NZ wealth funds supercharge homegrown tech startups with $65m
Wednesday, 24 June 2026
New Zealand’s burgeoning technology sector has received a $65 million boost from Kiwi and international shareholders, with Simplicity and The New Zealand Super Fund ploughing money in this week.
The multimillion-dollar punt on Kiwi tech firms happens as discussions over supporting local and funding retirement heat up.
KiwiSaver and investment fund manager Simplicity plans to pour $30m into a new deep tech and health sciences fund from Bridgewest Ventures, it said today.
The investment comes hard on the heels of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund investing another $35m in technology investor Movac.
Read more:
Homegrown protection system to protect NZ’s vital underwater cables
3 things the struggling hospo industry wants from the next Government
With more than 190,000 members and more than $11 billion funds under management, Simplicity has built a small portfolio of private markets investments. It has previously invested in success stories including Substack, Halter and Tracksuit via Icehouse Ventures.
Bridgewest specialised in working with technology and science experts to commercialise innovation in biotech.Simplicity’s Sam Stubbs said the investment would provide a bridge to global markets for proven intellectual property.
The fund was invested in 13 companies, including Masco, a sensory AI integration technology that recently inked a multimillion-dollar contract with a global animal health company BioOra, a partnership with the Malaghan Institute, working on automating the manufacturing of CAR T-cell immunotherapies for cancer treatment, and Zealafoam, which is commercialising plant-based polystyrene replacement foam products.
Bridgewest Ventures New Zealand chief executive Saum Vahdat said the country had world-class innovation capability, but found it difficult to access the capital, expertise and international networks needed to scale up globally. “Our role is to help bridge that gap.'
The firm’s Deep Tech and Health Sciences Fund has $62.7m in investor commitments from New Zealand, Australia and the US, with a target fund size of $100m.
Meanwhile, the Super Fund is one of several institutional investors to back Movac’s Growth Fund 7, which has raised $185m at first close, almost double its initial target, and expects to hit its $200m fund cap next month.
Rishab Sethi, acting director of Private Equity at the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, said the Super Fund had been the largest investor in several of Movac’s previous funds.
“We are always looking for commercially attractive opportunities to invest in New Zealand,” Sethi said. “For the past 10 years, Movac's growth funds have given us a way to support local companies when they need that support the most, to contribute to New Zealand's burgeoning tech sector, and to generate positive returns.”
The Super Fund, which had a total fund size of $85.1b, had about 11% of its portfolio invested in domestic assets, including more than $500m in private companies through external managers such as Movac, he said.
“In terms of proportion of domestic investments, it's been broadly consistent over the past couple of years at around 11% of the portfolio.
“The ongoing issue with investing locally is scale. In the past few years the funds have grown more quickly than the overall economy, so the value of our investments keeps going up, but over time the proportion has gone down.”
Mark Vivian, partner at Movac, said the firm had about $66m of investment coming from wealthy foreigners on the active investor plus visa scheme, of which 62% were from the United States, 10% Hong Kong, 9% Germany, and 8% Singapore.
“Across the board, these folks have a genuine interest in New Zealand, particularly the Americans who are viewing it as a longer-term option rather than a shorter-term one,” Vivian said.
Most were investing in a range of different asset classes, including venture capital, private equity and funding, as well as private credit infrastructure. They took a more evenly spread view of the investment opportunities, he said.