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BWA | JUL 2026 3 Welcome to the inaugural edition of Business World Australia. Across Australia, the business landscape is being shaped by organisations that are not simply responding to change, but actively building through it. Housing pressure, infrastructure demand, energy transition, healthcare innovation, regional growth, supply chain resilience, and the next generation of Australian technology all feature prominently in our first issue. Our cover feature, Simonds Group, captures one of the country’s most important conversations: how Australia builds more homes, in more formats, with the discipline and scale required for a changing market. With a legacy stretching back more than 75 years, Simonds’ story is one of heritage, adaptation, and renewed momentum, as the company expands across volume housing, medium-density development, alternative sales channels, and strategic partnerships. Also featured on the cover is DevelopmentWA, whose work across major precincts, land activation, waterfront development, and community-shaping projects reflects the increasingly important role of government-backed development agencies in creating places that are commercially productive, liveable, and future-focused. This month also sees the launch of our recurring Project of the Month series, beginning with Victoria’s North East Link. More than a missing freeway connection, North East Link is a tunnelling, logistics, workforce, and urban-design story that reflects the complexity of delivering major infrastructure through established communities. Our first Leaders in Industry profile turns to Melanie Perkins, Co-Founder and CEO of Canva, whose journey from a classroom design frustration to one of Australia’s most influential technology companies remains one of the country’s defining founder stories. We also look to the future through our Startup Showcase, profiling companies such as Harrison.ai and Q-CTRL, two Australian-founded businesses taking highly specialised technology into global markets — one through clinician-led artificial intelligence, the other through quantum infrastructure and control. The features this month reflect the purpose of Business World Australia: to spotlight the companies, projects, and leaders helping shape the nation’s industries from the ground up. We hope that you enjoy your read. Scott Lowry Editor-in-Chief PUBLISHING Raza Malik, CEO & Group Publisher Cindy Berkshire Head of Circulation EDITORIAL Scott Lowry Editor-in-Chief Vanessa Norris Sr. Editor Caleigh Emma Sr. Correspondent Mackenzie O’Reilly Associate Editor Eric Bismack Associate Editor CREATIVE Kulvir Singh Art Director Sergi Iranzo Creative Director Felix Balbao Graphic Design Stella Stevens Video Production Kim Dougherty Social Media OPERATIONS Frank Connor IT Director Mona Alhambra Finance Director Melissa Calderon Production Manager LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
4 BWA | JUL 2026 CONTENTS 42 06 NORTH EAST PROJECT Building Melbourne’s Missing Connection 16 MELANIE PERKINS Canva from a Classroom Frustration into One of Australia’s Most Influential Technology Companies 22 LINDSAY AUSTRALIA Extending a Paddock-toPlate Logistics Model Through Acquisitions, Rural Reach and Cold-Chain Scale 30 HARRISON.AI Building a Global Clinical-AI Company from a Mission-Led Australian Founding Team 36 Q-CTRL Turning Quantum Research Pedigree into a Global Quantum Infrastructure Company 16 30 36
BWA | JUL 2026 5 42 SIMONDS Rebuilding Momentum Through Scale, Channel Diversity and a Broader Homebuilding Platform 48 SHAPE AUSRALIA Expanding from Fitout Specialist to Diversified Construction Services Leader 56 DEVELOPMENTWA Shaping Western Australia Through Major Precincts, Place-Led Delivery and Statewide Development Capability 64 CITY OF WANNEROO Shaping Western Australia Through Major Precincts, Place-Led Delivery and Statewide Development Capability 72 SYMAL GROUP Building Scale Through Self-Perform Delivery, Major Alliances and Expanding Infrastructure Capability 78 DURATEC Built Around Renewal, Protection And Trusted Delivery 86 NOUMI Rebuilding Momentum Through Brands, Ingredients and Smarter Partnership 94 DONUTKING Extending an Australian Classic Through Franchising, Occasion-Led Innovation and Brand Partnerships 100 SMNOMED Scaling Sleep-apnea Treatment Through Clinical Alignment, Manufacturing Discipline and Better Digital Workflows 108 SUMMERSET Growing a Trans-Tasman RetirementVillage Platform Through Continuumof-Care Scale, Greenfield Expansion and Australian Entry 116 OMEGA OIL & GAS Advancing a Taroom Trough Frontier Play with a Cleaner Balance Sheet and Bigger Appraisal Ambition 122 AURELIA METALS Reweighting a Cobar Basin Business Toward Base Metals and Copper 128 29 METALS Rebuilding Operational Momentum Around Copper, Asset Quality and Near-MiNe Growth 56 64 72 86 94 116
6 BWA | JUL 2026 BUILDING MELBOURNE’S MISSING CONNECTION
BWA | JUL 2026 7 North East Link is one of those infrastructure projects that is best understood not as a single road, tunnel or interchange, but as a long-delayed piece of metropolitan logic finally being put into place. For decades, Melbourne’s freeway network has had a conspicuous gap in the north east: the missing connection between the M80 Ring Road and the Eastern Freeway. North East Link is designed to close that gap, giving freight, commuters and cross-city traffic a more direct route while taking pressure off the suburban roads that have long carried traffic they were never really designed to handle. Victoria’s Big Build describes the project as the biggest ever investment in Melbourne’s north east, with the 6.5-kilometre tunnels from Watsonia to Bulleen intended to take 15,000 trucks off local roads each day and reduce travel times by up to 35 minutes. That is the clean public promise of the project: less time lost in traffic, fewer trucks on local streets, and a more complete orbital road network for Melbourne. But the reason North East Link makes such a strong Project
