Published on the 04/05/2026 | Written by Newsdesk
AppWrap aims to help you keep up to date with an easy to read collection of news and snippets published by other leading tech media publications that we trust. AppWrap May 2026 07.05 Australia’s largest tech startup community, Fishburners, is in volu
AppWrap aims to help you keep up to date with an easy to read collection of news and snippets published by other leading tech media publications that we trust.
AppWrap May 2026
07.05 Australia’s largest tech startup community, Fishburners, is in voluntary liquidation, with KPMG appointed administrator. InformationAge reports KPMG is facilitating a strategic restructuring of the organisation, and will be seeking expressions of interest from parties in the innovation and tech sectors. Fishburners will continue to trade as usual while the assessment is underway.
06.05 Australian education institutions are among those caught in a worldwide cyber security attack after they Canvas learning management system, developed by US company Instructure, was subjected to a hack. ABC News reports state schools in Queensland and Tasmania, universities in NSW and South Australia and TAFE in Tasmania are affected. Instructure says it doesn’t believe birthdates, passwords, government identifiers or financial information have been impacted. Names, locations of study, email addresses and messages between users are however believed to have been compromised.
04.05 NAB has changed its capitalised software policy, reducing the value and useful life of capitalised software assets thanks in part to AI enabling software to be built or replicated quickly and cheaply. ITnews reports the bank took a $1.3b hit to its underlying profit and $949m to its cash earnings for H1 FY2026 owing to the change.
AppWrap April 2026
28.04 Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Amanda Rishworth says her department is currently undertaking gap analysis to identify how current frameworks and institutions are interacting with the adoption of AI. Speaking at the AFR Workforce Summit, Rishworth noted the tripartite AI Employment and Workplaces Forum, which meets for the first time this week, bringing together government, employers and unions to ‘build a common understanding’ and translate themes of trust, capability, transparency, safety and productivity into actions and outcomes in workplaces.
27.04 NAB is building an AI science team to guide how AI tools are deployed across the business and the workforce’s transition. TheAussieCorporate says the team will shape which tasks are automated and which new roles are created to support them. The work includes designing systems to safely handle customer data, helping make staff decisions and streamlining back office processes.
23.04 The Australian government has signed a MoU with Microsoft which is promising to continue investment in local AI capability and cloud computing and align with the governments Expectations for Data Centres and AI Infrastructure Developers. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources says the MoU – the second under the National AI Plan – also outlines Microsoft’s intention to collaborate with government on AI safety and workforce capability, support delivery of the APS AI plan and help the government understand future infrastructure needs.
22.04 The OAIC has found that InspectRealEstate’s rent-tech platform, 2Apply, collected excessive information and did so by unfair means. The OAIC says the platform has agreed to adapt its personal information collection practices on a without-admissions basis. The decision requires IRE to cease collecting personal information just as prospective renters’ gender, student status, citizen status and visa expiry and details of previous living history.
21.04 Identity verification company Persona has announced an integration with ConnectID, the Australian digital identity exchange created by Australian Payments Plus. BiometricUpdate says the integration keeps data private, providing age verification that relies on data a financial institution has already collected from a user.
22.04 The eSafety commissioner has given legally enforceable transparency notices to Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and Stream amid concerns online games are being used to spread violent propaganda and radicalise young people and by sexual predators to groom children. eSafety says the notices require the providers to explain how they are identifying, preventing and responding to these harms, along with bullying and online hate.
21.04 A NSW Treasury staff member has been charged after allegedly downloading more than 5,600 government documents containing ‘confidential commercial and financial information’. NSW Government says the information covers multiple departments and projects. Police believe all the data has been located and is now secure, with no external compromise to the Treasury’s system.
16.04 Apple has granted Australian law enforcement access to user notification data for the first time. InformationAge reports a transparency report shows four push token identifiers were sought across two of the requests, with one push token request granted.
16.04 South32 Aluminium is suing Siemens alleging missing code in a programmable logic controller led to a steam turbine generator overheating and being ‘effectively destroyed’, ITnews reports.
15.04 Travel giant Booking.com has notified an unknown number of customers about a data breach which has seen hackers steal customer data. BBC reports some customers have contacted it saying they have already started receiving suspicious messages. Booking.com has declined to say how many people are affected or in what regions.
