The Australian-New Zealand SaaS startup exits stealth with enterprise customers and $600K ARR, aiming to challenge PowerPoint’s dominance.
Australian SaaS startup Aether has raised US$3.8 million in seed funding to expand its team globally and accelerate product development. The round was led by Icehouse Ventures with participation from Brand Fund 2.
Founded by Carsten Grueber, Ursula von Keisenberg, and Daniel Alexander-Head, Aether has built an AI-powered platform that integrates live data into business presentations. The tool is designed to cut the time teams spend manually updating slides and reduce errors in critical documents such as board packs, business reviews, and campaign reports.
Despite only just exiting stealth, Aether has secured enterprise customers across Australia, New Zealand, and the US, generating more than US$600,000 in annual recurring revenue.
The company is the first spin-out from New+Improved, a venture studio started by the team behind Tracksuit and Ideally. Its founders bring experience from TikTok, Xero, and Qualtrics, backgrounds they believe will be vital in scaling against entrenched incumbents.
For more than three decades, Microsoft PowerPoint has defined the presentation market, with a reported 95% share as of 2012. Around 200 million copies are still used actively each month. Aether aims to disrupt that dominance by automating workflows that can consume as much as 40% of marketers’ time.
“Creating presentations has barely evolved since PowerPoint first launched in 1987,” the founders noted in a joint statement. “Our mission is to give companies a faster, smarter way to communicate business-critical information.”