Salus Ventures

Q-CTRL has just achieved a major milestone: delivering a GPS-free navigation system in quantum sensing. In doing so, the company has become the first to demonstrate true commercial quantum advantage in navigation. GPS denial is unfortunately a common weapon of both traditional and economic warfare, with over 1000 flights now disrupted by GPS jamming incidents daily and outages estimated to cost over $1 billion per day. Frankly, Q-CTRL's new quantum navigation technology, Ironstone Opal is a game-changer and has outperformed conventional GPS solutions by up to 50x. Salus Ventures is delighted to have backed Michael Biercuk and the team at Q-CTRL in their effort to unearth the benefits of quantum for practical use. You can read more about this achievement in the comments below. 🚀 #QuantumAdvantage #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

It is with great excitement that we announce the appointment of aerospace and defence industry veteran Dr. Shane Arnott to the Salus Ventures Strategic Advisor Program. Shane leads Anduril Industries programs and engineering teams as Senior Vice President. Prior to this, he was with the Boeing Group for over 20 years, where he served as one of Boeing's most senior lead engineers and enjoyed the title of being the first non-American Senior Technical Fellow. Shane's experience cuts across the deep technology and national security sectors and in the Australian market, his work is truly unparalleled, having led both the Ghost Bat and Ghost Shark programs. With unrivalled knowledge of air and naval technology innovation and development in domestic and global contexts, Shane will drive maximum impact for Salus Ventures' cadre of founders. 🚀 Shane joins other industry and policy luminaries such as Paul Symon AO, The Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO, Rear Admiral Lee Goddard CSC and Kate Lundy in the Salus Ventures Strategic Advisor Program. On his appointment, Shane said: “It’s an honour to join Salus Ventures as a Senior Advisor. I look forward to collaborating with the team to advance critical sovereign capabilities, contribute to defending democracy, and foster innovation within Australia’s tech ecosystem.” We look forward to the deep value Shane will add to our portfolio companies and overall investment strategy. #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

Arkeus team busy on stand at #SeaAirSpace2025. Big thank you to Rear Admiral Eric Ver Hage, Military Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International and Industry Engagement, and Major General Hugh Meggitt, Head of Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) who both made time to find out more about how Arkeus is rapidly accelerating decision making in challenging, #contested or denied environments Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) David McCue Patrick McCann

Last week, Salus Ventures General Partner and Co-Founder, Dan Bennett spoke at the Tech Council of Australia's Australian Cyber Exchange 2025 conference, the nation's first cyber exchange program. Dan spoke alongside a number of academic and industry leaders, including; Antony Hosking, Catie McHugh and Pieter Danhieux. During the session, panellists shared their frank and diverse assessments of Australia's cyber security opportunities and challenges, exploring how different sectors of the economy can work together to power innovation, enhance commercialisation and bolster sovereign cyber security capacity. 🇦🇺 Speaking to the VC and startup environment, Dan outlined a number of Australian cyber success stories such as Kasada, Secure Code Warrior and Bugcrowd, who are building a foundation from which the next generation of Australian cyber founders will grow. Congratulations to the Tech Council of Australia for a flawlessly executed event and for bringing this very important dialogue to the forefront of discussion across the Australian technology industry. 👏 #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

Last night our General Partners and Co-Founders Marten Peck and Dan Bennett hosted a constructive discussion with Vu Tran, Co-Founder of Black Sky Industries (formerly of Go1) as part of The University of Queensland's UQ Ventures Momentum Accelerator. 🚀 Salus Ventures is proud to be partnering with the UQ Ventures Momentum Accelerator to deliver the National Security & Dual-Use Technology Cohort and the conversation last night was an early indication of how much enthusiasm there is in Queensland around private capital crowding in to support dual-use innovation. The conversation surfaced three key takeaways: (1) The private sector is driving innovation: Though government sets the demand signal, private industry is powering solutions. Private capital has a key role to play in this regard and is powering the roll out and scaling of impactful solutions for government. (2) Accelerators open the aperture: Accelerator programs can expand the realm of the possible. Entrepreneur in Residence, Vu Tran, shared his own experience participating in Y Combinator and passed on the lesson of challenging the status quo to achieve the remarkable. (3) Partnering with the right VC fund allows innovators to reach their potential: The Salus Ventures team and Vu Tran swapped thoughts on how critical selecting the right venture partner is, noting that rather than just providing an exit opportunity, a good VC will superpower scale. Great to see so many talented Australian innovators at the event and can't wait for the program to kick off in earnest. 🇦🇺 Don't forget to apply by this Friday April 4! Link in the comments below. Marten Peck Dan Bennett Yazz Krishna Hannah Sharaf Bryce Turner Veronica Nolan DCI David Elchuk Vu Tran Emily J Hughes Chaos1 Brad Pettit Benny Johanson #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