09.04 Canva has acquired Australian AI tool Simtheory and Australian marketing automation company Ortto for undisclosed sums. Canva says the deals will take it from a design tool to an ‘end-to-end’ work system and strengthen its AI capabilities, 9news reports.
09.04 Bendigo and Adelaide Bank will cut its tech and business operations teams after signing two major tech deals with Infosys and Genpact outsourcing some tech and business management capability. The cuts will save the business at least $65 million yoy, by the 2028 financial year AFR reports. It adds hundreds of roles are likely to be affected.
03.04 Artemis II astronauts experienced Microsoft Outlook failures shortly after launch, with Mission Control called in to remotely troubleshoot the issue. Commander Reid Wiseman reported that two instances of Outlook were running simultaneously on his Surface Pro, leaving both unresponsive, Mashable reports.
02.04 The ATO has launched an in-app security feature enabling users to confirm, in real-time, that they are speaking with the real ATO not a fraudster. Almost 7,500 ATO impersonation scams were reported in July 2025 alone, with impersonation scams peaking during tax time, the ATO says.
01.04 SpaceX has filed confidentially for an IPO according to reports, which say the company is committed to debuting in June, with Elon Musk aiming to raise US$50b-$75b. The NYTimes reports SpaceX values itself at more than $1 trillion and would be one of the most valuable companies to reach the stock market.
01.04 Oracle is cutting thousands of jobs from its 162,000-strong workforce, with 10,000 believed to have lost their job so far. Senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers and technical specialists are among those affected, the BBC reports. Around 10,000 people are believed to have lost their jobs so far. It is unknown if the cuts are related to Oracle’s heavy AI spend.
01.04 The Federal government has signed a new MoU with Anthropic to build on the national AI plan launched in late 2025.
AppWrap March 2026
31.03 eSafety has flagged Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube for compliance issues with the Australian Social Media Minimum Age obligation and is gathering evidence to inform potential enforcement action, it says.
26.03 Meta and Google have lost a landmark US case, with a Los Angeles jury finding the two companies negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people. Reuters reports the jury found Meta liable for damages of US$4.2 million, with Google liable for $1.8m in the case of a US woman who sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media.
25.03 Delaying public disclosure of serious cyberattacks on critical infrastructure operators ‘to prevent disclosure from compromising national security’ is one of five changes proposed in a Department of Home Affairs consultation paper for amended Security of Critical Infrastructure (Soci) rules. Other reforms in the paper include changes to make it easier for the government to restrict multiple entities from using high-risk vendors or technology and clarity around the threshold for issuing a direction.
25.03 Canva has acquired Melbourne-based digital out of home advertising company Doohly in a $30m deal which adds outdoor advertising to its offering. The deal is the design company’s third acquisition this year and comes just a month after it bought US startup Mango.AI and the UK’s Cavalry notes StartupDaily.
24.03 Silicon Quantum Computing has secured $20m from the National Reconstruction Fund to support scaling of its quantum processing units and Watermelon machine learning system, SmartCompany reports.
19.03 The X Money payments service, Elon Musk’s attempt to build a ‘everything app’ will enter early public access in April. Musk’s ambitions for the embedding payments into X are broader than most Western tech companies, notes PaymentsIndustryIntelligence, with Musk talking about a system that could eventually encompass savings, payments, securities and other financial activity, reducing reliance on traditional banking channels. At launch X Money is expected to offer core wallet and payment functions, including the ability to move funds within the platform.
18.03 An attempt by the CEO of US videogame publisher Unknown Worlds to wriggle out of paying a US$250m performance has suffered a setback after the court documents showed Changhan Kim asked ChatGPT how to avoid paying the bonus. InformationAge reports Kim engaged the chatbot to draft a corporate takeover strategy, which involved stymieing the release of the highly anticipated Subnautica 2. Following ‘guidance’ from ChatGPT he also posted public ‘critical messages’ on the company website.
