Amazon started charging for rides in a car with no steering wheel. Japan’s funding week went on holiday.

Issue 09 – Week ending 16 August 2026 – For founders building beyond their own borders.

We’re back with another issue – this time featuring international founder across Japan, Australia and the globe – Ali Motahari building up MedicTranslate – a platform that provides digital health and language services, built for people crossing medical, regulatory and language barriers.

We spotlight our bootstrapping story of the week Bannerbear, plus our global tech story of the week Zoox.

In the Fundraising corner, Japan saw raises from – Shizen Connect and PURMX Therapeutics,Inc., to name a few

Australian raises included – Farmbot Monitoring Solutions, Alloy Robotics, Fabulate, Kantoko and more …

Globally we feature capital secured across the UK, India and Israel by – Cambridge Aerospace, Yulu, Remepy, Centricity and Cytix.

All the global headlines for the week, our horrible laugh of the week, events over the next couple of weeks including our Japan Market Entry webinar with Tyson Batino and more.

Catch it all and more in this week’s issue.

FX for this issue: A$1 = US$0.705 = ¥112.6 (US$1 ≈ ¥159.6). Rates as at 13-14 August 2026, applied across the whole issue.

🎤 Ecosystem profile

Ali Motahari, founder of MedicTranslate (based in Japan). Digital health and language services, built for people crossing medical, regulatory and language barriers.

Give us your 15-second intro and what you’re working on.

I’m Ali Motahari. My background is in digital health, technology and healthcare transformation, and I’m currently building MedicTranslate, a digital health and language-services business focused on helping people navigate medical, regulatory and language barriers across borders, particularly between Japan and international markets.

Are you avoiding AI, somewhat into AI, or all in on AI?

I’m pro-AI to the max, actually! I see AI as a major enabler rather than something to avoid. We’re actively using it to improve efficiency, automate processes and create better customer experiences, particularly in healthcare, translation and international service delivery. For me, the question isn’t whether to use AI, but how to use it responsibly and effectively.

In the full Q&A Ali gets into the hardest part of crossing borders and why he thinks it comes down to trusted local partners, the digital health background people don’t expect, and the specific partnership help he is after right now.

→ Read the full Q&A on Global Day Zero ↗

🌱 Bootstrapping spotlight

Bannerbear (Singapore): an API that generates social images, banners and short video from templates, so a marketing team can produce hundreds of variants without opening a design tool.

Solo founder Jon Yongfook Cockle has run it as an open startup since 2018, publishing revenue publicly the whole way. It crossed US$1m ARR in September 2025 with a team of about six. No outside equity, ever, and Tracxn still lists it as unfunded.

(Tracxn) ↗

🇯🇵 Japan raises

Three rounds landed in window, and only one disclosed an amount. This is an Obon week, so treat the list as a snapshot of a half-shut market rather than a signal about anything.

OLTA (Tokyo): ¥2.5bn / A$22.2m / US$15.7m (growth, pre-IPO strategic) Runs Cloud Factoring, an online invoice-factoring service for SMEs, plus the INVOY invoicing platform. Resona Holdings took the whole allotment and OLTA becomes an equity-method affiliate, with factoring rolling out across Resona’s four banks. (PR TIMES) ↗

株式会社Shizen Connect (Tokyo): amount undisclosed, part of a Series A whose first close was ¥2.7bn / A$24m / US$16.9m (Series A extension) Aggregates home batteries, heat-pump water heaters, EVs and small solar plants into one virtual power plant that can be traded on the power market. Mitsubishi HC Capital came in from its ¥10bn innovation fund alongside a business alliance. (PR TIMES) ↗

PURMX Therapeutics,Inc. (Hiroshima): amount undisclosed (strategic capital alliance) Hiroshima University spinout developing cancer drugs from unmodified natural microRNA. Lead asset MIRX002 has finished Phase I in malignant pleural mesothelioma and is in Phase I for head and neck cancer. TSE-listed AI company FRONTEO subscribed and is running a joint PoC. (PR TIMES) ↗

Nothing else cleared the window. NOT A HOTEL’s ¥16.5bn Series D and JPYC’s ¥1bn Series B extension both got heavy coverage this week, but were announced 6 and 5 August respectively, so they belong to the last issue’s fortnight.

Takeaway: every disclosed investor this week was a corporate, not a fund. Resona into OLTA, Mitsubishi HC Capital into Shizen Connect, FRONTEO into PURMX. The VC desks were closed for Obon and the strategic desks were not, which is worth remembering if you are timing a Japan raise around the calendar.