8 BWA | JUL 2026 of the Month is that its construction story is just as significant as its transport story. This is not a modest road widening exercise. It is a multi-package program involving twin three-lane tunnels, major upgrades to the Eastern Freeway and M80 Ring Road, new interchanges, new walking and cycling connections, parkland improvements, and one of the most complex urban tunnelling efforts currently underway in Australia. The Department of Treasury and Finance describes North East Link as the largest investment in a road project in Victoria’s history and says the link is expected to carry up to 135,000 vehicles daily once complete. At the centre of the project are the tunnels themselves. Running between Watsonia and Bulleen, the North East Link tunnels are being built up to 45 metres underground, passing traffic beneath local suburbs rather than pushing more surface road infrastructure through established communities. That underground alignment is central to the project’s design philosophy: it is
BWA | JUL 2026 9 not only about building a road, but about limiting the physical disruption of that road on the communities above it. Victoria’s Big Build says the tunnels are being built to preserve more parkland and recreational areas from Borlase Reserve and Banyule Creek in Yallambie through to the Yarra River precinct in Bulleen. The most visible symbols of that tunnelling effort are Zelda and Gillian, the two tunnel boring machines working their way from Watsonia to Bulleen. Zelda began tunnelling in August 2024 on the northbound tunnel, followed shortly after by Gillian in September 2024 on the southbound tunnel. Each TBM operates around the clock with crews of operators, electricians, mechanics, ring builders and tunnel engineers. The latest Big Build tracker shows just how far the machines have advanced: Zelda has excavated 5,064 metres of a 5,098-metre drive, while Gillian has excavated 4,449 metres of a 4,948-metre drive. Those figures make the project feel very much alive. North East Link is no longer just a plan, procurement model or artist impression. It is now a tunnelling operation nearing the end of one of its most technically important phases. In October 2025, the Victorian Government said the two 15.6-metre-diameter, 90-metrelong TBMs were well over the halfway point, having travelled more than three kilometres each and installed
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BWA | JUL 2026 11 more than 25,000 pre-cast concrete tunnel segments made in Benalla. By that stage, more than 8,000 people were working across North East Link, with the project expected to create more than 12,000 jobs in total and 10% of work hours being delivered by apprentices, trainees and cadets. That workforce story is important because large infrastructure projects are often discussed only in terms of cost and congestion relief. North East Link is also a major industry-capacity project. It is training workers, engaging specialist tunnelling expertise, supporting local manufacturing through concrete segment production, and creating opportunities across civil construction, engineering, traffic management, systems integration, road operations and long-term maintenance. For the construction sector, it is a live demonstration of the kind of integrated delivery capability required to build major urban infrastructure in a dense, complex city environment.
12 BWA | JUL 2026 The delivery structure is also notable. The $11.1 billion Primary Package was procured as an availability-based public-private partnership, with financial close reached in October 2021. The Spark consortium — including WeBuild, GS Engineering and Construction, CPB Contractors, China Construction Oceania, Ventia, Capella Capital, John Laing Investments, DIF and Pacific Partnerships — was awarded the main tunnel package. The primary package includes the twin three-lane tunnels, interchanges at Lower Plenty Road and Manningham Road, upgrades around Bulleen Road, new and upgraded green land bridges, and walking and cycling infrastructure forming part of the new North East Trail network. The PPP model matters because North East Link is not just being built for opening day. The tunnels will also need to be operated, maintained and renewed over a long asset life. The project therefore brings together design, construction, financing, operations, maintenance and lifecycle management in a way that reflects the modern reality of infrastructure delivery. Major roads are no longer simply concrete and asphalt assets; they are technology-enabled systems with ventilation, safety, tolling, communications, monitoring, incident response and managed motorway interfaces. That systems element is especially visible in the Eastern Freeway upgrades. As part of the broader program, the Eastern Freeway is being upgraded with new express lanes, managed motorway technology and Melbourne’s first dedicated busway. That last element is easy to overlook, but it is important. North East Link is a road project, but it is also intended to improve bus movement and multimodal connectivity across the corridor. The opening of a section of the Bulleen Road Interchange