17.03 Google has reportedly paused plans for a $20b AI and data centre hub, warning the federal government that high taxes could cause the country to miss out on investment. DatacentreDynamics reports the company has told government it is concerned that if it set up such a hub in Australia, the ATO would consider it a ‘permanent establishment’ exposing it to a 30 percent corporate tax rate. Google is currently exploring where to establish the major APAC hub.
16.03 AI disruption is causing Australian software companies to make big job cuts, with private tech companies expected to follow in the footsteps of Atlassian and WiseTech with redundancy rounds, valuation cuts and a bottleneck for public listings, AFR reports.
12.03 Atlassian is cutting around 1,600 jobs – or 10 percent of its workforce. The company says the move is to ‘self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales’, while strengthening its financial profile, Forbes reports. The retrenchment will cost between $225m-$236m.
11.03 Professional body CA ANZ says it will investigate the failure of an external exam delivery platform after more than 1,300 students were locked out of one exam and another 60 experienced delays of up to 40 minutes on a second exam. CA ANZ blamed a failure in an external exam platform operated by a third-party provider.
11.03 US medtech giant Stryker has been hit by a major cyberattack, with an Iran-linked hacking group claiming responsibility, saying it is in retaliation for the killing of more than 170 people – mainly schoolgirls – in a strike on a school, and warning it marks the beginning of a new chapter in cyber warfare, Al Jazeera reports. The group says it has seized 50TB of Stryker data in the attack which it says has erased data from 200,000 devices.
10.03 Anthropic is opening a Sydney office and hiring a local team. The company says Australia ranks fourth globally in Claude.ai usage, relative to population, with strong demand from local business. It says it plans to deepen engagement with Australian institutions and collaborate on projects that advance the country’s national interests and priority sectors. It is also exploring opportunities to expand compute capacity in Australia ‘given our longstanding belief that democracies should lead in AI development’. The company is currently suing the US government over its claims that Anthropic is a ‘supply chain risk’. The row erupted after Anthropic refused to all US military to have unfettered use to its AI tools.
05.03 Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind is warning Australian organisations that a recent ruling allowing Bunnings to use facial recognition is not a green light for the technology. Kind, who says she has not filed an appeal of the Administrative Review Tribunal finding, which overturned her ruling against the technology, says the decision shows the law allows for the balancing of competing interests – privacy vs public safety – but entities will need to conduct a detailed risk assessment specific to their circumstances before deploying the technology. “Retailers should view the decision as a useful case study, rather than a green light for deployment of biometric technologies,” she says.
AppWrap February 2026
27.02 Commonwealth Bank has called in the police and corporate regulator over concerns $1b in home loans were obtained fraudulently, including with AI-created documents. AFR reports the bank reported itself to police and the regulator after a review of the compliance practices and customer lending documents, which stepped up following revelations about the Penthouse Syndicate, which allegedly defrauded NAB of around $150m. Increasingly sophisticated AI has made it easier to create authentic looking false documents and to steal identities.
26.02 Nvidia has posted blockbuster quarterly results of US$68.1 billion – up 73 percent year on year and well above analysts’ forecasts. Revenue from the data centre division, which sells the chips used to train and run AI models was up 75 percent yoy to $62.3 billion, the company says.
25.02 Australian logistics software company WiseTech is cutting around 2,000 jobs – nearly a third of its global workforce in a restructure focused on using genAI to increase efficiency in software engineering and support, Reuters reports.
25.02 Australian Peter Williams has been jailed for seven years for selling critical software and information related to cybersecurity to a broker with ties to the Russian government. Williams was working in the US. 9News reports the tools were cyber-exploit components which can be used to identify weaknesses in tech systems or infect them with viruses.
24.02 The federal government has scrapped a permanent AI advisory board appointed to develop AI guardrails. ABCnews reports the body, funded in the 2024 Budget, was scrapped only months after spending $188,000 and more than a year whittling down a list of experts to a shortlist of 12 nominees. The government says it will instead establish an AI safety institute early this year.
25.02 Commonwealth Bank is spending $90 million to get staff ‘AI-ready’. The bank says the program will help employees ‘build skills, find new opportunities and get ahead of the changing nature of work’. AI learning has already been delivered to 30,000+ staff.
