Meet the 55 deep tech startups pitching investors at UNSW’s showcase

This Thursday, October 15, these entrepreneurs will have the chance to put their best founder foot forward in front of investors.

Investors can register their interest in attending here.

The invite-only investor event promises plenty of big ideas and business opportunities.

Here’s a taste of some of the projects and opportunities attendees will hear about:

Founded by Dr Jesse Laeuchli, Quantum Lock is developing a new way to protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats.

Power grids, financial exchanges and data centres need to know their hardware hasn’t been tampered with or compromised. Quantum Lock uses entangled photons and quantum communication protocols to detect intrusion attempts at the device level, offering a physics-based way to verify that mission-critical hardware remains secure.

Founded: 2025 | Stage: Pre-seed

Founded by Dr Lawrence Lee, Dr Min Huang, Brock Siegel and William Hyun, SWAN Genomics is commercialising the world’s first single-molecule DNA sequencing platform built on plasmonic nanoantennas.

Protected by seven patent filings and backed by more than US$6M from investors, the UNSW spinout bridges short-read accuracy and long-read capability to deliver scalable, cost-effective sequencing across research, biotech and clinical diagnostics.

Founded: 2023 | Stage: Series A

Founded by Flora Salim, Hao Xue and Devin Hua, DataCruiser is building AI for the moving world.

Physical infrastructure operators lack unified predictive insights to make decisions in dynamic, unobservable environments. DataCruiser’s platform ingests real-time physical data to forecast demand spikes, spot anomalies and run proactive “what-if” simulations on the fly.

Founded by Goran Bozic and Prof. Shawn Kook, DeCarice is a UNSW spinout tackling the challenge of decarbonising heavy diesel fleets.

Transitioning heavy commercial diesel fleets to zero-emission alternatives is expensive and slow to deploy at scale, making existing clean power technologies non-viable for many heavy industrial businesses.

DeCarice adapts diesel engines to run as hydrogen or natural gas hybrids, helping decarbonise heavy diesel fleets without sacrificing performance. The company has developed a prototype engine and has four pilot projects in the pipeline.

Founded by Hélène Klein and Tushar Kumeria, EpiQuil is developing a proprietary dissolving microneedle patch for the transdermal delivery of lipophilic drugs to treat severe, drug-resistant childhood and adult epilepsies, including Lennox-Gastaut syndrome.

The patch aims to eliminate the daily burden of high-volume oral oils, delivering consistent therapeutic doses through the skin to increase bioavailability while improving quality of life for patients and caregivers.

Founded by Dr Craig Benson and Doug Griffin, Skykraft build and operates its own constellation of satellites to deliver real-time air traffic management.

Air traffic control systems don’t work over oceans and in remote areas, leaving major surveillance and safety gaps, particularly in nations with infrastructure challenges such as Papua New Guinea. Skykraft’s satellites deliver real-time global VHF communication and air traffic tracking. Backed by more than $100 million in funding, with 10 satellites already in orbit, the space tech pioneer overcomes line-of-sight radar limits to provide continuous, space-enabled air traffic management for commercial airlines and navigation service providers worldwide.

Founded: 2017 | Stage: Series B

Founded by Shane Keating, CounterCurrent has built the “Google Maps for the sea”, using satellite data and onboard sensors to deliver real-time, hyperlocal ocean forecasts.

Around 11 billion tonnes of cargo are shipped by sea each year. Rising fuel costs and tightening emissions regulations are putting increasing pressure on shipping operators to improve fuel efficiency, reduce emissions and maintain profitability. CounterCurrent’s AI routing system cuts commercial vessel fuel burn and emissions by 10–25 per cent without requiring vessel modifications, saving operators up to AUD $9 million per ship annually.

Founded: 2024 | Stage: Pre-seed

Additional companies that will be at the Showcase include: