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ECOSYSTEM: South Australia, the Festival State.

On: What makes South Australia great - lately and previously - and other factors that contribute to the growth of this unique ecosystem over time. A broad look at tech & startups, tourism, innovative output, the importance of place, and the entrepreneurial spirit that contribute to the sum of its croweater* parts.*look it up

South Australian tech & innovation landscape

Having been well immersed in the Australian tech & startup scene for a number of years - most notably recently with my work leading the APAC engagement efforts at Tractor Ventures as their 1st employee - I have gotten to know the inner-workings and particulars of many an ecosystem in AU/NZ. And I do mean inner.

I’ve felt compelled to write a deeper deep-dive on some of these ecosystems, honing in on a number of stories of the builders, buildings, and interesting happenings in and around the edges that are a core contributors to the lifeblood of these locations in an entrepreneurial and economic sense.

And so it is right now as at March 2026, with the next edition of SOUTHSTART Ideas Festival starting - alongside the mighty Adelaide Fringe (the world's second-largest annual arts festival) - that I kick off with the 1st version of my GROUPED publication focus on The Festival State: South Australia.

Cheers, Gaz👇️

JUMP TO:

INTRO - Welcome to SA, The Festival State

“Punching above their weight” - an oft-used term in Australia (and we do love an underdog story) which usually means “doesn’t have the $$ of NSW, but goes alright” in an Australian emphasis of say venture capital $ in -> major fundraise, launch moments & liquidity events out.

The government have been investing in SA, and the outcomes have been building and building consistently to exhibit undeniable momentum.

One anchor of that effort is the SA Venture Capital Fund (SAVCF) - a $50 million fund established in 2017 through the South Australian Government Finance Authority. The fund's mandate is to help build dynamic and innovative early-stage companies and accelerate their growth to a national and global scale, with a particular focus on sectors the state has identified as strategic priorities: space, clean energy, cybersecurity, defence, food technology, and health & medtech.

In 2020, Artesian Venture Partners was appointed as fund manager - one of Australia's most active early stage venture capital firms, with presence across Australia, China, Singapore, US & UK. And importantly, Lot Fourteen in the CBD has become a beacon presence for the South Australian ecosystem in the Adelaide CBD, with scores of technology entrepreneurs flocking to the location for co-working, showcases, investor engagement and critical research commercialisation output.

Lot Fourteen

The private VC ecosystem is now beginning to develop its own momentum alongside government-backed infrastructure. Eastend Ventures - co-founded by JD Sheard and Josh Garratt - made history in 2025 as the first fund in South Australia to achieve unconditional ESVCLP status, crossing the key $10 million threshold.

Raising approximately $50 million for Fund 1 to give sophisticated investors access to a diversified portfolio of promising companies from Australia’s mid-sized markets, the fund is targeting early-stage, high-growth B2B companies across South Australia, Western Australia, and Queensland - markets Eastend believe have been historically overlooked by the east coast VC establishment. Their LP certification was only the 53rd ever issued in South Australia: No. Big. Deal.

Garratt, who also co-founded SA angel investment network Southern Angels, has been on record likening the appetite for investment in under-serviced markets to what's happening in the United States in locations such as Denver, Florida, and Seattle - cities attracting founders who work harder than larger markets and, “punch above their weight.”

Eastend Ventures (L-R) JD Sheard, Josh Garratt

The Department of State Development runs the Seed-Start grant program for early-stage commercialisation, the broader Research and Innovation Fund, and a suite of export and investment support infrastructure.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, housed at Adelaide University (est. at UniSA) and home to world-leading marketing science research, is a good reminder that SA's most influential global exports aren't always software companies.

A broad focus for this piece is on how knowledge economy, cultural output, deep-tech (and some left-of-field-ness) is a story of the South Australian innovation ecosystem sometimes lesser-known ambitions.

Data Snapshots - VC Investment, Gov Investment & more

There’s no point reporting on the ecosystem if you’re not going to include some data - whilst I would love some more current data to include in this as well, this gives a very quick insight into a number of key points that help explain ecosystem growth and capacity. I kept it to 3 tables only, no need to overdo this stuff.

