Why Australia Has More AI PhDs Than Anywhere | First Cheque

Blackbird partner Tom has spent the last decade obsessing over one thing: why Australia talks about innovation from a place of doubt, while the US talks about it from a place of opportunity.

From buying BHP as a kid through his parents, to operating at Canopy before it was acquired, to spending most of the 2010s investing out of Colorado and now back in Australia at Blackbird, Tom has seen both sides of the talent arbitrage.

In this episode of First Cheque, Tom joins Maxine and Cheryl to share why 8 percent of all AI experts in Asia-Pac are based in Australia, why we have more AI PhDs than any other country in the world and why no one is celebrating it, and what it really means that 88 percent of our PhD students are immigrated talent. They also dive deep into why commercialization is still broken, how Foundry and Baker Street are trying to fix the bridge from lab to seed, and why product-led growth is not dead — it just changed.

Tom also reflects on the boomerang effect, the R and D tax credit as Australia's secret weapon, and why the next decade of Australian companies will be built with a base in Australia and a base on the West Coast.