Icehouse Ventures

Congratulations to James Fuller, Claire Fuller, and the Hnry team on their NZ$30 million Series C! Millions of sole traders face the same challenge: financial admin that takes time away from the work they actually want to do. Hnry built a solution that handles it automatically. When a payment comes in, Hnry's platform calculates and pays income tax, GST, and superannuation, then transfers the remaining amount to the user's account. It also manages invoicing, tax returns, and expense tracking. The platform saves sole traders 70% of admin time and 75% of monthly costs compared to alternatives. That impact drives word of mouth: between 35% and 40% of new users come from friend and family recommendations. "This influx of capital will help supercharge Hnry's rapid growth across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. We'll be continuing our heavy investment in our team, our product, and our marketing to help as many sole traders as we possibly can." - James Fuller, Co-founder and CEO. Read more via SmartCompany: https://lnkd.in/ebhkGKQq

Congratulations to Antioch on closing their $US4.3M pre-seed round! Kiwi co-founder Harry Mellsop and the Antioch team are solving one of the hardest problems in robotics: how do you safely validate AI-driven systems that operate in the physical world? Robotics development currently requires teams to test every iteration on physical robots. This creates expensive and lengthy development cycles that limit how quickly teams can iterate. “We’ve talked to teams literally renting Airbnbs just so they can test their household robots overnight, or spending millions building fake warehouses and neighbourhoods to simulate the real world. It’s slow, expensive and wildly inefficient. With Antioch, you can do all of that virtually.” - Harry Mellsop. Antioch's cloud simulation platform lets teams validate robotics systems entirely in software before hardware leaves the lab. This pre-seed funding will support product development as they work with early customers and partners across construction robotics, smart-security systems, and foundation-model developers. What makes this particularly special is watching Harry’s journey from an Icehouse Ventures intern in 2017 to the co-founder of Antioch. 👏🦾 Read more on their story via NZ Herald: https://lnkd.in/e9CrJwh7

Foxglove have closed a US$40 million Series B! 👏 Co-founded by Kiwi Adrian Macneil and Roman Shtylman, Foxglove is building the data infrastructure that powers robotics development. Robotics companies face a common infrastructure challenge: their robots capture huge volumes of multimodal data from cameras, sensors, and other equipment, which needs to be visualised, analysed, and used to train AI models. Until recently, most companies were building their own internal platforms to handle this, each one reinventing the same wheel. Foxglove is building the data engine for Physical AI, the infrastructure robotics companies need to capture, analyse, and evaluate the massive amounts of multimodal data their systems generate. Today, they are trusted by tens of thousands of developers at companies like NVIDIA, Amazon, Anduril, Tesla, and Wayve. Adrian grew up in rural New Zealand, packing kiwifruit and watching manual tasks that robots could one day handle. After leading infrastructure at Cruise and engineering at Coinbase, he and co-founder Roman Shtylman saw this gap and built Foxglove to fill it. Congratulations to Adrian, Roman, and the entire Foxglove team! Read more via NZ Herald: https://lnkd.in/g6Z8MKRW

Congratulations to Jamie Jermain, Jovan P. and the entire Emerge team on the launch of Emerge Personal! Emerge Personal offers everyday banking accounts for all Kiwi. Combined with Emerge Business, which serves small and medium-sized businesses with straightforward banking and card access, Emerge now covers people across every life stage. 👏 💳 Jamie and Jovan started this journey in 2021 with SquareOne App, frustrated by the lack of financial education and tools for Kiwi kids. They built parent-controlled accounts to teach children about money. That product now has 250,000 users and sits under the Emerge brand alongside Business (approaching 5,000 cardholders) and now Personal. They're building a locally-owned alternative in a market dominated by Australian banks and global neo-banks. The features include instant account setup, virtual cards, real-time updates and no hidden fees. Interest-bearing accounts are coming soon, with multicurrency wallets and international transfers planned for early next year. Read more via NBR (paywall): https://lnkd.in/giNUkQMw Or check out more via their website: https://www.emerge.nz/

Congratulations to the Number 8 bio team on raising A$11m in their Series A round! Founded by Waikato-raised Dr Thomas Williams and Dr Alex Carpenter, Number 8 bio has developed a slow-release capsule that sits in the rumen for up to six months, delivering a proprietary molecule that cuts methane emissions from ruminant animals (such as cattle, sheep, and goats) by up to 90%, while improving productivity. The commercial model is just as innovative. Number 8 Bio is rolling out a carbon-insetting programme where supply chains pay to reduce emissions within their own beef and dairy value chains, compensating farmers for using BetterFeed while meeting their climate targets. "When I met Thomas, it was clear that Number 8 Bio was a startup with the economics figured out. By both increasing yields for farmers at the front end and reducing emissions at the back end, Number 8 Bio proves that profit and the planet can co-exist." - Mason Bleakley, Principal at Icehouse Ventures. The funding will help Number 8 Bio expand into New Zealand and Europe, and complete regulatory approvals ahead of commercial launch in 2026. Read more on Number 8 bio here: https://lnkd.in/gCXb5fcz Or the article via NBR - National Business Review (paywall): https://lnkd.in/gYqdhGMm

Congratulations to Chris Bacon, Jack Wood and the Komodo Wellbeing team on closing their latest $1.2m pre-Series A raise! Since 2017, Komodo Wellbeing has been building a student wellness platform that helps schools take an evidence-based approach to student mental health and wellbeing. The platform collects data from multiple sources through surveys and regular check-ins, helping schools identify both individual student concerns and broader trends affecting their communities. Today, they're working with hundreds of schools across 34+ countries, supporting hundreds of thousands of students. This round was led by Kami co-founders Alliv Samson and Hengjie Wang through their new family office Hiraya Ventures, with Hengjie joining the board. Former Reddit, Inc. CEO Ellen Pao also joins as an investor alongside us and other existing backers. With this funding, the team is focused on international growth and launching new tools to make schools happier, safer places for students and staff. Exciting times ahead! 🚀 🏫 Read more via NZ Herald: https://lnkd.in/gp-j6h39