Though not extensively referenced in this data, the State of Australian Startup Funding 2025 report by Cut Through Venture / Folklore Ventures was constantly referenced as part of this exercise and is well worth a look for a recent funding analysis. For SA that would be $5.4Billion raised, (up from $4.0B in 2024) 390 Deals, and a 31% increase in YoY growth, with fewer but larger rounds raised.

ECOSYSTEM KPI’s

Metric

Figure

Source / Context

Verified SA startups

780+

Dealroom, 2024

People employed by SA startups

7,400+

Dealroom, 2024

Adelaide ecosystem value

$1.9B

Startup Genome GSER 2024

Ecosystem value growth (2021–23 vs 2019–21)

+89% CAGR

Startup Genome GSER 2024

Early-stage funding raised (Jul 2021 – Dec 2023)

$146M

Startup Genome GSER 2024

Global emerging ecosystem rank (2024)

Top 91-100 (debut)

Startup Genome; jumped 25+ spots YoY

Oceania rank - Affordable Talent

#1

Startup Genome GSER 2024

Sources: Startup Genome GSER 2024; StartupBlink 2025 Global Startup Ecosystem Index; Dealroom via Department of State Development (2024). *SA-specific VC investment data is not published as a separate state line item in national funding reports.

Government & Research Funding - SA Specific

Program / Initiative

Quantum

Purpose

SA Venture Capital Fund (SAVCF)

$50M

Early-stage startup investment via Artesian Venture Partners. Est. 2017. 11 SA companies supported to date.

Research & Innovation Fund (RIF)

Ongoing

Funds research commercialisation, critical tech adoption, and early-stage business growth across SA.

Seed-Start Grants

$50K-$500K per grant

Matched funding for early-stage SA startups commercialising innovative products or services.

Research, Commercialisation & Startup Fund (RCSF)

$28M

Supports research-industry collaboration and startup formation, focused on Lot Fourteen.

Southstart Government Commitment

$2M

3-year funding from RIF to secure Southstart in Adelaide through 2026, 2027, 2028.

Lot Fourteen Government Investment

$550M+ (state)

Precinct development including Innovation Centre, Space Assembly & Testing Facility, and Defence Technologies Academy.

Moon to Mars / Space Agency Grants

$9M+ (2024)

Federal grants to SA space startups including Neumann Space and Myriota demonstrator missions.

Adelaide BioMed City

$3.8B precinct

Medical research, clinical trial and manufacturing hub adjacent to Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Sources: Department of State Development SA; SA Government Budget 2025–26; Australian Space Agency; Renewal SA; University of Adelaide. All figures AUD.

SA's Standout Funding Rounds (2023–2026)

Company

Round

Amount

Investors / Notes

Sector

Fleet Space Technologies

Series D

A$150M

Dec 2024; valued ~A$800M (record Aus space)

Space / Mining Tech

Myriota

Growth

A$50M

Led by NRFC ($25M); 2024

Satellite IoT

Splose

Series A

A$46M

Spectrum Equity (US); 2026 - largest SA SaaS round ever

Health Tech / SaaS

Fivecast

Series A

A$30M

US cyber VC fund; 2023

Cyber / OSINT

Eastend Ventures (fund)

Fund I

A$13M

SA's first ESVCLP; 2025

VC Fund (B2B focus)

Cropify

Seed

A$2M

Mandalay Ventures + Hatcher+; 2024

AgTech / AI

Sources: Startup Daily, SmartCompany, company announcements, and South Australian Government media releases. Figures in AUD

PLACE: The Importance of Gathering

Those who know me know I harp on about the importance of ‘place’ - of the importance of gathering people in a physical location, to drive heightened collaborative efforts.
The location of Lot Fourteen on Adelaide CBD’s North Terrace is of particular importance, but being that South Australia is well known as ‘The Festival State,’ there are some other key activities throughout the year that drive tourism at a phenomenal level. (Hate to neglect the fact that visitors prompt activity too.)