🇦🇺 Australia raises

Farmbot Monitoring Solutions (Sydney, Australia): A$22m / US$15.5m / ¥2.48bn (Series B) Satellite-connected sensors that let livestock farmers check water tanks, troughs, dams, pumps and rain gauges from a phone instead of driving the paddocks. Led by Lewis & Clark Partners, with Meat & Livestock Australia’s Cultiv8 fund and Macdoch Ventures following. The money funds a US push, where the company trades as Ranchbot and now runs its group HQ out of Fort Worth. (Startup Daily) ↗

Alloy Robotics (Sydney, Australia): A$11.5m / US$8m / ¥1.29bn (seed) Ingests robot fleet telemetry so engineers can find why a test run failed in about ten minutes instead of a day. Roughly 1,000 robots and 10,000 missions on the platform. Square Peg led, with Blackbird, AirTree and Skip all in, plus engineers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Tesla, Waymo and Halter. That makes Alloy the fifth Australian company ever backed simultaneously by Blackbird, Square Peg and AirTree, after Canva, Lorikeet, Airwallex and Partly. (Forbes) ↗

Fabulate (Sydney, Australia): A$4.5m / US$3.2m / ¥507m (growth, at an A$84.5m valuation) Brands and agencies use it to find social creators, run campaigns and measure what came back. Around 90% of the round came from existing shareholders. Already trading across NZ, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. (Startup Daily) ↗

Kantoko (Sydney, Australia): A$3.5m / US$2.5m / ¥394m (seed) Online ADHD clinic pairing a national doctor network with assessment and prescribing software, getting adults diagnosed and treated in weeks rather than months. Side Stage Venture and Tenmile co-led, with the Go1 founders angel investing. Third company from Zac Altman, who sold LoungeBuddy to Amex. (Startup Daily) ↗

Also raised: Sterling (Auckland, NZ) took A$3.15m / NZ$3.8m seed led by Blackbird for AI that runs invoice processing and month-end close inside an SME’s existing accounting stack, sold at about NZ$1,500 a month with a chartered accountant doing onboarding. On the non-equity side, MILLIBEAM (Adelaide) picked up A$4.6m in government grants for a counter-drone jammer, @CUREator+ split A$13.5m across six biotechs, and the WA government spread A$1.275m across 26 startups.

Takeaway: Farmbot moved its group HQ to Fort Worth and sells into the US as Ranchbot. Sterling is charging NZ$1,500 a month and putting a chartered accountant on every onboarding. Two very different answers to the question of what you actually have to change about the company when you leave home, and neither of them is the product.

🌏 Around the world

Cambridge Aerospace (Cambridge, UK): US$300m / A$426m / ¥47.9bn (Series C, at a US$3.4bn valuation) Builds low-cost interceptor missiles. The Skyhammer unit flies more than 30km at 700km/h to bring down attack drones, and the UK Ministry of Defence is already a customer. DFJ Growth led, with Lux, Accel, Lakestar and Elad Gil in. (EU-Startups) ↗

Yulu (Bengaluru, India): US$93m / A$132m / ¥14.8bn (Series C, US$63m equity plus US$30m debt) Shared electric two-wheelers rented by the minute, leaned on hard by quick-commerce and food-delivery riders in Indian cities. GEF Capital Partners led. (TechCrunch) ↗

Remepy (Ramat Gan, Israel): US$36m / A$51m / ¥5.7bn (Series A) Builds “hybrid drugs” that pair a prescription medicine with a personalised AI therapy app. Lead program Hybridopa for Parkinson’s enters Phase III in Q4. Co-led by O.G. Venture Partners and M Ventures, the venture arm of Merck KGaA. (Calcalist) ↗

Centricity (Gurugram, India): US$32m / A$45m / ¥5.1bn (Series A, Rs 280 crore) One interface for independent wealth advisers and family offices to research, transact and manage clients across asset classes. Led by SMBC’s Asia Rising Fund. (Entrackr) ↗

Cytix (UK): US$7m / A$9.9m / ¥1.1bn (Series A) Watches every software change an enterprise ships, scores the business risk each one introduces, and logs the evidence for compliance. Built for teams whose code volume jumped when they turned on AI assistants. Northern Gritstone led. (Tech.eu) ↗

Takeaway: no US round made this list, and the one to look at twice is Centricity. That is Sumitomo Mitsui’s Asia Rising Fund leading a Series A for a wealth platform in Gurugram. Japanese bank capital routing into Indian fintech is a corridor that never comes up in the Australia-to-US conversation, and it is open.