BWA | JUL 2026 13 in July 2025 marked the first permanent road section to open as part of the project, while also allowing traffic to keep moving as crews continue building the tunnel entrance and major interchange that will eventually connect the Eastern Freeway to the 6.5-kilometre tunnels. The Bulleen Road Interchange milestone also illustrates the scale of the physical works. To build the new 270-metre section of Bulleen Road, crews installed more than 100 of the largest Super T beams ever built in Victoria, each up to 43 metres long and weighing up to 126 tonnes. Details like that help bring the project out of abstraction. This is the kind of infrastructure where every milestone depends on heavy lifts, night works, traffic staging, community disruption planning, supply chain coordination and careful sequencing between temporary and permanent works. The project’s community-facing design has also evolved in response to feedback. Victoria’s Big Build says the tunnel design was lengthened to 6.5 kilometres, with simpler interchanges, five MCGs of parkland along Banyule Creek at Borlase Reserve, a new two-kilometre tree-lined Greensborough Road boulevard, a twohectare Yarra Link green bridge over Bulleen Road, and three new wetlands along the Yarra River and Koonung Creek in Bulleen and Balwyn North. That part of the project is worth emphasising because major road projects often face criticism for dividing communities or prioritising cars at the expense of local amenity. North East Link is still a road project, and a major one, but its design response shows how expectations have changed. The project has had to include parkland, wetlands, green bridges, tree canopy, shared paths and better active transport connections as part of its
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BWA | JUL 2026 15 core public value proposition. In total, the broader program is delivering more than 34 kilometres of new and upgraded walking and cycling paths, including links to Yarra River trails, the Koonung Creek Trail, local parklands, schools, community clubs and station precincts. A balanced profile should also acknowledge that North East Link has not been without scrutiny. Like many large infrastructure projects in Australia, it has faced public attention over cost escalation, construction disruption and tunnelling complexity. In January 2026, tunnelling was paused after a sinkhole opened at AJ Burkitt Oval in Heidelberg. ABC News later reported that investigations found a planned test during excavation had caused the ground to cave in, and that authorities said tunnelling would resume with the incident not expected to add cost or delay to the project. That episode is a reminder that infrastructure of this scale is never just a technical exercise. It is built in public, under communities, beside live roads, and under intense scrutiny. The real test of a major project is not whether it avoids every challenge, but whether it responds transparently, strengthens controls and continues safely. In that sense, North East Link’s construction phase is also a case study in risk management, community trust and engineering discipline. When complete, North East Link is planned to open in 2028, bringing together the tunnels, M80 Ring Road Completion and Eastern Freeway Upgrades into a single operating corridor. The project will be tolled, with the State retaining toll revenues initially through a Stateowned tolling company, while the Eastern Freeway and M80 Ring Road will remain toll free.
16 BWA | JUL 2026 Melanie Perkins is still best understood not simply as the co-founder of Canva, but as the executive who has stayed close enough to the company’s original mission to keep reshaping it as it scales. Canva’s own leadership page identifies her as Co-Founder and CEO, and the company’s recent updates show that she remains publicly associated with its biggest strategic moves, from major product launches to its next era of AI and enterprise expansion. That matters because many founder stories become less compelling once the founder is no longer central to the operating story. Perkins’ profile is different: the company’s direction is still unmistakably hers. Under her leadership, Canva has moved well beyond the “easy graphic design tool” label that first made it famous. In Canva’s 2025 year-in-review post, the company said it had grown to 260 million monthly us-
BWA | JUL 2026 17 Building Canva from a Classroom Frustration into One of Australia’s Most Influential Technology Companies ers and $3.5 billion in revenue, while also noting that Canva was now used by 95% of the Fortune 500. Those numbers tell only part of the story, but they are useful markers of just how far the business has stretched from its original core. Canva is no longer only for students, social teams and small creators; under Perkins, it has become a platform that now sits inside classrooms, startups, nonprofits and some of the world’s largest organisations at once. A large part of that current impact comes from the way Perkins has kept broadening the company’s ambition without abandoning the original mission of accessibility. The big recent example is Visual Suite 2.0, which Canva described in 2025 as one of its largest launches ever, designed to bridge productivity and creativity more tightly inside one platform. In 2026, the company pushed further with Canva AI 2.0, which it framed as its most significant product evolution since launch,
18 BWA | JUL 2026 turning Canva into a more conversational and agentic creation environment. What is notable here is not just product velocity, but the consistency of the strategic direction: under Perkins, Canva keeps trying to reduce the friction between an idea and a finished piece of work. Perkins’ current chapter is also defined by the way she has expanded Canva upmarket without letting it lose its broader mass-market identity. In 2024, Canva acquired Affinity, a move the company said would help it support professional creatives with more advanced tools. The next year, Canva formally relaunched Affinity and later explained that it had the financial strength to make it free because Canva itself had become a profitable, rapidly growing business with 28 million paying customers and $3.5 billion in annualized revenue. This is one of the most strategically interesting parts of Perkins’ leadership: she has managed to grow Canva from a tool that once disrupted the low end of the design market into a company now reaching further into professional creative workflows as well. That same expansion logic is visible in Canva’s adjacent acquisitions. In 2024, the company acquired Leonardo. Ai, saying the deal would strengthen its visual-AI capabilities and bring a team of around 120 researchers, engineers and designers into the business. Then in 2026, Canva announced the acquisitions of Simtheory and Ortto, describing them as ways to add agentic AI and customer-data-driven marketing automation into the platform. Seen together, those moves say something important about Perkins as a leader: she is not only growing Canva through organic product rollout, but through carefully chosen acquisitions that widen the platform from design into AI, workflow and marketing operations. Under her leadership, Canva has become less a single product and more an expanding creative operating environment. What makes that current success more impressive is how clearly it links back to Perkins’ earliest business instincts. Before Canva, she co-founded Fusion Books with Cliff Obrecht, applying a simple drag-and-drop design approach to school yearbooks. In an interview reflecting on that period, Perkins said Fusion Books became the largest yearbook company in Australia and expanded into France and New Zealand. That earlier
BWA | JUL 2026 19 venture is important not because it was enormous, but because it gave her a real proving ground for the core Canva idea: take something that is technically difficult, visually intimidating and far too slow, then redesign it so ordinary people can do it themselves. That instinct — simplify the hard thing without making it feel cheap — still sits at the centre of Canva. The transition from Fusion Books to Canva also reveals something essential about Perkins’ style as a company-builder. Canva’s own historical materials say the company launched in 2013, but only after a long period of pitching, team-building and investor persuasion. Official Canva newsroom pieces explain that Bill Tai and Lars Rasmussen encouraged Perkins and Cliff Obrecht to find a technical co-founder, which eventu-
20 BWA | JUL 2026 ally led to Cameron Adams joining as the third cofounder. Canva’s 2013 seed-round announcement later named backers including Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners, 500 Startups, Bill Tai, Lars Rasmussen, Ken Goldman and Paul Bassat. This part of the story matters because it shows Perkins doing one of the hardest things in startup building: taking an initially simple product insight and slowly constructing the team, capital base and technical credibility to support a much larger version of it. There is a common temptation to describe leaders like Perkins purely through valuation and wealth, but that misses what is most interesting about her career. The more useful leadership lens is that she has kept thinking in systems. Fusion Books was not just a yearbook company; it was a test case for design simplification. Canva was not just a design app; it was a platform for democratising visual communication. The newer Canva is not just a template library with AI add-ons; it is trying to become what the company itself now calls a Creative Operating System, where design, productivity,
BWA | JUL 2026 21 data, branding and increasingly AI-assisted execution all meet in one place. That kind of strategic continuity across multiple company stages is rare, and it is one of the reasons Perkins makes such a strong “Leaders in Industry” subject. Her leadership style also appears to be unusually mission-retentive for a founder who now runs a very large private company. Canva’s own language still returns constantly to “empowering the world to design,” and Perkins’ byline pieces continue to frame new launches as extensions of that mission rather than departures from it. Even the Affinity decision was explained not simply as a business move, but as part of Canva’s broader effort to widen access to professional-grade creative tools. Whether one views that language as idealistic or strategic, the consistency is real. Perkins has managed to grow the company dramatically without allowing the public narrative to become detached from the original reason it existed. That does not mean the road has been linear or easy. The company’s own historical and retrospective materials reference repeated investor knockbacks in its early days, a long journey to building the right founding team, and the challenge of turning an apparently simple idea into a product robust enough for global scale. The reason those details are worth mentioning is that they change the profile from a polished success story into a more useful leadership case study. Perkins did not arrive at Canva after a sequence of major exits or a conventional Silicon Valley founder apprenticeship. She built her way into the role by spotting a genuine user problem, testing it in a niche market, then showing enough persistence and clarity to keep widening the thesis until the rest of the market caught up. At this point in her career, Perkins is no longer interesting only because she helped create one of Australia’s most valuable private companies. She is interesting because she has remained the executive face of its most important reinventions. The Canva of 2013, the Canva of mass adoption, the Canva of enterprise growth, and the Canva now integrating AI, professional design tools and marketing automation are all recognisably parts of the same company. That coherence is one of her biggest achievements in the current role. Plenty of founders build breakout products; fewer can keep redesigning the company around the same mission as it becomes larger, more complex and more globally significant. Perkins has done exactly that.
