraceptive pill delivery service, Juniper has supported 200,000 Australian women and also runs in the UK, Japan and Germany, and the company has more than 400 team members. Its careers page says its HQ is in Sydney, with offices in London, Berlin, Tokyo and Manila. It does not publish funding figures on its site.

Lesson for founders: instead of one big health brand, Eucalyptus built several focused ones, each speaking to one group of patients about one problem.

Best for: founders in digital health and direct-to-consumer brands.

6. Servicely: AI agents for service desks

Servicely sells AI-native service management: one platform for IT, HR, finance and legal requests, where its AI agent, Sofi, answers and resolves requests and passes on only what the customer allows. Its site claims that 65% of tier-one requests are resolved autonomously, end to end (its own figure). It lists two offices: Sydney, at Level 3, 31 Alfred Street, and London. It does not publish funding figures.

Lesson for founders: Servicely competes with much larger service desk suites by leading with one measurable promise, the share of requests its AI closes without a person.

Best for: founders in enterprise software and AI agents.

7. Morse Micro: long-range Wi-Fi chips from Surry Hills

Morse Micro is a fabless semiconductor company that designs Wi-Fi HaLow (IEEE 802.11ah) chips: long-range, low-power wireless for cameras, sensors, farms, factories and smart buildings. Its about page says it was founded in Sydney in 2016 by former Broadcom engineers Michael De Nil and Andrew Terry, now has more than 220 people and 11 offices worldwide, and sells the MM6108 and MM8108 chips. Its site gives its address as Level 8, 10-14 Waterloo Street, Surry Hills. A founder bio on that page mentions 200M raised but gives no currency, so we cite no exact figure.

Lesson for founders: Morse Micro bet on a wireless standard that few companies supported and built the chips for it. Being early on an open standard can make a small company the default supplier.

Best for: founders in semiconductors, IoT and hardware.

8. Q-CTRL: software that makes quantum hardware useful

Q-CTRL writes software that controls quantum computers and sensors. Its products are Black Opal for learning quantum computing, Fire Opal for running quantum algorithms, Boulder Opal for building and running quantum computers, and Ironstone Opal for quantum navigation without GPS. Its about page names Michael J. Biercuk as founder and CEO and shows investor logos including Airbus Ventures, Lockheed Martin, Main Sequence, Salesforce Ventures and Square Peg, without amounts. Its careers page lists Sydney as its first location, alongside Santa Monica and San Francisco.

Lesson for founders: Q-CTRL does not build quantum computers. It sells the software layer that every hardware maker and user needs, a way to profit from a new field without betting on which machine wins.

Best for: founders in deep tech, defence tech and developer tools.

9. Diraq: quantum chips from ordinary silicon factories

Diraq is building quantum computers from spin qubits in modified silicon transistors, made in the same kind of factories that produce ordinary chips. Its about page says it was founded by researchers and engineers in Sydney, where it has its Australia head office and a manufacturing and cryo-test facility; its US head office is in Palo Alto. It names NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, GlobalFoundries and imec as partners and says it is one of only six companies worldwide selected for the final stage of DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. It does not publish funding figures on that page.

Lesson for founders: Diraq's pitch is that it can use the chip industry's existing factories. Reusing an industry's infrastructure can make a new technology much cheaper to scale.

Best for: founders in quantum, semiconductors and university spin-outs. See also our guide to quantum startup events.

Where Sydney Startups Get Support

Cicada Innovations: describes itself as Australia's leading deep tech incubator, at the National Innovation Centre in Eveleigh, with a HealthTechHub at Westmead. Its Foundations, Elevate and Stride programmes form a path from first skills to traction, and it also runs NSW Health and NSW Defence and Aerospace programmes.
Tech Central Innovation Hub: a NSW Government hub at 477 Pitt Street, operated by Stone and Chalk, with coworking memberships, dedicated desks and private offices for startups, office suites for scaleups, and landing pads for regional and international founders (international businesses can get up to 4 months of membership). According to Startup Daily, it took over the services of the old Sydney Startup Hub on York Street.
UNSW Founders: the University of New South Wales startup programme. It runs the 10x Accelerator (seed funding and 10 weeks of learning, with health, climate and all-industries tracks), the Peter Farrell Cup pitch competition and New Wave for women founders. It says it supports more than 12,000 people a year and that its accelerator alumni have raised more than $175 million.
Sydney Genesis: the University of Sydney's twice-yearly accelerator for startups with at least one founder from the university. Each cohort takes ten startups, and the winner of the finale receives the Genesis Prize, valued at A$30,000 in equity-free funding. Since 2008 it has supported more than one thousand founders.
Stone and Chalk: besides running the Tech Central Innovation Hub, it offers desks, programmes, mentoring and events for startups through its own site.

