The big four banks agreed to hear pitches from Australian AI companies.
Curated by Roger Hanney · Throughline Advisory · Sydney · Edition of Monday 31 August 2026, covering 27 to 31 August
Published 21 September 2026
Five financial institutions opened a door that local AI companies say was shut.
The problem the program addresses is sales access. Australian AI companies report that large local buyers default to overseas suppliers.
The Buy Australian AI Partnership is an eight-week program for Australian AI startups and scaleups. Participants learn how large organisations assess and buy AI. They get time with enterprise leaders and help with pitches and procurement. Stone & Chalk, an Australian startup hub, runs it. The National AI Centre, the federal body that supports industry adoption of AI, is the principal sponsor. The first intake covers banking, insurance and superannuation.
Westpac and NAB each confirmed their role on 27 August. Information Age, the Australian Computer Society's publication, lists all four major banks and Cuscal as anchors. The Gradient Institute, a responsible AI research body, will support participants.
The ABC reported the experience behind it. Christopher Sampson, co-chief executive of the AI company Tiliter, said he had to win customers overseas before Australian companies would take the product seriously. Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton said more than 1,500 Australian AI companies exist. He said the challenge is getting in front of buyers.
The program does not commit any bank to buy anything. It is access, coaching and a hearing. Whether a contract follows is the measure to watch.
Sources: Westpac, 27 Aug 2026, NAB, Aug 2026, Information Age, Aug 2026 and ABC News, 28 Aug 2026.
Charlton wants data centre approvals to come with computing capacity for local firms.
The second half of the government's argument is about what Australia gets for hosting the buildout.
Computing capacity, often shortened to compute, is the processing power needed to train and run AI models. A small number of global companies control most of it. The ABC reported Michael Gately, who runs an Australian AI company, describing a global scramble for that capacity.
Charlton's position, from a speech in August, is that a company building a data centre in Australia should make some capacity available to Australian businesses, researchers and startups. Data centres employ few people once built. Hosting them does not by itself return much to the local economy. The government is drafting national standards for data centre approvals with the states, covering location, electricity and water.
No capacity requirement exists yet. It is a stated negotiating position. If it reaches the standards, it would change the price and availability of local compute for Australian buyers.
Source: ABC News, 28 Aug 2026.
OpenAI used a change-of-control clause to cut off a customer.
A contract term most buyers skim decided which AI models a widely used developer tool can offer.
Cursor is an AI coding tool used by software developers. It lets them choose between models from several suppliers. Anysphere is the company that makes it. SpaceX, the rocket and satellite company controlled by Elon Musk, announced in June that it would buy Anysphere for US$60 billion in stock. The purchase completed in mid-August. SpaceX also now owns xAI, Musk's AI company, which competes with OpenAI.
On 28 August OpenAI said it will stop supplying models to Cursor. It proposed 12 November as the end date. A change-of-control clause is a contract term that lets one party exit if the other party's ownership changes. OpenAI said its agreement gave it a limited window to cancel after such a change. It said it chose the longest notice available.
OpenAI's stated reason was trust. It said companies controlled by Musk had breached contracts with it before. Michael Truell, Cursor's co-founder, said the two sides are talking. Musk dismissed the move.
Cursor's users got 76 days to move off a supplier they did not choose to leave.
The lesson for a buyer is not about these two companies. Most organisations now use AI through a tool, and the tool buys its models from someone else. Your supply can end because of a contract you have never seen, between two companies you do not control.
Source: Reuters via iTnews, Aug 2026.
A bank should buy the best tool, and a pitch program does not change which tool that is.
The lead treats access as the constraint. The counter-case says the constraint is capability and price. A bank's risk, fraud and service teams answer for outcomes. If an overseas supplier's product performs better at a lower cost, a buyer who picks the local option is spending shareholders' money on industry policy. Eight weeks of coaching does not alter that comparison.
The same case applies to compute. Requiring data centre builders to reserve capacity for local firms is a cost. It will be priced into the projects or will send some of them elsewhere. Australian firms can already rent capacity from the same global suppliers as everyone else.
"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."
Map the supply chain behind each AI tool you use, one line per tool.
Use case. Anyone who approves or renews software. For each AI tool, write down three things: who you pay, whose model runs underneath, and where it runs. A coding assistant, a meeting summariser and a customer service bot may all sit on the same two or three model suppliers. The map takes about an hour for a small organisation.
Tips. Ask vendors directly which models they use; most will say. Note whether the tool lets you switch models, because that is your fallback. Record the notice period in your own contract. Revisit the map when any supplier is acquired.
Learn more, free, no paywall: the NIST AI Risk Management Framework covers third-party and supply chain risk in its Govern and Map functions. It is a United States government publication, free to download.
Find the change-of-control clause in your largest AI contract.
Open the agreement for the AI tool your organisation depends on most. Look for three terms: change of control, termination for convenience, and notice period. Write down who can exit, on what trigger, and how many days you would have. If the answer is fewer days than it would take you to move, that gap is a risk to raise before renewal. Reading AI contracts with a commercial lens is the engagement Throughline Advisory runs: throughlineadvisory.au.