And so it is that even though SOUTHSTART is the 1 x well-known reputable gatherer of startup and tech investment folk on the calendar, there are many other excuses for these folks to visit SA, and that they do throughout the calendar year.

Lot Fourteen

Lot Fourteen is the most well-known illustration of ‘a home for startups’ in South Australia. Built on the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site on North Terrace - right in the heart of the city, adjacent to universities, galleries and the CBD - it is a world-class innovation district dedicated to solving complex global challenges.

Australian Space Agency locating on the site of the former Royal Adelaide Hospital (at Lot Fourteen)

The Australian Space Agency calls it home. So do Fleet Space, Myriota, Inovor Technologies, and a growing cluster of deep-tech startups. When fully built out, the precinct is expected to host 6,000 knowledge workers and 700,000 visitors annually. This method of establishing an Innovation District in a city centre, surrounded by culture, education, accessibility and foot-traffic tends to generate a different kind of energy than those marooned in business parks on an urban fringe.

AFL Gather Round

(I’m a footy fanatic. As if I wasn’t referencing it.)

The AFL Gather Round (been to it, incredible) is the annual concentration of all AFL home-and-away matches in a single city and falls in Round 5 2026, between April 9th and 12th. Gather Round has called Adelaide home since its inaugural edition in 2023, and the economic momentum shows the results.

Gather Round

The 2025 edition generated a record $113.9 million in economic activity, up 24% from 2024 and 36% from 2023, with 241,613 visitors spending an average of 4.7 nights in the state. In 2025, the Barossa Valley hosted AFL premiership matches for the first time, generating $4.87 million in direct expenditure for the region, showcasing a prime example of a major event providing very decent economic benefits beyond the city boundary.

Wine Country

The wine industry is foundational to South Australia's identity, economy, and tourism pull. South Australia accounts for almost 80% of the nation's premium wine, with over 700 wineries representing just under half of the country's vineyards.

Clare Valley. Unreal Rieslings.

South Australian wine is responsible for more than half of all Australian wine production, and Adelaide has earned a seat in the exclusive Great Wine Capitals network - placing it alongside Bordeaux, Napa Valley, and Mendoza. Nationally, Australian wineries attract around 7.5 million visitors annually, with international visitors contributing 41% of total winery spend.

ACTIVATION: SOUTHSTART

SOUTHSTART - SA's premier startup and innovation conference - brings the startup and innovation threads together. Running since 2013, it has grown from a local meetup into a nationally acclaimed festival, voted Australia's most loved startup festival by Startup Muster three years running.

Team SOUTHSTART

The South Australian Government has committed $2 million from the Research and Innovation Fund to secure its place in Adelaide through 2026, 2027, and 2028. The 2026 edition (themed: Resonance) runs across three days in March, spanning CBD venues and McLaren Vale, with speakers from OpenAI, Canva etc. alongside investors from Airtree, Blackbird, Techstars Australia, and GROUP GROUP :)

Past speaker alumni include Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph and Techstars founder Brad Feld. An interesting moment in time I note with Southstart curating an intimate (though definitely not tiny) experience, with the announcement of the demise of SXSW Sydney in the recent rear-view mirror. “Create an excuse to gather, see the benefits transpire

IN CONVERSATION: Danielle Seymour, Co-Founder of SOUTHSTART

Danielle Seymour, SOUTHSTART Co-Founder, expert curator

Gaz Williams: Danielle: what factors of SA innovation growth have occurred because of SOUTHSTART?

Danielle Seymour: Capital has landed in SA startups that wouldn't have been funded otherwise i.e. Airspeeder's Co-Founder confirmed the festival added "a couple of million" to their capitalisation through connections made.

Enterprise deals have closed, with Optible securing KPMG as a pilot client. Businesses have been professionalised: ShowMe Exchange walked in once and walked out with long-term legal and marketing partners that unlocked new customers. Talent has been placed.

And perhaps most significantly, Adelaide's reputation has shifted. Global investors, corporates and media now come here purposefully, because they know this is where serious, scalable companies are being built.