🌐 Global headlines

• Lenovo posted its biggest quarter ever, US$26.9bn in revenue, up 43% year on year, with AI revenue up 60% to US$9.3bn and now 35% of the group (China/Hong Kong, 13 Aug). (CGTN) ↗
• SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.6, tuned for long-running agents and coding, at US$2 per million input tokens and US$6 per million output. It scores 61 on the Artificial Analysis index, level with GPT-5.6 Sol (US, 12 Aug). (x.ai) ↗
• Again acquired US industrial biotech Genomatica, putting AI-driven molecule discovery on top of existing industrial-scale fermentation capacity. Terms undisclosed (12 Aug). (Tech.eu) ↗
• A breach at shipping giant Ceva Logistics rippled across Europe, disrupting eight warehouses and exposing customer data at ING, Bol, De Bijenkorf, Ajax and Valve’s Steam (France/Netherlands, 10-11 Aug). (TechCrunch) ↗
• Demis Hassabis lobbied US Treasury and the White House for a FINRA-style independent AI standards body, one that could pre-test frontier models 30 days before release (UK/US, 13 Aug). (Tech Times) ↗

🛠️ Global tech on display

Zoox (US, Amazon-owned) started charging fares in Las Vegas on 10 August. The vehicle is a four-seat pod with no steering wheel, no pedals and no mirrors, and passengers sit facing each other. This is the first time anyone in the US has taken money for a ride in a vehicle built with no manual controls at all, which is a different thing from a retrofitted car driving itself.

The number that matters is the regulatory one. NHTSA granted the first commercial Part 555 exemption ever given to a purpose-built robotaxi, covering eight federal safety standards and allowing up to 2,500 vehicles a year from 31 July 2026 to 31 July 2028. Zoox says it has carried close to a million riders across Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin and Miami on the free service before switching the meter on.

(FOX5 Vegas) ↗ and demo footage on the Zoox YouTube channel ↗

😂 Joke of the week

💭 Thought of the week

With all the distractions out there, sometimes a business plan, even a basic one, is all we need to keep ourselves focused, prioritising the right stuff and working towards the best objectives for our business or startup.

The thing to remember in the land of AI or tech is that a plan doesn’t need to be concrete. It needs to be flexible enough to pivot and evolve with the business. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile.

Ali’s answer above is the same point from the other side: you can’t work out the local market, the regulations and the right partners while you are already mid-move. Farmbot’s Series B this week funds a US push under a different brand name, which is not a decision you make on the fly.

Take the time out this week to fill out a simple one-page business plan. If you’re looking for a template, reach out.

📋 Programs open for application

We’re opening up a new low-cost community program for early-stage founders building for their initial market shortly, we’ll be helping you get started with simple product, marketing and sales to help you get started.

Watch out for more info coming from this channel soon!

📅 Upcoming sessions & events

Entering Japan: what it really takes for founders and business owners

Wednesday 26 August, 7:30pm AEST, online.

Me and Tyson Batino , who has 15 years on the ground, JLPT N1 and 120+ businesses set up in the market. No pitch. We get into why products that win at home stall in Japan, GK vs KK vs branch office, the annual and minimum taxes nobody warns you about, what actually works in B2B versus B2C, and how to tell if you are ready.

Questions answered live. Register ↗

AI Salon Sydney: Building AI with Trust & Security

Thursday 27 August, 5:30pm, UTS Startups, Ultimo. Three speakers on the unglamorous half of shipping AI: Geoff McGrath (Ashurst Perkins Coie) on IP ownership and employee use policies, Frank Yoo (Simbian AI) on AI-powered security, and Tim Lea (Fidestra.ai) on verifying synthetic media. Register ↗

Founder Fridays Sydney – September

Friday 4 September, 4:00pm, Stone & Chalk Tech Central, Haymarket. Free. This month’s guest is Adrian Bunter of Sydney Angels, who has been through 100+ transactions across raises, IPOs, acquisitions and spin-offs. Founders only, no service providers. Register ↗

Know a founder building across borders? Forward this to them.

One question for the comments: Farmbot moved its group HQ to Texas and renamed the product for the US market. If you went global tomorrow, what would you have to change that isn’t the product?

PS – As always, if you’re working on anything exciting, I’d love to chat about it – vibe-coded, scaling or otherwise …

… because I love hearing about new tech, I can offer a few pointers and happy to introduce you to people relevent in my network too. DBS (Don’t be shy) and reach out for a ☕️!

Cheers – Matt 🙃