Sydney Companies From the Old List That Changed or Could Not Be Verified

The 2026 version of this article listed ten names. Here is what we found when we checked each one in November 2026:

Kept: Relume, Vow, Neara, Eucalyptus and Servicely still operate and show a Sydney base on their own sites or press releases.
SafetyCulture: now called Mitti, and kept under its new name.
Paytron: the payments company was bought by OFX. OFX's page Paytron is now OFX is dated 3 July 2023, and paytron.com now forwards to OFX, so it left the list.
Upflowy: its web address now forwards to Psyke, an AI marketing product, whose homepage gives no Sydney address, so we removed it.
Lumiant: its site gives no address and says its products are currently unavailable to the public, so we could not confirm a Sydney base or that it still operates as before.
Fable Food: its site gives no Sydney address and points to Queensland's Sunshine Coast, so we removed it from a Sydney list.

We also removed the old article's links to third-party company directories and growth-estimate sites, and a valuation figure that had no source.

Which Sydney Startup Should You Learn From?

You build B2B software: study Mitti for growing from one narrow task, Servicely for leading with one measurable AI promise and Neara for winning slow, loyal customers.
You build for designers or agencies: study Relume, which put AI on top of a component library people already trusted.
You build in health or consumer brands: study Eucalyptus for running several focused brands instead of one.
You build in food or climate tech: study Vow for selling to chefs before shops, and Neara for software that helps the grid cope with extreme weather.
You build hardware or deep tech: study Morse Micro for betting early on an open standard, Q-CTRL for selling the software layer of a new field and Diraq for reusing existing chip factories.
You are just starting: if you study or work at UNSW or the University of Sydney, start with UNSW Founders or Genesis; for deep tech, talk to Cicada Innovations; for a desk and a community, look at the Tech Central Innovation Hub.

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How Founders Use Sydney's Startup Scene

Notice the two paths here. Software companies like Mitti, Relume and Eucalyptus sold to customers abroad early, while deep tech companies like Morse Micro, Q-CTRL and Diraq came out of research teams and needed patient investors and partners. Plan your own path before you raise. Meet the local scene at the events in our guide to startup events in Sydney and our list of deep tech startup events. Compare programmes in our guides to startup incubators in Asia, accelerators for early-stage startups and accelerators for AI startups.

For money, see early-stage VCs in Asia, angel investors for AI startups, grants for female entrepreneurs and grants for women entrepreneurs in Asia. If you are still choosing a base, compare Australia in our guides to the best countries for early-stage startups, the best countries for AI startups, the best cities for early-stage startups and the top cities for AI startups worldwide. For a US comparison, read our lists of San Francisco startups and Phoenix startups to watch, and meet other founders at startup events for female entrepreneurs.

Before you copy any of these business models, validate your startup idea with real customers. Then make your startup easy to find: list it in the F/MS marketing directories, publish your startup press release, and write about your product with the F/MS AI SEO Tool or the AI SEO Blog so customers, investors and AI assistants can find you.

FAQ About Sydney Startups to Watch in 2027

Which Sydney startups should I watch in 2027?

Our verified list: Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture), Relume, Vow, Neara, Eucalyptus, Servicely, Morse Micro, Q-CTRL and Diraq. Each still operates and shows a Sydney base on its own site or in its own press releases, checked in November 2026.

Is SafetyCulture still a Sydney company?

SafetyCulture is now called Mitti. Its company timeline says it opened its Sydney headquarters in Surry Hills in 2014, and its about page says more than two million workers across 80,000 organisations use the platform.

Which Sydney startup raised money most recently?

Of the rounds the companies publish themselves, Neara announced an AUD 90 million Series D led by TCV on 10 February 2026.

Which Sydney startups work in deep tech?

Morse Micro (Wi-Fi HaLow chips), Q-CTRL (quantum control and navigation software), Diraq (quantum chips made from silicon transistors) and Vow (cultured meat).

Is Relume an Australian company?

Yes. The company data on Relume's site gives 2021 as its founding year and Sydney, New South Wales, as its location. Its homepage says it is trusted by more than a million freelancers and agencies.

Where can founders in Sydney get support?

Cicada Innovations in Eveleigh for deep tech, the Tech Central Innovation Hub at 477 Pitt Street (run by Stone and Chalk) for desks and programmes, UNSW Founders for the UNSW community and Sydney Genesis for University of Sydney founders.

What happened to the Sydney Startup Hub?

According to Startup Daily, its services moved from York Street to the Tech Central Innovation Hub at 477 Pitt Street, which the NSW Government says is operated by Stone and Chalk.

Is there support for female founders in Sydney?

Yes. UNSW Founders runs New Wave, a programme for women founders, and our guides to grants for female entrepreneurs and grants for women entrepreneurs in Asia list more options.

What happened to the startups on the old list?

Relume, Vow, Neara, Eucalyptus and Servicely stay, and SafetyCulture stays as Mitti. Paytron was bought by OFX in 2023, Upflowy's address now forwards to a different product, and Lumiant and Fable Food gave no Sydney address.

Where can I get a backlink by writing about my startup?

You can publish a guest post in one of the Fe/male Switch startup blogs, which rank in Google and in AI tools. Get a quality backlink.

About the Author

Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.

Violetta Bonenkamp

2026-11-08 00:01 Best Startups