22 BWA | JUL 2026 Extending a Paddock-to-Plate Logistics Model Through Acquisitions, Rural Reach and Cold-Chain Scale
BWA | JUL 2026 23 Lindsay Australia has built its identity around a relatively simple but valuable idea: being useful across more of the agricultural supply chain than a typical transport operator. The company says it is an ASX-listed integrated transport, logistics and rural supply group with a specific focus on food processing, food service, fresh produce and horticulture. On its main site, it describes itself as working in partnership with Australian farmers at all levels of the supply chain. That “paddock to plate” framing is not just branding. Lindsay’s operating structure spans Lindsay Transport, Lindsay Rural, Lindsay Fresh Logistics, and the acquired businesses WB Hunter and SRT Logistics, giving it exposure to freight, warehousing, producemarket handling, rural merchandising and cold-chain distribution. The breadth of that model is one of the main reasons the company stands out in the listed logistics space. FY2025 showed both the scale and the complexity of that model. In its FY2025 annual report, Lindsay said group revenue rose 5.6% to $849.8 million, while underlying EBITDA fell 11.7% to $81.4 million and underlying net profit before tax fell 27.9% to $31.9 million. Management linked the softer earnings result to margin pressure in transport and difficult seasonal and weather conditions in key horticultural regions. Those figures matter because they tell a more realistic story than a simple growth headline would. Lindsay is not a frictionless logistics growth machine; it is an operationally intensive business exposed to fuel, labour, seasonality and produce-market conditions. But the same disclosures also show a company still investing in its network, still growing revenue, and still broadening its national capability through acquisitions and facility upgrades. The transport business remains the core engine. Lindsay says its transport arm has been operating since 1953 and has become one of Australia’s largest refrigerated transport companies, delivering more than 2 million tonnes of freight to more than 3,200 customers. In FY2025, transport revenue rose to $574.0 million,
24 BWA | JUL 2026 supported by growth in freight services and network optimisation across the east coast. But the broader model becomes more interesting when the partner and acquisition layer is added. In July 2023, Lindsay acquired WB Hunter, a long-established rural merchandising business with an eight-store footprint across northern Victoria and southern New South Wales. The company says that acquisition aligned with Lindsay Rural’s ambitions and strengthened its reach into agricultural-supply markets where agronomy, fencing, nutrition and trade products all matter. That acquisition is more than a bolt-on. It shows Lindsay pushing further upstream into relationships with farmers rather than focusing only on downstream freight. The annual report says a bolt-on acquisition, Nagambie Equine Rural, was also added to WB Hunter in FY2025, reinforcing the sense that Lindsay is trying to build a broader rural-services platform rather than just a bigger trucking network. The same logic applies on the logistics side. SRT Logistics became a wholly owned subsidiary of Lindsay in May 2025, with the company describing the deal as creating the country’s largest refrigerated logistics network and materially improving connectivity between Tasmania and mainland Australia. SRT’s own page says it already served some of Australia’s most respected food manufacturers, producers and retailers, making it
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26 BWA | JUL 2026 a meaningful complement to Lindsay’s existing eastcoast strength. That acquisition looks particularly important because it extends the group’s cold-chain reach in a market where national coverage is difficult to replicate. The annual report also notes that SRT was completed post year-end on 1 July 2025, which means the business enters the next phase with even greater network density than the FY2025 headline numbers alone capture. For a logistics company, that matters as much as a singleyear earnings comparison. Lindsay Fresh Logistics adds still another piece to the operating model. The company says this business handles unloading, cross-docking, storage, ripening, fumigation and import/export services from the Brisbane Markets, with services into market agents and major Brisbane delivery centres. It is a good example of how Lindsay’s value proposition extends beyond linehaul into the handling and management of produce within major food-distribution nodes. There is also a clear infrastructure-growth program underway. The FY2025 annual report says the expansion of the Adelaide refrigerated facility and a new leasehold site in Perth were both on track for completion in the first half of FY2026, while efficiency initia-
BWA | JUL 2026 27 tives focused on higher-capacity road combinations and asset productivity were also progressing. Those are the kinds of low-glamour investments that often matter most in transport and logistics. The challenge section for Lindsay is therefore easy to frame in constructive terms. Margin pressure in transport, weather disruptions and cyclical softness in regional hardware and trade conditions all affected the FY2025 earnings outcome. But the company’s response has been to grow the network, broaden the rural platform, invest in depot and facility upgrades, and strengthen the cold-chain footprint through acquisitions rather than retreat from the market.
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BWA | JUL 2026 29 That is what makes the company a strong feature. Its collaborator network is not built around one famous customer name, but around a more practical ecosystem of Australian farmers, produce-market agents, rural communities, WB Hunter, SRT Logistics and specialist market-handling operations in places like Brisbane Markets. Those relationships reveal a business that is deeply embedded in how food and agricultural products actually move through Australia. Lindsay today looks like a company still shaping itself into a broader agricultural-supply-chain platform. It remains exposed to the normal pressures of transport and seasonal logistics, but it also has scale, network depth and an acquisition track record that continues to widen its reach. On that basis, the business reads less like a simple freight operator and more like a longduration service partner to Australian agriculture.