24.02 The ASD has publicly released its Azul open-source malware analysis tool to help safely handle and analyse malware. Azul is designed for large-scale malware analysis and is designed to be highly scalable and store tens of millions of samples, ASD says, adding it can turn common analysis steps into analysis plugins which can be used as part of an automated workflow and assist in identifying variants of a malware family more efficiently.
18.02 Xero is restructuring with 250 jobs on the line – including in Australia. The company is creating around 280 roles in Canada as part of the restructure, BusinessDesk reports [paywalled].
18.02 YouTube suffered an outage from around 11.50am AEDT, with a spokesperson for Google saying an issue with the recommendations system prevented videos appearing.
18.02 The federal opposition has unveiled a new-look shadow ministry under Angus Taylor, with Victorian senator Sarah Henderson appointed shadow communications and digital safety minister. ABCnews reports Casey MP Aaron Violi has been promoted to the outer shadow ministry with a broad portfolio including science, technology, cyber security and the digital economy. Deputy Liberal Leader Jane Hume will be shadow minister for employment and industrial relations as well as productivity and deregulation.
18.02 Australian company Terram Astra has set its sights on a US$10m seed capital raise for a new sovereign ground-based infrastructure platform designed to strengthen communications resilience, defence readiness and space safety across the region. Manufacturers’ Monthly reports Terram Astra’s first hub is located near Alice Springs.
17.02 Highly sensitive Australian court files have been accessed by a foreign entity based in India, an ABCnews investigation has revealed, with Greens senator David Shoebridge saying access to the cases by foreign entities is ‘a national security risk’. The investigation showed Canada’s VIQ Solutions, which employs transcribers in Australia, has also subcontracted work to an Indian company specialising in automated voice-to-text technology, in breach of the VIQ contract. Thousands of court files were accessed by e24 staff with Indian email addresses.
16.02 Federal government entities are failing to report cyber incidents to the Australian Signals Directorate. InformationAge reports just 35 percent of the 200 government entities said they reported at least half of all cybersecurity incidents observed on their networks.
11.02 Service NSW has started testing a new system enabling residents to verify who they are in a single step when interacting with state government services online. ITnews reports initially the digital ID system will be used with a limited number of services, starting with a state toll rebate scheme.
06.02 Australian-founded AI data centre startup Firmus Technologies has secured another $100m to expand its local data centres. The funding, from ASX-listed Maas Group means the company, which is Singapore-based, has raised more than $900m in less than five months, StartupDaily reports.
06.02 CommBank says it has become the first bank to disclose how it is ideating, developing, deploying and managing AI at an organisational level, including ‘practical examples’ of AI in action across the business. Those examples include AI to protect against fraud and scams, strengthen cyber security, enhance customer experience and detect abuse in transaction descriptions.
05.02 Atlassian’s revenue for the quarter to December 31 was up 23 percent to US$1.58 billion, with cloud revenue growing 26 percent providing the company with its first $1b cloud revenue quarter. However, net loss also grew from $38.2m to $42.6m. Operating loss was down from $57.5m to $47.7m the company says. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes dubbed the quarter ‘fantastic’, adding: “We’re building a bloody great business.”
03.02 The federal government has rejected a bipartisan proposal which would have allowed a parliamentary committee to cancel large consultancy contracts, saying its own reforms are doing the job. A centralised register for conflicts of interest breaches has also been ruled out.
03.02 Australia’s STEM capability is facing a ‘severe crisis’ as a result of flatlining Commonwealth funded research, Science and Technology Australia says. In a pre-budget submission it says Stem research must stop being viewed as a cost and instead be seen as an investment. It says 47 percent of Stem professionals are considering leaving their current roles, with 33 percent planning to leave the sector altogether.
03.02 Xero says more than two million subscribers are using its full AI features, with more than 300,000 using its newer GenAI features. In a market update today the company claimed customers are saving around 22 hours a month using bank feeds and automated actions, with more than 12 percent using AI Insights.
03.02 Kiwi AI startup Teacher’s Buddy has raised $2.3m in trans-Tasman seed funding. The offering aims to reduce teacher workloads, helping with marking and student report writing and producing customised, differentiated curriculum-aligned teaching and assessment materials The company says the funding was led by Auckland’s Soul Capital and Australia’s Giant Leap.
