Today I'm announcing Latitude 37, a new program to support 10+ young Australian AI founders each year. Each cohort will receive AUD $100,000 in equity-free capital, access to Airwallex's global network across 100+ countries, an immersion tour in San Francisco and Singapore, and direct exposure to the AI-native infrastructure we're building at Airwallex. The capital is equity-free because the first year is when ownership gets given away cheapest and protected the least. I want these founders to keep theirs.
Here's why I'm doing this now.
Ten years ago, five friends built Airwallex from a Melbourne coffee shop floor
We had no Silicon Valley connections and no roadmap anyone had followed before. What we did have was a critical problem we wanted to solve: cross-border payments were broken for small businesses and we also had the conviction that the right infrastructure, built patiently enough, would eventually make that problem disappear.
Today Airwallex moves money across 200 countries, processes nearly US$300B in annualized transaction volume, holds close to 90 licenses globally, and has crossed $1.2B in ARR at an $8B valuation. I believe the conditions that made that possible from Melbourne in 2015 are about to produce something far larger in the next decade. And the reason is AI.
The most profound platform shift of our generation
AI is not a feature, a trend, or a marketing layer you bolt onto an existing product. It is a fundamental rewiring of how software is built, how businesses operate, and how value is created. Spend management software used to take three to five years to build. Today it takes less than six months. The cycle of software development is collapsing. The cost of starting something is collapsing with it.
That changes who gets to build.
We are about to see an explosion of entrepreneurs of every kind — solo founders, two-person teams, restaurant owners who can now run their finance operations with one AI agent instead of one finance team, designers who become product companies overnight, engineers from non-traditional backgrounds who ship things they could never have shipped before. The barriers to entry — capital, code, language — are lower than they have ever been. A 14-person company in Brisbane or Adelaide can now compete against a 1,400-person incumbent in ways that were impossible two years ago. AI is a force multiplier of productivity, not a substitute for the people who know their domain deeply. It empowers business owners and specialists to do more of what they're already great at, using infrastructure that used to be reserved for the largest enterprises in the world.
Small businesses are the backbone of the economy. I believe AI won't replace them but in fact will multiply them.
Australia's quiet superpower
There's a conversation happening right now about where the next wave of great technology companies will come from. Australia belongs in that conversation because it is one of the most important innovation ecosystems in the world. Its research universities rank among the best globally. Nearly a third of the population was born overseas, creating a depth of multicultural perspective and global network that is almost impossible to replicate anywhere else. The domestic market is small enough that Australian founders are forced to think globally from day one. And our position at the crossroads of Asia and the West gives our companies a natural bridge to the fastest-growing economies on the planet.
Looking back, the things that felt like disadvantages when we started Airwallex turned out to be the source of our edge. We had no big home market. We had to acquire licenses across dozens of jurisdictions and go global from day one. We weren't part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem, so we had to do many things in hard mode including raising capital, finding product-market fit, and recruiting. This all shaped us and helped us build a global business.
Australia has produced more than 30 unicorns. The country's tech sector now employs nearly a million people and contributes over $258B annually to the economy. Australian startup funding is up 31% year-over-year in early 2026. The ecosystem is maturing fast.
But early-stage funding — particularly in AI — remains uneven. Too many founders rely on overseas capital too early, on terms that don't serve them. Too many promising ideas die in the first year because the founder can't afford to keep the lights on while they find product-market fit. That's the gap I want to help close.
Why AI makes this specifically an Australian moment
The companies that will define the AI era are not just the foundational model labs in San Francisco. They're the platforms that take AI and make it useful in the real economy. Australian founders already think globally from day one. They already operate across time zones, currencies, and cultures. Pair that mindset with AI's collapsing cost of software development, and you have the conditions for a generational wave of Australian companies — built for the world from the moment they start. Latitude 37 is Airwallex's commitment to making sure the next generation of those founders has the capital, the networks, and the support to get there.
Latitude 37
Named after Melbourne's latitude, where Airwallex was founded, the program reflects our belief that the coordinates where you start shouldn't limit how far you can go. Latitude 37 builds on Airwallex Impact, our global Pledge 1% commitment, but represents a more focused effort to back young AI founders in Australia at the earliest, most fragile stage of their journey. Each cohort will receive:
AUD $100,000 in equity-free capital
Access to Airwallex's global network of partners, investors, and customers across 100+ countries
An immersion tour in our offices in San Francisco and Singapore
Direct exposure to the AI-native infrastructure we're building at Airwallex, including the agentic finance and global money-movement tools that any modern founder will need
The next decade is going to produce the largest cohort of new founders in modern history, in part because AI has finally made it possible for people who were locked out of building before to walk through the door. I want a meaningful number of them to be Australian. I want them to know that someone believes in them before anyone else does.
If that's you — wherever you are in Australia — start building. We'll be ready.
More details on applications and eligibility coming soon. Register your interest now.
Jack Zhang
Co-founder and CEO of Airwallex