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BWA | JUL 2026 31 Building a Global Clinical-AI Company from a Mission-Led Australian Founding Team Harrison.ai has become one of the strongest AI companies to emerge from Australia because it was built around a real healthcare bottleneck rather than a generic machine-learning thesis. The company says it was founded in 2018 by brothers Dr Aengus Tran and Dimitry Tran, with the belief that technology could help make quality healthcare more available and more equitable at scale. Today, Harrison.ai describes itself as a global healthtech company focused on AI-powered diagnostic support and workflow solutions in radiology and pathology, with growing reach across Australia, Europe, Asia and the United States. The founder background gives the company unusual depth. Harrison.ai’s own long-form founder profile on Aengus says he grew up in Vietnam in a family deeply shaped by maths and education, later studied medicine
32 BWA | JUL 2026 in Australia, and became increasingly convinced that the world’s healthcare problems could not be solved by clinicians alone. The same profile says his brother Dimitry brought the business and execution lens to the company’s formation, giving Harrison.ai a founding structure that combined clinical credibility with commercial ambition from the beginning. That pairing still feels central to the way the business presents itself today. That origin story matters because Harrison.ai never really looked like a conventional enterprise-software startup. The company has consistently framed its mission less around “AI transformation” in the abstract and more around the specific pressures facing modern healthcare systems: clinician shortages, rising imaging volumes, delayed diagnosis and growing workflow complexity. Its public materials say the goal is to expand clinician capacity, improve operational efficiency and support earlier disease detection, which is a more grounded and useful framing than many AI-healthcare companies manage. The company’s capital journey also shows how that thesis has matured. In February 2025, Harrison.ai announced a US$112 million Series C, saying the round would support accelerated expansion into the United States and broader scaling of its AI-powered diagnostic and workflow products. Its About page now says total capital raised exceeds US$240 million, which places it among the more heavily backed private AI companies
BWA | JUL 2026 33 in Australia and underlines how much investor conviction has accumulated around the platform over time. Importantly, that capital was raised against a business that was already showing a more coherent product architecture than many medtech AI peers. In 2025, Harrison.ai unified its identity more clearly by bringing together its radiology and pathology businesses under a single brand, with earlier entities such as Annalise.ai and Franklin.ai tied more explicitly into one platform story. The company described that unification as a way to simplify how customers engage with it and to accelerate global growth across medical diagnostics. That matters because it suggests the business is moving beyond a collection of promising products and into something more integrated and scalable. The radiology side of the business appears to be the strongest proof point so far. Harrison.ai says its technology is used across 40+ NHS Trusts in the UK, by more than half of Australia’s radiologists, in every public emergency department in Hong Kong, and with customers in Europe and the United States. Those kinds of deployment claims are significant because they indicate the business is operating well beyond pilot-stage experi-
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BWA | JUL 2026 35 mentation and into routine clinical workflows in major health systems. The partner ecosystem adds another layer of credibility. In late 2025, Harrison.ai announced a strategic partnership with Apollo Radiology International, describing the company as one of the world’s largest and most advanced teleradiology groups. The partnership was framed around using Harrison.ai’s chest X-ray and brain-CT diagnostic support tools to strengthen Apollo’s global reporting capabilities. That is exactly the sort of collaborator that makes a clinical-AI story feel more substantial: not just a health system trying a new tool, but a specialised radiology operator integrating the technology into a scaled service environment. There is also evidence of validation at the productperformance level. Harrison.ai’s site includes published evaluation work on specific diagnostic models, including studies on obstructive hydrocephalus detection and intracranial findings on head CT. That does not make adoption automatic, but it does show the company trying to support its commercial story with clinically meaningful evidence rather than relying only on marketing language. In healthcare AI, that distinction is critical. The challenge for Harrison.ai is that healthcare remains one of the most difficult markets in technology. Procurement cycles are long, integration burdens are high, trust has to be earned with clinicians, and even strong products can stall if the workflow fit is weak. But Harrison.ai’s current shape suggests it is navigating those realities from a position of unusual strength: mission-led founders, significant capital, evidence-backed products, and a growing network of real clinical customers and partners.
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BWA | JUL 2026 37 Turning Quantum Research Pedigree into a Global Quantum Infrastructure Company Q-CTRL is one of the most intellectually ambitious companies in the Australian startup ecosystem, but what makes it genuinely interesting is that it has worked hard to convert that ambition into a commercial category. The company says it is a global leader in quantum infrastructure software, combining quantum control, error suppression, sensing and education tools to accelerate the path to quantum advantage. In a sector often dominated by hardware headlines and scientific mystique, Q-CTRL has built itself around the less glamorous but increasingly critical software and control layer. Founder Professor Michael J. Biercuk is central to that story. Q-CTRL’s About and press-kit materials describe him as a global science and technology innovator with deep experience spanning academia, government and industry, including prior work in the US Department of Defense and intelligence community. The company’s own five-year retrospective says Q-CTRL was founded in November 2017 out of Biercuk’s Quantum Control Laboratory at the University of Sydney, which is important because it shows the business came directly out of frontier research rather than out of trend-following startup opportunism.
