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Building Australia’s Sovereign AI Capability: Rachel Gately and Michael Gately Receive 2026 ACT Chief Minister's Pearcey Award

Announcement posted by Pearcey Foundation 30 Sep 2026

The Pearcey Foundation today announced Rachel Gately and Michael Gately, co-founders of Trellis Data, as joint recipients of the 2026 ACT Chief Minister's Pearcey Entrepreneur Award. The awards were presented at an event in Canberra by ACT Chief Minister, Andrew Barr.

Husband-and-wife team Rachel and Michael Gately established Trellis Data in Canberra in 2016 to address a major market vulnerability: the reliance of Australian government, defence, and enterprise organisations on foreign, cloud-dependent AI platforms that compromise data sovereignty, privacy, and operational security. Together, the Gatelys set out to build a fully sovereign, secure platform designed to support a wide range of data sources, and AI and machine learning model types. Trellis Data is now a flagship Australian AI success story.

"Rachel and Michael staked their personal and financial capital on building a sovereign AI platform to challenge the global tech giants. They chose to fund independent proprietary development rather than building wrappers around international AI models, so that public sector agencies can safely leverage AI without compromising security," said Dr Tim Turner, ACT Pearcey Foundation Chair.

"Most importantly, Rachel and Michael have shown us that world-class AI software can be conceptualised, built, and commercially scaled out of Canberra. Their success offers a powerful example for other Australian technology founders pursuing high-growth deep-tech models."

Competing directly against the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon posed massive operational and capital challenges. The Gatelys faced the challenge of developing proprietary neural network architectures from scratch, convincing risk-averse public sector buyers to adopt local deep-tech solutions, and scaling high-end machine learning engineering talent from within the competitive Canberra talent pool. Furthermore, they had to fund aggressive R&D cycles while maintaining strict compliance with high-level government security accreditations.

Trellis Data created one of the world's fastest speech-to-text and translation algorithms, capable of operating in air-gapped, high-security environments. The company's compound annual revenue growth rate is over 100%, it's seen rapid expansion into international markets including the United States, and Trellis Data's AI platforms have been deployed across major Australian federal departments, law enforcement agencies, and defence programs.

Trellis Data provides critical sovereign capability, ensuring sensitive national security, intelligence, and health data remain fully protected on Australian soil.

Earlier this year, Trellis Data launched Agentaus, a publicly accessible, fully sovereign and Defence-grade secure AI platform where all model inference, data storage and processing occur in highly secure Australian data centres.

The Pearcey Foundation ACT Chief Minister's Entrepreneur Award is an annual award presented as part of the broader Pearcey Foundation awards program, which recognises outstanding Australian individuals in the technology and entrepreneurial sectors. This specific award acknowledges individuals in the ACT who have demonstrated innovation, success, and leadership in entrepreneurship, especially in the field of information and communications technology (ICT). It aims to highlight local achievements and promote the entrepreneurial culture within Canberra.

As the ACT Pearcey Award recipients, Rachel Gately and Michael Gately will represent the territory in the Pearcey National Awards to be held in November.

For more information about previous ACT Pearcey Entrepreneur Award recipients, go to https://www.pearcey.org.au/awards/state/act.

Other State Awards

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About the Pearcey Foundation
The Pearcey Foundation Inc. is a non-profit organisation established in 1998 to raise the profile of the Australian Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry and profession. It was created in the memory of one of the greatest pioneers of the Australian ICT industry, Dr Trevor Pearcey. By celebrating the heroes in our industry, past present and future, the Foundation is looking to attract and encourage young Australians into this most exciting of global high technology sectors of our nation.


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