Australian agtech had a brutal 2024. Funding rounds dried up. Several mid-stage companies shut down or sold for less than their last raise. The general venture mood swung against capital-heavy hardware-enabled agritech bets.

Through 2025 and into 2026, the picture has quietly improved. Total dollars are not back to 2021-2022 peaks, but deal count has stabilised and the quality of what’s getting funded has, by most accounts, improved. Less moonshot, more proven unit economics.

The sub-sectors seeing genuine activity in 2026: precision irrigation and water management (helped by the run of dry seasons), livestock monitoring and animal welfare technology (regulatory tailwinds in EU export markets), grain and oilseed supply chain digitisation, and a small but interesting cluster in alternative protein adjacent ingredients.

What’s not seeing capital: drone-as-a-service plays, autonomous tractor startups (the assumption being that John Deere and CNH will dominate), and most consumer-facing food traceability apps.

The capital sources have shifted. Less pure venture, more strategic capital from the big agribusiness and food companies. Wesfarmers, Nufarm, and Elders have all been more visible on cap tables. Family office capital from agricultural family wealth has also grown as a category.

The takeaway, after watching the cycle play out, is that agtech is becoming what it probably should always have been: a slower, lower-multiple sector that rewards capital discipline and operational depth over pure software velocity. The companies that survived the 2024 reset are mostly stronger for it.

A note on the policy backdrop. The federal Future Made in Australia framing has been largely silent on agtech, which has frustrated parts of the sector. Compared to the explicit support for clean energy and critical minerals, agtech has had to make its own way. Whether that’s a problem or a feature depends on your view of industrial policy generally.