GW: How about some unique stories of tech/startup awesomeness from running SOUTHSTART?

DS: Some are listed above, standing amongst hundreds of others. For example, Functionly's founder credited SOUTHSTART with “triggering our $3.6M seed round"!

GW: What’s been the greatest positive change in SA/Adelaide since SOUTHSTART began?

DS: As per Eastend Ventures, "SOUTHSTART has built a cathedral to human connection". And as per "us", the cement in its foundations is confidence and depth.
Founders now build from Adelaide with a global outlook rather than seeing relocation as the default. The ecosystem's stories - funding rounds, enterprise pilots, hires and national partnerships - have moved Adelaide's reputation from "regional" to a place that produces serious, scalable companies.

That shift in self-belief and visibility, the underpinning we've quietly laid year after year, is arguably the biggest structural change of all.

GW: Fantastic - what still needs more work to keep growth increasing each year?

DS: The foundations are strong. However, work remains to strengthen our culture of experimentation, which is a multi-layered, societal feat - achievable by no single actor alone. Our role is to keep providing the platform where rare connections are made, champion the importance of doing so, and trust that the compounding effect of those connections ultimately moves the needle.

BACKGROUND CHECK: SA Innovations of years past

As part of the research for this piece, I was particular interested to dive more into some of the more unique examples examples of innovative innovation that has a South Australian flavour associated, so here’s a few bits and pieces that helped me feel hopelessly inadequate with my work output up until right now:

  • In 1843, John Ridley manufactured in South Australia the world's first mechanised grain stripper - a technology that became the direct pre-cursor to the modern combine harvester and transformed agricultural productivity at a global scale.

  • Over a century later, Lance Hill invented the Hills Hoist in Adelaide in 1945 - now listed as a National Treasure by the National Library of Australia and featured in the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.

  • In the 1980s, working for Caroma in Norwood, Bruce Thompson invented the dual-flush toilet - a water conservation innovation now replicated in bathrooms across the globe.

  • And the wine cask, that peculiarly Australian contribution to democratising a drink (sometimes affectionally known as ‘goon’), was developed in South Australia in the late 1960s in conjunction with Penfold Wines.

In an era of satellites, rockets, deep tech and artificial intelligence everything, some nods to the past is also a worthwhile use of your time.

EDUCATION CHECK: SA Research, and Recent Happenings…

South Australia's university story changed significantly at the start of 2026. Adelaide University formally began operations in January, merging the University of Adelaide - the third-oldest university in Australia - with the University of South Australia, whose antecedent history dates back to 1856.

The combined institution brings together approximately 70,000 students, has been invited to join the Group of Eight - Australia's coalition of research-intensive globally ranked universities - and is projected to add $500 million to the state's economy per year and create an additional 1,200 jobs.

Adelaide University

Both legacy institutions had already built genuine global reputations. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the home to Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow framework, became one of the most cited marketing science bodies in the world. The University connection to Lot Fourteen runs deep, with the new institution expected to maintain its presence adjacent to the Australian Space Agency, and the under-construction Innovation Centre set to house the Australian Defence Technologies Academy.

ThincLab, the (now) Adelaide University longstanding startup accelerator, has been a consistent part of the founding support ecosystem providing commercialisation pathways for student and researcher-led ventures. Also, Flinders University's New Venture Institute adds further depth in entrepreneurship and innovation education.

Adelaide University will find its feet as one unified ‘brand’ in market, and the integration of research, industry, and precinct-based innovation that SA has been under-the-radar assembling, will deepen.

INDUSTRY CHECK: Space, Intelligence & Creative Science

If there is one industry that defines where South Australia is heading, it’s SPACE.
Myriota, spun out of the University of South Australia in 2015, has become one of the standout examples of deep-tech scaling from Adelaide to the world. The company provides low-cost satellite IoT connectivity for remote sensors across agriculture, mining, and environmental monitoring - the kind of infrastructure problem that matters enormously in a continent as vast and remote as Australia.

