Ben Thynne, family offices pile into AI biz

afr.com:

Australia’s ultra-rich are getting in on the AI craze, snapping up a stake in Brisbane-based automation infrastructure business MakerOps.

MakerOps was founded by former-Simple chief executive James Charlesworth in 2020. 

Street Talk understands a range of high-net-worth investors and family offices including Evolution Healthcare founder Ben Thynne and Vita Group founder Maxine Horne have tipped into the seed round led by Brisbane-based boutique corporate advisory firm 115 Capital.

The little-known company, founded in 2020, develops artificial intelligence to help sales teams optimise their workflow and drive high conversion rates. Target clients include any organisation which has a big sales team, calling out big tech firms with US revenue like Shopify, Atlassian, Slack and Canva in a pitch deck by Street Talk.

MakerOps, which has aspirations to be Australia’s first AI unicorn, is seeking to take on the likes of US$219 billion ($327 million) US software Salesforce. Long-time Meta machine learning engineer and Microsoft alumni Joel Pobar has been brought on as a key adviser,

Founder, ex-Simple co-founder and former chief executive James Charlesworth, will relocate to Silicon Valley following the raise.

A spokesperson for the company declined to say how much was raised, but the deck showed the seed round was targeting US$5 million ($7.5 million), valuing the company at US$35 million ($52 million) with revenues of $1.3 million ($1.9 million)

MakerOps’s ambitious three-year growth plan shows it’s planning a Series A US$50 million ($74.6 million) funding round next year, hoping to tap Silicon Valley-based AI investors, and a Series B round in December 2025 to raise another US$100 million ($150 million)

115 Capital, formerly