A $3.5 million check buys you different things in different markets. In Silicon Valley, it might fund a Series A extension for a single AI infrastructure team. In Sydney, it bought Nakatomi the operating capital to launch three or four entire companies this year. The venture studio, one of Australia's first of its kind, is betting that hands-on co-creation is the missing layer between local founders and global scale.
Nakatomi's model is straightforward: partner with founders, corporates, or creators, then deploy its cross-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, and strategists to build the venture from day one. The studio takes an equity stake and aims to spin companies out as independent entities. Its early portfolio shows the breadth of the ambition: Ovum, an AI-powered women's health platform; Ruminati, a tool for tracking agricultural emissions; and Peeple, a casual work platform [Nakatomi, Unknown].
The Capital and the Constraint
The $3.5 million raise, reported by Forbes Australia, is a one-off investment rather than a traditional seed round [Forbes Australia, Unknown]. The capital came from a consortium of local operators and funds, including Chris Gillis, co-founder of the AI image generation unicorn Leonardo.AI, Gannet Capital, and Scalare Partners [Forbes Australia, Unknown] [Business News Australia, Unknown]. This is not passive venture capital. The investor group is betting on Nakatomi's ability to systematically de-risk early-stage company building through shared resources and repeated pattern recognition.
The funding, however, defines the studio's immediate scope. At an estimated burn rate to support a full-time build team, $3.5 million realistically fuels the launch of three to four ventures annually, as the firm itself has stated [Forbes Australia, Unknown]. This is a portfolio approach, spreading risk across multiple bets instead of going all-in on one. The constraint is also a discipline: Nakatomi must be highly selective in its partnerships and ruthlessly efficient in its build cycles to make the math work.
The Build Versus Bet Dilemma
The venture studio thesis faces a classic tension. Does adding hands-on support increase the odds of success, or does it simply subsidize ventures that cannot attract traditional venture funding? Nakatomi's answer appears in its corporate partnership arm. The studio helps larger Australian companies build new ventures, effectively acting as an external R&D and innovation lab [Nakatomi, Unknown]. This provides a revenue stream alongside equity, and it leverages a market need many corporates have: the desire to innovate without distracting the core business.
The early outputs suggest a focus on deep, sector-specific problems rather than chasing broad tech trends.
- Ovum. Built with Dr. Ariella Heffernan-Marks, this femtech platform aims to create a comprehensive, AI-guided health journal for women [Nakatomi, Unknown].
- Ruminati. Targets the agricultural sector with a tool to measure and manage climate emissions, a pressing need for Australian farmers and exporters.
- Peeple. Aims to organize the fragmented market for casual and gig work.
Each venture tackles a real, often underserved, Australian pain point with technology. The studio's role is to provide the product strategy, design, and engineering muscle the founding experts may lack.
The Sydney Ceiling
The most credible risk for Nakatomi is not execution, but geography. The Australian startup ecosystem, while growing, has historically struggled to produce global category-defining companies at the volume of the US or Europe. A studio model that successfully launches ventures still faces the subsequent challenge of scaling them internationally. Nakatomi's investor ties, like the link to Leonardo.AI's Gillis, provide a bridge to global networks and later-stage capital. But the studio's ultimate test will be whether its companies can attract follow-on funding from investors outside Australia and expand beyond their initial regional focus.
The $3.5 million from Gillis, Gannet Capital, and Scalare Partners is a vote of confidence in the local model [Forbes Australia, Unknown]. The forward question is whether that model can manufacture not just viable startups, but breakout companies that define their categories from Sydney. For founders who prefer a co-pilot to a check-writer, Nakatomi is making that bet tangible, one build at a time.
Sources
- [Nakatomi, Unknown] Nakatomi | Venture Studio & Creative Partner | https://nakatomi.com/
- [Nakatomi, Unknown] Nakatomi | Our work | https://nakatomi.com/work
- [Nakatomi, Unknown] Nakatomi | What we do | https://nakatomi.com/what-we-do
- [Forbes Australia, Unknown] Venture Studio Nakatomi pulls in $3.5m | https://www.forbes.com.au/news/entrepreneurs/venture-studio-nakatomi-pulls-in-3-5m-to-back-and-build-aussie-startups/
- [Business News Australia, Unknown] Venture studio Nakatomi backed by innovators | https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/venture-studio-nakatomi-capital-raise.html