Myriota satellite IoT

Myriota recently secured a $50 million AUD funding injection, led by $25 million from the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, to expand its Adelaide-based workforce and scale its IoT connectivity platform globally. The company now has offices across North America, Europe, and Latin America.

Fleet Space Technologies (also Adelaide-based at Lot Fourteen) raised A$150 million in Series D funding in December 2024, valuing the company at approximately A$800 million at the time - a record for an Australian space startup. Fleet combines satellite technology, AI, and geophysical data to make mineral exploration more efficient - a remarkably apt fusion of Australia's new economy ambitions with its oldest industry.

Fleet Space

In early 2026, rocket launch company Gilmour Space Technologies also established a presence at Lot Fourteen, adding another dimension to what is becoming one of the Southern Hemisphere's most concentrated space clusters.

Adam Gilmour + rocket

And then there is one of the most symbolic moments of all: Katherine Bennell-Pegg, Australia's first qualified astronaut under the Australian flag, based at Lot Fourteen with the Australian Space Agency, was named 2026 Australian of the Year.

Beyond space, the creative and attention economy is producing its own global impact. Dr Karen Nelson-Field PhD is a former professor of media innovation at the University of Adelaide who, in 2017, founded what is now Amplified (fka Amplified Intelligence) - a global SaaS platform helping brands, publishers, and agencies understand what actually grabs and holds human attention, with a customer base spanning the globe from its Adelaide headquarters.

Dr Karen Nelson-Field

Nelson-Field is a regular on the stages of Cannes Lions and SXSW, has been recognised by the world's largest advertisers including Google and Meta, and her research has been cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. (note: I had the pleasure of getting to know Dr Nelson-Field quite well in our Tractor Ventures interactions. Big fan.)

SA: A FOUNDERS VIEW w/ Sean Grealy, Sell Anything

Sean Grealy, co-founder of Sell Anything (and these days often regarded as South Australia’s second favorite son after Tony Modra) helps tech founders go from $0-$1million each and every day, scaling their sales efforts at a founder-led level.

Sean Grealy, Sell Anything

Sean was asked for some recommendations of relatively lesser-known builders building, in SA. Sean had these founders to advocate for, all flying far more under-the-radar than those consistently in the LinkedIn headlines:

Jo Chaturvedi-Durant: Venture Partner / Senior Investment team of Frontier Investments at VU Venture Partners. (global early stage tech VC focusing on Consumer, Enterprise, FinTech, Frontier, Healthcare, and PropTech). Also Venture Partner at Eastend Ventures, VC in Residence at ThincLab and Mentor at Techstars. Jo was VP of Investment Management at Morgan Stanley for ages. “Legendary Human.”

Allys Todd: Executive Director and Founder at VALAI, an Australian climate intelligence company transforming how property, finance, and insurance sectors understand and act on climate and efficiency data. “Gun Human.”

Clockwise from Top Left: Jo, Roland, Allys, Sanjam

Roland Harrison: Founder of PCMTEC, custom vehicle tuning desktop software for high performance mechanics in the niche area of Ford Falcon, Mustang, F150, Bronco, Maverick, Explorer and many other makes of Ford. “Bootstrapped founder, hacks cars, very decent revenue!”

Sanjam Kohli: Co-Founder of Chefadora, an AI-powered global food-blogging platform that enables anyone to publish, discover, and earn from recipes with over 100,000 monthly active users from nearly 180 countries. “Large MAU, global users, awesome founder!”

*I then threw a few of my own examples in there so some good ol’ fashioned entrepreneurial spirit that lives in the City of Churches (of thereabouts)

Jack Economos and Lachlan Kitson: Founder of Glizzy, a very unique indie video games platform immersed in the Amazon Gaming sphere. As they promote: absurd, off-beat, and just plain weird indie PC games - from narrative-driven horror adventures to chaotic simulators. Super cool!