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BWA | JUL 2026 39 The company’s funding history reflects that growing credibility. In October 2024, Q-CTRL announced the expansion of its Series B to US$113 million (A$166 million) after adding US$59 million of new capital. The company said the round extension set a global fundraising record for quantum technology and accelerated timelines to quantum advantage. This followed earlier Series B expansions, including a 2023 announcement that brought the Series B total to US$52.4 million and added Salesforce Ventures to the cap table. That progression matters because it shows consistent conviction building over time rather than a single one-off funding spike. What makes Q-CTRL especially compelling is that it has not stayed trapped inside the quantum-computing lab. Its case-study and market materials show a deliberate push into quantum sensing and navigation, areas where the company argues quantum advantage may arrive sooner and prove commercially valuable earlier. The company says it is working with the Australian Department of Defence, the UK Royal Navy, the US Department of Defense, and Airbus on navigation solutions, while separate 2025 material says DARPA selected Q-CTRL to develop next-generation quantum sensors for advanced defense platforms, with support from Lockheed Martin. That partner set is especially important because it widens the startup story beyond quantum-computing enthusiasts. Q-CTRL is not just telling investors that quantum matters someday; it is showing that aero-
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BWA | JUL 2026 41 space and defence organisations are already willing to fund and test quantum-enabled technologies in navigation and sensing contexts where GPS resilience and precision are strategically valuable. That makes the company’s platform feel much more grounded in realworld demand. At the same time, the core software business remains central. Q-CTRL’s materials say its performance-management software runs natively on IBM quantum computers, and the company also highlights Black Opal, its education platform, as part of the overall ecosystem. That combination is interesting because it suggests Q-CTRL is not betting on just one route to market. It is building software for practitioners, tools for learners, and navigation/sensing solutions for applied sectors — all under a broader infrastructure logic. There is also a notable infrastructure commitment at home. In 2023, Q-CTRL announced the groundbreaking of a new global headquarters in Sydney, describing it as the first commercial facility in Australia dedicated to quantum technology. The company said the development was supported by the NSW Government’s Jobs Plus program and the Federal Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative Translation grant, which adds another layer of institutional support to the story. That matters because it shows the business is not only exporting Australian talent; it is also helping build physical quantum-industry presence locally. The challenge for Q-CTRL is the one that haunts the entire quantum sector: timelines. Quantum promise is real, but commercial adoption windows are still uncertain and often overhyped. Yet Q-CTRL’s strategy appears unusually well adapted to that reality. By focusing on infrastructure software, quantum control, education and sensing — rather than on trying to outbuild hardware giants — the company has found multiple nearer-term pathways to relevance. That does not eliminate risk, but it gives the business a broader commercial base than many quantum peers.
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BWA | JUL 2026 43 Rebuilding Momentum Through Scale, Channel Diversity and a Broader Homebuilding Platform Simonds is one of the clearest listed names available when looking for publicly traded Australian residential homebuilders of meaningful scale. The company’s website says the Simonds story began with founder Gary Simonds and now stretches back more than 75 years, while its latest half-year reporting describes Simonds Homes as one of Australia’s largest volume homebuilders, with display homes across Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. That heritage gives the business a strong foundation, but what makes Simonds more relevant now is the way it appears to be evolving beyond a classic volume-builder identity into a broader multi-channel housing platform. That broader platform is visible in the current product and channel mix. Simonds said in its 1HFY26 report that it operates across single- and double-storey detached homes, medium-density developments and dual-occupancy projects, servicing customers in metropolitan state-capital markets and major regional cities. This is an important shift in emphasis. Instead of presenting itself solely as a traditional detached-home builder, the company is leaning harder into adjacent housing formats that better reflect affordability pressures, smaller lots, denser urban conditions and the growing need for more flexible residential supply across multiple buyer groups. The 1HFY26 numbers suggest that strategy has already begun to generate stronger momentum. Simonds reported group revenue of $362.8 million, up 14.1% year on year, together with EBITDA of $17.9 million and group NPAT of $3.0 million. The company attributed that revenue growth primarily to a higher number of jobs under construction, reflecting both the contribution from Dennis Family Homes (DFH) and
44 BWA | JUL 2026 the impact of investment in alternative sales channels. Site starts rose to 904, up 23.3%, and the company also reported improved gross margin through a combination of higher revenue, stronger portfolio performance and ongoing productivity improvements on site. The Dennis Family Homes acquisition is a central part of that current story. Simonds has said the completion of the DFH acquisition in February was a significant strategic milestone, delivering immediate financial benefits while expanding the group’s product range, display footprint and market reach. In the half-year report, management said the successful integration of DFH was one of the main reasons starts and jobs under construction rose. That matters because it suggests the acquisition is not simply a paper-scale transaction; it is actively changing the size and shape of the operating platform in a way that is already visible in production activity. The second major expansion marker is geographic. Subsequent-events disclosure in the 1HFY26 report said Simonds entered into a 50:50 joint venture with Atlas Building to undertake residential construction projects in Western Australia. That is a particularly useful partner detail because it signals a practical route into a new market without requiring a full standalone rollout from day one. In other words, Simonds is not trying to force a Western Australian presence through pure corporate transplantation; it is entering with a local partner and a shared structure that reduces friction while broadening the company’s national footprint.
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BWA | JUL 2026 47 The company’s growth logic is also tied increasingly to channel diversity. Simonds said it continues to invest in Medium Density and Wholesale channels to diversify revenue streams and build a more stable construction pipeline, while also pointing to opportunities in ready-build homes and government-related affordable housing work. Management specifically referenced the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), noting that later rounds of funding aimed at delivering 21,000 affordable and social homes support long-term demand and create additional development opportunities for the group. That is important because it suggests Simonds is trying to place itself in parts of the housing market where policy support and structural undersupply can create more durable workstreams. None of that removes the underlying challenges of the sector. Simonds’ half-year report acknowledged continuing macroeconomic pressure, the capital-intensive nature of residential construction and the need to support customers affected by builder insolvencies in Victoria through cooperation with domestic building insurers. Those are not small challenges. They underline how difficult the operating environment remains, even for larger and better-capitalised participants. But they also help explain why Simonds is leaning into scale, integration, broader product types and multiple sales channels rather than relying on one narrower version of the homebuilding model. That is ultimately what makes Simonds a strong feature. It has genuine heritage, meaningful residential scale, and a recent period of operating improvement that appears to be backed by real strategic change rather than temporary market luck. The combination of DFH, Atlas Building, affordable-housing tailwinds and broader product/channel diversification makes Simonds look like a builder trying to emerge from a difficult period with a more durable and versatile platform than before. For your expanded residentialconstruction set, that gives the company more editorial substance than a simple volume-builder label would suggest.
