# SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti as founder targets billions with AI insurance pivot > Source: > Published: 2026-08-13 03:19:42+00:00 # SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti as founder targets billions with AI insurance pivot SafetyCulture founder [Luke Anear](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/safetyculture-founder-luke-anear-slams-tax-overhaul-as-a-rounding-error/news-story/b37e716d554e5fcc15998f2d83c6b259) likes to move fast. As a teenager he would buy cars for $50, or sometimes get them for free, then drive them around in the bush until they wouldn’t go anymore. Call it a need for speed – he even thinks the Hume Highway and other roads should be turned into autobahns if the bar to get a licence were raised. Which is why it is somewhat ironic that he founded a $2.5bn company built on making workplaces safer. But to Anear, who [returned as chief executive](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/safetyculture-ceo-kelly-vohs-exits-after-one-year-as-founder-returns/news-story/b718f750db0dc36ac543c8db29a4ba8e) in February, that tells only part of the story, and it is why he has now changed the company’s name to Mitti. In a wide-ranging interview Anear reveals how he plans to reap billions of dollars a year as a workplace insurer, why nuclear power should be deregulated, why universities should stop “producing another professor”, and how SafetyCulture – now Mitti – is harnessing AI to launch dozens of new products while avoiding the mass lay-offs that have hit other software companies. And he can’t move fast enough to make them happen. “We’ll end up with revenue in the billions with insurance. We’ll end up with revenue in the billions in software and our consumables business,” Anear said. “It’s the most exciting time I’ve seen to build a product.” **Office that looks like a supermarket** The reason it is exciting is AI. The biggest change to Mitti – which takes its name from the Hindi word for soil, and middle in old Norse – began in February when Claude maker Anthropic released Opus 4.6, which could digest large code bases and complex files, making AI far more useful for developers. AI now writes about 90% of Mitti’s code, and Anear said it would soon be 100%. But more on that later. Opus 4.6 landed shortly before he returned as CEO, taking back the reins after [former US Green Beret](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/safetyculture-ceo-kelly-vohs-unconventional-path-from-green-beret-to-25bn-software-startup/news-story/caadfbece3e0291df36a73ac80412cdc) Kelly Vohs’s 12-month stint at the helm of the company. Vohs had climbed the ladder at private equity titan Blackstone’s portfolio of companies after he left the army, but was based in New York. SafetyCulture needed a “consistent CEO presence” at its Surry Hills headquarters. A tour of the office reveals why. While most tech juggernauts are decked out with billiards and ping pong tables, Mitti has rooms that are almost full replicas of its customers’ operations. There is part of a supermarket like Coles, a car hoist complete with chassis and Toyota branding, a meeting room that feels like a Sydney train to emulate Transport for NSW, a mining conveyor belt and a Pilbara dirt palette for a big miner The setup didn’t cost much, Anear said. It reminds his engineers to think about what customers actually need. It was those customers who began the company’s path towards changing its name. A decade ago its biggest accounts started using the software as more than an inspection checklist. A global hotel chain was asking whether guests were offered a glass of water on arrival. A multinational retailer was using it to train store staff. **What changed on February 5** While this happened organically, Anear couldn’t make the full pivot until the arrival of Opus 4.6. “It meant it could hold a million tokens in its memory, or 750,000 words, and that’s what changed everything,” Anear said. “Up until then, it was like if you were building a house and you had five carpenters there, and you all look at the plans and say, ‘right, here’s the house’, and we’d all agree. But then you come back at lunchtime and they’re building townhouses. ‘Guys, what are you doing?’ ‘Sorry, that’s a good pick-up. You’re right’. And then they’d go back to building a house, and then you come back at dinner time and they’d be building a motel. “That’s what AI was like before February 5. You had to break the unit of work down to such a small amount that was very time-consuming. So now you’ve got the ability to be able to build a lot more.” Product feature requests that once took 18 months now ship in 48 hours. As for the engineers, Anear said they were “being promoted to foremen and site supervisors instead of having to nail every nail in the piece of timber”. This compares with [Atlassian](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/mike-cannonbrookes-atlassian-cuts-1600-jobs-in-major-pivot-to-ai/news-story/cf820db136a7cf44fb2c4dacb00e4646), [WiseTech Global](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/wisetech-global-to-sack-2000-staff-as-chief-declares-coding-era-over/news-story/6f0cbd361cd8dc528bf537aaf19a38c7) and Afterpay owner [Block](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/afterpay-owner-block-to-axe-4000-jobs-as-ai-changes-everything/news-story/4b5c54529d7d713622708190780f280a) laying off thousands of staff citing AI disruption. But Mitti is hiring “forward-deployed engineers” who sit inside a customer’s business, and infrastructure engineers – a role that did not exist at the company two years ago because it did not need one. “It’s brought engineers closer to the customer,” Anear said. “In the past, they were buried … in process. There were designers, there were product managers, there were engineering managers, and then there was maybe an engineer who did the work. “I’ve spent the last five months rebuilding the company from inside out. We’ve stripped out all the processes that were holding everyone back. Now we’ve got designers who also can deploy code. We’ve got engineers that are able to design as well. “It means they’re all more effective, and they can do a lot more now without having to wait on another team to finish