HedgeCo.Net — Blackbird closed its sixth venture fund at A$1.05 billion, the largest venture-capital raise on record in Australia and New Zealand, Business News Australia reported from the firm’s August 25 announcement. FinanceAsia, Capital Brief, and Financial Newswire independently printed the same A$1.05 billion close and the same record claim. Dollar conversions in the coverage do not agree; keep the object in Australian dollars.
New global limited partners include Adams Street Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Schroders, those outlets said. They sit alongside returning Australian institutions: the Future Fund, Hostplus, Aware Super, and HESTA. That is the LP list to print. Do not invent tickets.
Capital Brief said the A$1.05 billion narrowly beats Blackbird’s 2022 vintage, which had A$1.032 billion of committed capital and was itself the prior Australian record. TechNode Global put the prior fund at about A$1.03 billion in 2022. The inaugural vehicle was a A$29 million fund in 2013, Business News Australia and Capital Brief both noted. The new book keeps the firm’s early-stage, both-sides-of-the-Tasman brief, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, and Auckland.
Blackbird was Canva’s first institutional investor in 2013, Capital Brief reported, and the firm still cites Canva, Airwallex, Halter, and SafetyCulture as portfolio markers. Capital Brief also said 96% of initial investments from the previous early-stage fund were made at pre-seed or seed. That is a style point, not a performance figure. Skip net IRR and dollars returned unless a second outlet prints the same numbers the firm recited.
The allocator question is whether a record ANZ vehicle still behaves like a seed fund once global names are on the cap table. A$1.05 billion is a lot of early checks. Anyone treating the close as a growth-equity rebrand has not read the 96% pre-seed line.