Partly Raises $71 Million In Series B To Expand Australian Engineering Team

New Zealand-founded AI company Partly has closed a $71 million (US$50 million) Series B round led by DST Global Partners, valuing the company at US$500 million. The raise is being used in part to expand Partly’s technical team in Australia with hiring across software engineering, machine learning and data science.

Partly builds what it describes as the only AI foundation model purpose-built for the automotive repair supply chain. Called Interpreter, the model has been trained over five years on OEM catalogue and repair data alongside live transaction data from New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the Nordics.

What Partly Does

The automotive repair supply chain relies on accurately identifying and sourcing parts for each repair job. Partly’s platform is designed to reduce the manual workflow and data inaccuracy that the company says costs repairers margin on every job.

The problem the company targets is one of fragmentation and complexity. Matching specific vehicle configurations to the correct components across multiple suppliers and catalogues is a task that general-purpose AI models are not designed to handle, which is why Partly built a domain-specific model for the sector.

Levi Fawcett, CEO and Co-founder of Partly, described the development effort behind the model.

“We have spent five years building the AI infrastructure layer that the industry has been missing,” Fawcett explained. “The model architecture is nuanced – there’s a reason general models don’t solve it, and why we’ve been able to own the frontier AI here.”

The Australian Market

Australia’s vehicle repair industry is fragmented, spanning owner-operated panel shops through to consolidating multi-site operators. The company points to several pressures facing the sector: a tight labour market, rising vehicle complexity, ADAS recalibration demands and fixed insurer pricing. Across the industry, data inaccuracy and manual procurement workflows continue to erode margins.

Partly is actively recruiting in Australia to complement the engineering base it has built in New Zealand. The company is on track to more than double its global headcount this year.

“Australia and New Zealand are home to the kind of technical and AI talent we want building the future of automotive repair,” Fawcett added. “This raise lets us invest further in that talent locally.”

Investors

DST Global Partners led the Series B. The firm’s portfolio includes investments in Anthropic, Meta, Alibaba, Airbnb and Spotify.

Blackbird Ventures, which has backed Partly since its early stages, also participated in the round. Samantha Wong, Partner at Blackbird Ventures, pointed to the company’s focus on solving underlying data and workflow problems rather than layering software on top of broken processes.

“Australian repairers shouldn’t need 30 clicks and a crystal ball to find the right part,” Wong commented. “As investors since the beginning, we’ve been impressed at how deep the team was willing to go to fix the core underlying problems, and how they focus on user experience for an industry that has for too long dealt with mediocre software experiences that lead to real-world delay and expense.”

Wong noted the raise will support the growth of Partly’s Australian office alongside its broader international footprint.

Product And Model

Interpreter is trained on OEM catalogue and repair data as well as live transaction data from the markets Partly operates in. The company says the model handles the complexity of parts identification and procurement, a task that involves understanding vehicle specifications, parts compatibility and supplier catalogues at a level of detail that generic AI models are not trained to resolve.

The five-year training period reflects the depth of domain-specific data required. The model draws on data from OEM catalogues and live repair transactions rather than general internet training data, which is why the company argues general-purpose large language models cannot replicate its capability in this specific vertical.

Markets And Expansion

Partly currently operates across New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the Nordics. The US$500 million valuation and the Series B capital position the company for further international expansion, though the immediate priority is building out the Australian technical team to support regional growth.

The company is hiring across software engineering, machine learning and data science roles. Open positions are listed at partly.com/careers.

Last Updated on July 21, 2026 by Nick Ross