Tyson Beck: one of the worlds most well known creators of trading cards and collectible art. DEEP in the NBA and US sports scene, so cool to observe

Clockwise from Top Left: eologix-ping, Tyson Beck (& Giannis), Teamgage, Glizzy

Noelle & Ben Smit: Co-Founders of employee feedback platform Teamgage, and one of my favs I’ve gotten to know ever since they were Tractor Ventures funded company numero uno

Matthew Stead: Co-Founder and CEO of Ping Services, which merged with eologix a while back, moving him into a new role as Chief Product Officer. eologix-ping helps reduce wind turbine O&M costs by continuously monitoring blade condition (damage, alignment, ice and lightning). This is achieved with low cost IoT sensors that measures a range of rotor blade parameters such as vibration, sound, ice (capacitance), alignment (pitch), temperature etc. Amazing innovation honestly.

INDUSTRY CHECK: Food Technology: Growing Things Differently

South Australia's food innovation story starts in an unlikely place: a desert 300 kilometres north of Adelaide, where sunlight and seawater grow tomatoes at commercial scale.

Sundrop Farms, opened in Port Augusta in 2016, is the world's first combined heat, power, and water system powered entirely by solar energy for greenhouse food production. Using 23,000 mirrors to focus sunlight onto a 115-metre solar tower, the $200 million facility produces over 15,000 tonnes of truss tomatoes annually - without soil, pesticides, fossil fuels, or groundwater, drawing seawater directly from the Spencer Gulf and desalinating it on site.

Sundrop Farms

It supplies Coles under a decade+ long contract and represents one of the most credible real-world proofs that food production can be decoupled from conventional resource dependencies. The tech has since been replicated in Portugal and the United States.

Beyond Sundrop, South Australia's AgTech ecosystem is maturing at pace. PIRSA's AgTech program, delivered from 2021 to 2025, trialled 77 technologies from 58 companies across demonstration farms, and supported 23 projects through its AgTechGrowth Fund focused on drought resilience, climate adaptation, carbon management, traceability, and natural capital.

Adelaide-based Cropify is using AI to eliminate subjective grading from the classification of pulses and grains - recently securing $2 million in funding. ThincLab Waite - Adelaide's first AgTech, food innovation and wine-focused incubator - sits at the centre of much of this activity, bridging crucial research and commercialisation nous.

Cropify Founders Anna Falkiner (CEO) and Andrew Hannon (COO)

INDUSTRY CHECK: Design & Infrastructure: Built to Matter

South Australia has a quietly remarkable track record of producing world-class built environments - and one of the world's most storied architectural practices was born here.

Woods Bagot was founded in Adelaide in 1869 and is now one of the world's largest architecture firms by employee count, with 18 global offices. From its early work on the University of Adelaide's Bonython Hall to 21st-century projects including the Qatar Science & Technology Park and the SAHMRI building in Adelaide, the firm has shaped both its home city and major projects worldwide.

Woods Bagot SAHMRI

The SAHMRI building itself is a design landmark: its pine-cone-shaped diagrid facade uses passive solar principles and a chimney-effect air conditioning system to create one of Australia's most sophisticated research environments, housing up to 675 researchers across flexible wet and dry laboratories.

More recently, Woods Bagot delivered 83 Pirie Street in Adelaide's CBD: the first all-electric, carbon-neutral-ready commercial building in Adelaide; the first Platinum WELL v2 pilot pre-certified building; and the first commercial and retail mixed-use building in the state built without natural gas.

The facade engineering was a collaboration between Woods Bagot and Arup, who also played a significant advisory and technical role on the new Royal Adelaide Hospital - at $1.85 billion, the largest infrastructure project in South Australian history and one of the most technologically advanced hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere.

INDUSTRY CHECK: Under-The-Radar (But Need-to-Know)

Not every interesting thing happening in South Australia is happening in space or AI. A few examples of output of note:

Video Gaming

Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight

Adelaide's games ecosystem includes Team Cherry - the studio behind Hollow Knight, one of the most critically acclaimed indie games of the last decade - alongside Mighty Kingdom, which started in Adelaide in 2010 and now employs 100 people, working with Disney, LEGO, and Sony on more than 75 games with over 50 million downloads.

