2026 ACT Award
Rachel Gately and Michael Gately, co-founders of Trellis Data, are the joint recipients of the 2026 ACT Chief Minister’s Pearcey Entrepreneur Award. The award was presented by the ACT Chief Minister, Andrew Barr at a small event on 29 September 2026.
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.
Dr Tim Turner, Chair of the ACT Chapter of the Pearcey Foundation noted:
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.
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
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.
Pearcey Event
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 December.
Sponsors
The Pearcey Foundation acknowledges the ongoing support of the ACT Government and the Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, for sponsoring and participating in this prestigious ICT award
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