02.02 Victoria has set its sights on being Australia’s AI capital with the launch of an AI Mission Statement setting out the Allan government’s plans across six key pillars of investment attraction and adoption, data centres and digital infrastructure, local innovation, products and services, talent and workforce, ethical AI use and public sector adoption. The plan includes a $8.1 million Digital Jobs – AI Career Conversion program to safeguard jobs in industries at risk from AI, upskilling workers to transition into AI roles and become specialists in the technology.
AppWrap January 2026
27.01 Airwallex boss Jack Zhang says the fintech is at least two years away from a public listing, despite regular references to an IPO in 2026. Zhang’s comments, reported in StartupDaily, follow news last week that Austrac has ordered an audit of the company over AML/CTF concerns.
26.01 The APS plans a whole-of-government learning technology ecosystem following a co-design involving teams from 37 Commonwealth agencies. ITnews reports a core goal of the new system is to enable interoperability and integration across learning and development environments.
23.01 TikTok has finalised agreements with backers including Oracle, Silver Lake and Emirati company MGX to establish a US joint venture. Each of the three backers will hold a 15 percent stake in the company. ByteDance keeps a 19.9 percent share. The BBC reports the content recommendation algorithm has been licensed to Oracle – headed by Trump ally Larry Ellison – which already oversees US user data under a previous arrangement set up over security concerns. The deal will enable TikTok to continue operating in the US, but is likely to continue to be scrutinised, with some Democrats voicing concerns about the ties between Trump and TikTok’s new investor group could limit what gets shared on the platform.
22.01 Australia’s financial intelligence unit, Austrac has ordered an external auditor be appointed to assess whether fintech – and unicorn – Airwallex is complying with anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing. Austrac says it has ‘concerns’ about potential non-compliance including that Airwallex’s transaction monitoring program has not been ‘attuned to the full range of risks it faces’ and the company hasn’t demonstrated an acceptable understanding of who its customers are and what reporting may be required. The auditor must report findings within 180 days of appointment.
20.91 AI projects to improve construction safety, enhance space safety and detect speech delays, are among the 174 projects winning funding in the latest round of Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA) Ignite program. More than $72.5m in funding was allocated. The funding is for projects that build capability I nationally important sectors aligned with the National Reconstruction Fund’s priority areas, AEA says.
20.01 Gilmour Space has become Australia’s first space tech unicorn after raising $217m in a Series E funding round – its largest funding round to date. SpaceNews reports the round was led by the federal government’s National Reconstruction Fund and retirement savings fund Hostplus along with several other investors.
20.01 A bill cracking down on hate speech has passed the House of Representatives and Senate at a special sitting late on Tuesday, a month after 15 were killed at Bondi Beach. It includes provision to ban groups deemed to spread hate, the BBC reports. The hate speech reforms were originally part of an omnibus bill along with gun reforms, but the two were split last week. The gun reform bill, which includes a buyback scheme, was also passed.
16.01 Social media companies removed access to around 4.7 million accounts for those under 16 in the first half of December, eSafety says.
16.01 Alphabet’s Waymo robotaxi business has held discussions with Chinese car maker Geely, and other electric car makers, as it looks to enter the Sydney market. AFR reports. Waymo is stepping up its efforts in Australia, with the appointment of a lobbyist and a search for an office now underway. It has yet to lodge an application to begin testing in the city.
13.01 Advertising is hitting the AI chatbots with ads starting to show up in Google’s ‘AI Mode’ in what the Washington Post says is likely to be just the beginning of more trial-and-error attempts this year. Google has been pushing a new type of ad in AI Mode to advertisers, OpenAI has also been looking at introducing advertising in ChatGPT and Perplexity attempted ads but pulled back last year – but has left the doors open to try again.
08.01 The DTA has warned against outright bans of IT suppliers and services companies for unethical behaviour warning such bans could introduce significant operational risks and unintended consequences. ITnews reports parliament is considering an exclusion regime preventing those engaging in unethical conduct from bidding for government work, in the wake of the PwC scandal. The DTA, however, says blanket bans could block access to tech advances or skilled resources.