Robotics

RV Automation Tech lands in Aus

International robotics firm RV Automation Technology chose Adelaide to establish its first Australian R&D facility, partnering with local universities across research and development and hiring graduates directly from Flinders University - a sign that the state's advanced manufacturing identity attracts serious players from around the world.

Experience Technology & VFX

WOMADelaide

SA is home to a cluster of post-production and visual effects studios including Rising Sun Pictures, that have contributed to major international productions. Plus, an entire AV production / experience technology world focused on delivering marquee events like the Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide.

INDUSTRY CHECK: Other Ecosystem Initiatives Worth Knowing

Stone & Chalk (couldn’t not mention their impressive work in building SA capacity) operates the Startup Hub at Lot Fourteen: a co-working and incubator space supporting scores of startups across fintech, health tech, space, cyber, agtech, AI, IoT, and data analytics.

Stone & Chalk Adelaide, Lot Fourteen

It is the daily heartbeat of the precinct, and having visited a fair bit in recent times, it gets busier and sharper on the programming and growth initiatives for the internal community and broader external ecosystem, a great indicator of the hard work and efforts of the operational and curatorial team.

The Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), based at Lot Fourteen through Adelaide University, is one of the country's leading AI research bodies - collaborating with industry and government on computer vision, deep learning, and applied machine learning.

Adelaide BioMed City is a $3.8 billion health and life sciences precinct home to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, research institutes, and a growing cluster of medtech and biotech activity.

Adelaide BioMed City

Tonsley Innovation District to the south of the city is a 61 hectare site focused on advanced manufacturing and clean technology, providing a grittier, more industrial complement to Lot Fourteen's knowledge & SPACE economy orientation. (SA is rare for having multiple distinct innovation districts, each with a different sectoral character.)

Tonsley Innovation District

INDUSTRY CHECK: Setbacks

No ecosystem narrative is complete without acknowledging where things have gone a bit pear-shaped:

The most significant recent example is the failed Hydrogen Jobs Plan. The state government made ambitious commitments to build a green hydrogen power plant at Whyalla, ordering world-first GE Vernova hydrogen-capable turbines as a centrepiece of the plan.

In 2025, the project was officially cancelled and the Office of Hydrogen Power disbanded, with the government redirecting resources toward the rescue of the Whyalla steelworks.

Earlier, the Aurora Solar Thermal Project near Port Augusta, which was a $650 million plant billed as a world-first that would have covered 100% of the SA government's power needs under a 20-year agreement, was abandoned in 2019 when US developer SolarReserve failed to secure finance after years of extensions and community expectations.

In Summary:

Hope you enjoyed this deeper-dive into some aspects of SA that are well-known, and plenty of others that are not. I explored with curiosity the projects that Woods Bagot had been involved with for example, as knew that company well from my prev work when at University of Melbourne focused on the launch of innovation precinct Melbourne Connect, and then found out they were started in Adelaide itself! The more you know…

On the sniff-test, if you were to ask me my unfiltered opinion of the growth of the SA innovation ecosystem that I have observed, it is most certainly bottled energy that is noticed and recognised (as a visiting Melburnian), and this is from a point of observation of attending Southstart in 2022 ( and regularly popping into Stone & Chalk of course) to what’s occurring now. Very impressive.

SOUTHSTART Fest

Even, on a simple assessment basis, when in Adelaide for holiday in Jan 2026 and dropping in to say hello to a few folk there, the Stone & Chalk hub was full on a Tues morning in early Jan, and that can only signify one thing.

Builders are building, and momentum is infectious.

About Me: Hi I’m Gaz, and I’m a big fan of curation creating new media content streams out of thin air. I’ve been fortunate to run numerous events in all the cities in Aus and get to know a lot of the people within them very well. So, this felt right to produce in 2026, with more states on the way.

I help founders and funds scale their storytelling efforts by developing new media capabilities (newsletters, podcasts etc) and events should always be appreciated for their ROI, and fun.

w/ Aprill Enright on a past Tractor Ventures ‘tour’ in Adelaide in ‘23.

See you on the internet - Gaz Williams 👋
(Follow me on Linkedin HERE)

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