What an incredible atmosphere and fusion of Industry, Defence, Government and Academia coming together to accelerate capability advancement at the Avalon Australian International Airshow last week. Our Co-Founders and General Partners, Dan Bennett and Marten Peck represented Salus Ventures and met with friends, members of the community, Australian defence industry, as well as major global players. 🇦🇺 This year featured particularly interesting insights from Major General Hugh Meggitt, who outlined Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA)'s expedited roadmap in the coming months. Our hearts go out to SkyAces Airman Glenn Collins, who remains in critical condition after his accident. #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

Great to see Stephane Janson representing Salus Ventures and sharing our in-house position on quantum in the context of dual use technology at the 2025 Quantum Australia Conference. Steph discussed the nuances of venture investing in quantum, calling on universities to consider creating an entrepreneurship sabbatical for talented staff. He noted, "it would be great if lecturers could go and found a startup but have the ability to return to their university position if it didn't work out. This would unlock a more risk accepting culture and create a flywheel of talent." The Quantum Australia Conference brought together world-leading quantum researchers, businesses, government decision-makers, startups and big tech to exchange views on the state of the field, providing a behind the scenes look at what it takes to excel in the quantum industry. 🚀 Great to see Steph sharing the stage with experts William Zeng, James Davern, Michael Harvey and Alejandra Romero. #quantumcomputing #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes

One of our portfolio companies, Arkeus, has just announced the close of an oversubscribed, $5 million funding round to accelerate the expansion of their sovereign defence AI capabilities. As CEO Simon Olsen noted, Arkeus is the leader in autonomous optical systems and has recently seen a 10x increase in demand for its capabilities. This funding will allow the company to rapidly expand manufacturing capacity and deliver more, faster to their growing customer book across government and enterprise. With AUKUS nations demonstrating sustained focus on Pillar II, Arkeus is perfectly placed to support this increased demand. Salus Ventures was proud to support this latest funding round, which will propel Arkeus into new geographies. We look forward to continuing to leverage our deep global networks in support of this aim. Salus Ventures Co-Founder and General Partner, Dan Bennett said, “Salus Ventures is delighted to support the world-class multidisciplinary team at Arkeus, which continues to demonstrate exceptional customer pull through.” Dan remarked that Salus will continue to activate its deep global networks in support of Arkeus’ expansion into new geographies. #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes 🧵 Link to article in comments.

Looking forward to seeing our friends and colleagues at Avalon Australian International Airshow next week. Keep an eye out for our General Partners Dan Bennett and Marten Peck who will be walking the floors along with Salus Ventures' strategic advisors. Salus portfolio companies, Arkeus and Visionary Machines will be exhibiting - make sure to stop past! Simon Olsen Jonathan Nebauer Sonny Foster Nick Gibbs Enver Eyiam #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes Image credit: Avalon Airshow 🛩️

Great to see our own Dan Bennett, General Partner and Co-Founder of Salus Ventures contributing to Paul Smith’s exclusive for The Australian Financial Review over the weekend. The wide-ranging piece featured commentary from a handful of leading partners across the venture sector, surveying their responses to key questions about the state of the industry 🇦🇺.   Dan observed increasing interest from global venture funds – especially located in the US – in Australian companies. On this he said, “there’s a direct correlation between this trend and the importance of Australia to the US through AUKUS Pillar II initiatives, and to Indo-Pacific resilience (…) more broadly.” Dan also noted the tailwinds provided by the cadre of Silicon Valley executives now in key positions in the Trump administration, saying “alignment between the tech sector and the US government has arguably never been stronger.” #backingheroicfounders #joiningforces #backingheroes