Melbourne and regional Victoria offer world-class talent, state-of-the-art research and development infrastructure, an innovative technology ecosystem, strong business opportunities, a robust economy and a cost-competitive business environment.
Melbourne is Australia’s top game development location with a global reputation for a creative collaboration between developers, writers and artists that produces award-winning games.
Melbourne has been named as one of the best cities in the world for tech firms to operate in.
Melbourne has been named as one of the best cities in the world for tech firms to operate in. Melbourne ranked 22 in the top 30 global cities on the Savills UK Tech Cities in Motion report. The Victorian capital achieved a higher rank than Seoul, the home of Samsung, and China’s tech capital Shenzhen.
How ranking is calculated
The ranking considered the availability of venture capital, whether a city was on the radar for global tech companies, if it was an attractive city to live and work in and if it generated and attracted tech talent. The areas where Melbourne tends to do well in are health sciences and online digital platforms.
Victoria’s ICT industry is made up of over 8,000 companies, including 11 of the top 20 Australian technology companies. Many international companies are located in Victoria including: IBM, Microsoft, HP, Motorola, NEC, Ericsson, EMC, Cisco, Intel, Thales, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Bosch.
R&D Cluster
Melbourne has one of the largest ICT R&D clusters in the Southern Hemisphere, producing world-leading, commercially focused research. It has become known as the ‘hatching’ capital of Australia because of its strong R&D base, supportive start-up environments and numerous cooperative working spaces around the city.
Research institutes include:
- The Centre of Energy Efficient Telecommunications is a partnership between Bell Labs (Alcatel Lucent and the University of Melbourne) and is one of the largest research efforts on green telecommunications in the world.
- CSIRO's Data61 is Australia’s leading data innovation group, officially formed in 2016 from the integration of CSIRO’s Digital Productivity flagship and the National ICT Australia Ltd (NICTA)
- The Microsoft Centre of Social Natural User Interfaces (NUI) at the University of Melbourne
- The Centre for Technology Infusion based at La Trobe University
- Victoria University’s Centre for Applied Informatics (CAI)
- The Internet 4 Things research group at Swinburne University
- The Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information is actively involved in IP Generation and broad sector spatial solutions.
Read more about Victoria's strong economy and competitive business environment on the Invest Victoria website.
Melbourne is Australia's technology hub and is home to more than half of Australia's top 20 technology companies. See more videos like this on the Invest Victoria YouTube channel.
Startup ecosystem
Melbourne is identified as one of 22 global centres at the forefront of tech, with thriving and growing tech industries.
There are now over 2,700 startups in Victoria and the sector is growing at a rate of 23% every year.
One in five startups are focused on health and wellbeing which continues to be a core strength of the ecosystem.
Victoria now has 29 accelerator programs, many established with the support of LaunchVic, Victoria’s lead startup ecosystem development agency. LaunchVic supports entrepreneurs and investors to sustainably grow and deliver economic and cultural benefits for Victoria.
Melbourne recrowned as Australia and New Zealand’s EdTech hub
This year, Victorian EdTech companies account for more than a third of the EdTech companies in the HolonIQ Australia and New Zealand EdTech 50.
Melbourne continues to add to its list of EdTech credentials, with the release of the HolonIQ Australia and New Zealand EdTech 50 for 2022 highlighting the expanding number of fast growing and innovative learning, teaching and up-skilling startups in Melbourne.