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Investment and Partnering

Do you want to invest or partner with us in ground-breaking ideas backed by research to do good in Aotearoa and the world?

UniServices drives to build a better future by looking for new research opportunities locally and internationally, and by accelerating commercialisation of ideas out of research to address the most challenging problems in the world. We have even developed unique ways for nurturing this process to get the best results, making us much more than just a technology-transfer office.

Over the past ten years, UniServices has become a market leader in commercialisation

  • We provide ongoing support to our investees through access to networks, expertise, and resources.
  • We made investments that resulted in over $113m of additional research revenues.
  • We delivered a 3x realised return on investment with exits to some of the world’s leading companies.
  • We helped launch over 45 companies and licensed over 430 patent families.
  • We secured access to over $400m of follow-on capital.

We invest with the University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund

A key tool in our successful commercialisation of startups is our management of the University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund, which is a $20M open-ended and evergreen pre-seed and seed stage investment fund for transforming university intellectual property and research into high-growth global companies.

We are champions of the University of Auckland’s intellectual property, ranked in the top 150 of all universities worldwide

With New Zealand’s largest and most entrepreneurial university at our doorstep, UniServices has a strong pipeline of intellectual property assets. We actively identify ground-breaking discoveries with commercial potential at the University of Auckland and work with researchers to help them reach an industry ready stage, leading to a diverse and extensive portfolio of new technologies ready for commercial licensing. 

We rigorously support and test new ideas through specialist investment committees

Our specialist investment committees (named Return on Science) are made available nationwide for research institutions and businesses with commercial ideas, as well as the student investment committees (named Momentum) that we have built up and down the country to open doors and develop capability for students on both sides of the investment table.

 

Our co-investors 

Early stage and intelligent investment capital is essential to bridge the research-to-market gap. The University of Auckland Inventors’ Fund partners with local and international co-investors who share our vision to create, build, and support transformative intellectual property-based companies.