48 BWA | JUL 2026 Expanding from Fitout Specialist to Diversified Construction Services Leader
BWA | JUL 2026 49 SHAPE Australia has spent more than three decades building a reputation around technically demanding interiors, refurbishments and liveenvironment project delivery, but the business today is broader than that legacy might suggest. The company describes itself as a national fitout and construction services specialist, operating across all capital cities and a number of large regional centres, with capabilities spanning fitout and refurbishment, design and build, façade remediation, modular construction, new build, aftercare and facilities maintenance. Its own project archive says it has delivered more than 7,250 projects valued at over $10 billion. That widening capability is central to the company’s current profile. SHAPE’s investor materials say it is steadily transforming from a fitout and refurbishment specialist into a diversified construction services leader, and its sector mix now runs across commercial office, government, defence, education, health, hotels and hospitality, and retail. The company also says it has more than 746 people nationally, while a FY25 trading update described an award-winning culture and a Net Promoter Score of +88. The financial performance in FY25 suggests that broader model is working. SHAPE reported FY25 revenue of $956.9 million, up 14.1% year on year, EBITDA of $32.7 million, up 26.3%, and profit after tax attributable to shareholders of $21.1 million, up 31.9%. Its FY25 results announcement described that outcome as strong financial and operational performance, supported by diversified work across multiple sectors and geographies. What makes SHAPE especially interesting editorially is that the company sits in a part of the market where execution detail matters. It is often working in live hospitals, operating workplaces, education environments and public facilities where disruption has to be tightly
50 BWA | JUL 2026 managed and the quality of coordination between client, architect, project manager and builder can make or break the outcome. That is a less glamorous story than a high-profile tower build, but it is often where construction capability is tested most directly. The company’s work for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra captures that well. SHAPE refurbished AMSA’s office at 18 Marcus Clarke Street, transforming Levels 7 and 8 into a new workspace that included the Australian Response Centre. The project page identifies Davenport Campbell as designer and Dowse Projects as client project manager, while SHAPE said the team managed RFIs quickly, used frequent on-site architect visits and material substitutions to minimise delays, and delivered the project in a constrained environment with careful scheduling. That paragraph matters because it makes SHAPE’s collaborator ecosystem visible. On projects like AMSA, the company is not simply handed a blank site and left alone; it works within a broader delivery structure involving design consultants, project managers and public-sector clients, and its value lies partly in how well it manages those interfaces. For a profile like this, those are not incidental names — Davenport Campbell and Dowse Projects help explain the kind of coordinated delivery environment SHAPE has become comfortable operating within. A second project, the Centre for Better Health Futures at Charles Darwin University, shows SHAPE at a different scale. The company says it delivered the full construction and fitout scope for the facility, including bulk earthworks, services, external works, simulation spaces, VR technology, advanced AV systems and specialist teaching areas. The project page names Charles Darwin University as client, with concept design by Ashford Lamaya / ARCH and final design by Hames Sharley / Studio BE. That CDU project is useful because it reflects a more complex version of SHAPE’s growth path. This was not just an interior refurbishment; it was a new-build healthcare education facility with structural complexity, design changes during construction, labour con-
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52 BWA | JUL 2026 straints and a fixed teaching deadline. SHAPE says it re-sequenced works to meet occupancy requirements, continued variations after handover to minimise disruption, and used early engagement with subcontractors to manage labour-market pressure. That reads like a business growing by taking on harder work, not simply more work. The modular division is another major part of that expansion story. SHAPE says its modular team offers an end-to-end service spanning design, offsite manufacturing and construction, and recent project pages show how that plays out in real terms. On the New Women’s and Children’s Hospital Managing Contractor Compound in South Australia, SHAPE’s modular team manufactured 44 units to support the main hospital development, with Lendlease and SA Health named as clients, Das Studio and SHAPE as designers, and DLG SHAPE as builder. That project is important because it shows SHAPE pushing beyond its original fitout identity into repeatable, industrialised delivery. The compound was designed to house around 150 professionals supporting South Australia’s largest health project, and SHAPE said the modular solution minimised ground disturbance while delivering a long-term, accessible and sustainable office environment. With DLG SHAPE sitting inside that mix, the group structure itself becomes part of the partner story. The challenge section for SHAPE is therefore less about existential pressure and more about execution complexity. Its projects often involve live operations, staged handovers, design changes, constrained sites, labour shortages and multiple stakeholder groups. On the CDU project, the company said design changes and accessibility upgrades added significant scope during construction; on AMSA, it referred to logistical con-
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