The Australian and New Zealand startup community will see a boost in funding this year. Blackbird, a VC fund based in the two south Pacific countries, on Wednesday closed a fund at over AUD $1 billion, which is about USD $640 million, which the firm says is Australia's largest fund to date.

This is Blackbird's fifth fund, and it's double the size of the VC's last fund which closed in August 2020. Several institutional investors participated, including superannuation funds like AustralianSuper, Hostplus, Australia's sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, New Zealand's sovereign wealth funds and New Zealand Growth Capital Partners Elevate fund, which is a government-backed fund.

A decade ago, most Australian and in particular New Zealand institutional investors didn't want to put their money anywhere near tech startups. Their support today signals a maturation of the Australia/New Zealand venture capital space.

"[Superannuation fund] capital can go anywhere. It can go into the best Silicon Valley VCs," Sam Wong, a partner at Blackbird, told TechCrunch. "And so the fact that they are choosing to invest their money at this scale with an Aussie and Kiwi fund marks a moment for the ecosystem and shows that we have earned our right on the global stage to manage that capital."

According to Wong, it makes sense for superannuation funds to back the tech space because they have horizons in the decades and can afford to be patient.

"What they really care about is high returns so people can retire in dignity," she said. "And when you have that long-term horizon, you can seek higher return assets that don't have liquidity profiles that, say, public markets do. And that's exactly what we found in the Australian superannuation system -- they love tech because it's high growth, high return. It's very long dated, and they don't mind that it's locked up for 10 years."