their work.” It has allowed frontline workers to get more detail from Mitti’s platform that SafetyCulture never went near. For restaurants, it tracks ingredients to the gram – 3g of mayonnaise, 4g of pickles, a 45g beef patty – each deducted from a store’s stock level the moment the burger goes through the point-of-sale system. “We never went into that detail before,” Anear said. “They would check their stores, they would check the fridge temperatures, they would check the quality, they would check customer experiences, brand standards, lighting, but not to that detail of your ingredients in the burger as it’s getting sold.” Mitti is developing its own AI models and buying its own chips and servers. It is rolling out computer vision that can detect when a worker inadvertently creates a trip hazard or lifts something incorrectly, then alert that worker and suggest training. **Taking on the insurers** And this is where the new name becomes relevant. Mitti was the brand of SafetyCulture’s insurance joint venture with QBE, combining the workplace safety platform with QBE’s commercial cover. SafetyCulture bought out QBE’s 50% stake in 2023. Anear, formerly a trainee private investigator earning $700 a week, now oversees an insurance business worth hundreds of millions of dollars, licensed across 51 US states and jurisdictions, that writes business in 10 midwestern states. He is betting that 15 years of inspection data – four billion images of what good and bad look like in a workplace – makes his company a better judge of commercial risk than the insurers that have priced it since the Great Fire of London. “The insurance market, it’s a $7.5 trillion business last year globally; $2.5 trillion of that was P&C (property and casualty). That’s a huge industry, and I think no one is solving these problems the way we are. I think we’re well-placed to build something significant,” he said. Anear said customers using the platform run 19% lower claims costs and a 9% better loss ratio than those who don’t, according to analysis of Mitti’s own portfolio. Trippas White Group, the hospitality operator behind the Sydney Opera House’s venues, has cut claims in some areas by 35%. “The problem with insuretech has been that everyone (says) we have some magic black box of data, and we’ll now make insurance cheaper for everyone,” he said. “When the replacement cost of goods goes up every year. Whereas we’re saying, ‘no, we’ll give you the platform that helps you run a better business’.” **Prime minister for a day** Which brings Anear back to the bush and the $50 cars. “Taking risks is, by and large, a good thing,” he said, adding Australia has a problem with risk, particularly in tech. “Accepting failures is a requirement. We tend to pile on the criticism when people fail and probably aren’t as good at learning from some of those lessons.” But he argued equally for a return to individual responsibility. “Every kid gets an award at the school sports,” he said. “I’m not sure that that necessarily is the best thing for the team long-term, because I see the joy when my children win something, or my son kicks a goal at soccer and gets MVP for the day. “There is a positive flow-on effect for having to work for something and achieving it, and the self-esteem that comes from that.” Anear’s desire for speed and efficiency extends to the national economy. And if he were “prime minister for a day”, on top of his list would be deregulating nuclear power. “We need low-cost, abundant baseload energy to stay competitive – for manufacturing, for computing, for industrial robotics. Wind and solar alone won’t get us there,” he said. “There are about 80 reactors under construction globally right now and another 120 planned. We’re ranked 27th in the world for innovation outputs and rank near the bottom of developed economies for economic complexity. “Let’s get on with it – less fear-based debate, more building the future we actually want.” **Time to pick winners** He also wants governments to choose industries and back them, and rejects the idea that this is beyond their remit. “Silicon Valley was not built off technology companies. It was built off the defence program in the US through the Cold War. It was built off the space race. That’s where Fairchild Semiconductor came from. Silicon Valley wouldn’t exist if the government didn’t choose to invest in defence at the time,” Anear said. He said mining did the same here, generating between $4tn and $6tn over 20 years under regulatory frameworks built to let it happen. “One of the things missing right now is what are the next three industries that we are going to back and support,” he said. “We’ve got the minerals, the energy, the skilled workers and the political stability. We just need the tax settings and investment to make it worth building here instead of shipping it out. If we’re spending billions on defence products; let’s develop the expertise to build them here. “The best time to develop our own sovereign capability was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” Anear also wants legislation removed whenever new legislation is introduced. “We cannot continue to layer complexity on top of existing regulations and expect job creation to get easier,” he said. And he wants education fixed, so it’s less about “producing another professor” and more about the creativity, adaptability and hands-on skills that hold value in an AI economy. “If we get the settings right, the tradie has more time on the tools, and the desk worker isn’t blindsided by a shift nobody prepared them for,” he said. “We need a dynamic learning environment where AI is able to assist teachers to deliver tailored learning programs, and invest in experience-based learning rather than rote learning.” As for concerns AI is coming after jobs, he said it was overblown. “If AI is supposed to give us all this time because no one has to work, I haven’t found it yet. I’m working as hard as ever,” Anear said. *This article first appeared in The Australian as **SafetyCulture rebrands to Mitti as founder targets billions with AI insurance pivot**.* ## Related Topics ### UNLOCK INSIGHTS Discover the untold stories of emerging ASX stocks. 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