Where Australia’s advantages are greatest and institutional capital is scarcest.
Australia possesses world-leading solar and wind resources, abundant critical mineral deposits and more than twice the arable land per capita of the United States.
Combined with world-class universities and strategic relationships spanning the US, China, India and South-East Asia, Australia is ideally positioned to be a global leader in the real economy sectors that will define the next century.
Yet Australia systematically under-invests in hard-tech innovation. Australians hold more than twice as much wealth in housing relative to GDP as Americans, and invest a third as much in venture capital. Australian hard-tech startups are significantly undervalued relative to global peers. This is the arbitrage Kapunda captures.
At the pre-seed and seed stages, Australian hard-tech startups face a severe capital shortage.
Kapunda invests early, builds conviction, and helps portfolio companies make the transition to well-capitalised US markets where valuations are materially higher.
Hard-tech startups are high risk. Unlike software startups which largely face market risk, hard-tech startups must also overcome technology, manufacturing, implementation and regulatory challenges. But, while failure rates are higher, the moats are deeper and power law dynamics dominate. Hard-to-do is hard-to-copy.
Of the world’s biggest technology companies drive significant revenue from hardware.
Because hard-tech outcomes are more binary, the power law is more extreme. A small number of investments will generate the vast majority of returns. A family office making two or three direct hard-tech investments is not accessing this asset class. They are buying lottery tickets. A diversified portfolio approach is required to have a reasonable probability of capturing the outliers.
Underwriting technical execution risk requires a fundamentally different expertise than understanding the unit economics of enterprise SaaS. Generalist funds that make occasional hard-tech investments cannot build the pattern recognition, sector relationships or due diligence capability required to pick the winners. Focus is not a constraint. It is a competitive advantage.
The difficulty of investing in hard-tech is precisely what creates the opportunity. Generalist investors are deterred by technical risk, regulatory hurdles and manufacturing complexity. Those same characteristics are what generate outlier returns, but only for those that have the expertise to identify the winners and the portfolio construction to capture them.
Australia’s most capable technical founders are not building AI wrappers. They are rebuilding the real economy from first principles: in refineries, feedlots, substations and shipyards.
No-one stumbles into battery anode materials, HVAC componentry or robotic hull grooming. Founders choose these problems because they are real, and because they think they can solve them.
Australian hard-tech founders have less access to capital, fewer domestic customers and less government support. They are battle-hardened in a way their US peers are not and it shows in their ability to do more with less.
Our edge is finding these founders early and backing them with conviction and capital.
For the first time in human history, the cheapest way to create energy is not starting a fire. Solar, wind and batteries have made electrons the dominant form of energy, driving the electrification of transport, heavy industry, and HVAC as both economics and national security concerns accelerate the shift from fossil fuels.
The ongoing data centre build out represents the biggest CAPEX investment since the railroads in the late 19th century, placing unprecedented pressures on the construction and energy sectors. In parallel, low-cost intelligence is being applied to physical industries, triggering a boom in robotics and autonomy that will transform energy, heavy industry, and agriculture.
The rise of China as a competitor to the US and the breakdown of the rules-based international order have eroded the reliability of globalised supply chains. Nations are rapidly re-investing in sovereign capabilities, with critical minerals, energy, and food security at the centre, and governments are investing heavily to accelerate these efforts.
International investors are investing in these thematics.
Domestic investors aren’t. Yet.
Australia systematically under-invests in hard-tech at the earliest stages due to four structural forces that make seed-stage hard-tech a difficult mandate for most funds to pursue.
Australian hard-tech has not had a ‘Canva moment’. Without a landmark success to point to, it remains difficult to build LP conviction around the category, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem that keeps capital on the sidelines.
The Australian VC industry follows global trends with little regard for Australia's underlying advantages. As global hype has shifted from fintech to SaaS to crypto to AI, so have Australian VC funds, leaving segments like hard-tech unloved and under-invested.
Small dedicated seed funds do not work for a traditional multi-GP partnership model. Management fees on an A$20m fund support one general partner at best. As a result, most funds either skip the seed stage entirely or make only occasional investments. Neither approach generates the deal flow, relationships or insights needed to source and diligence the best opportunities.
Investors who develop genuine expertise in early-stage VC face strong incentives to abandon it. Strong performance attracts LP capital, which creates an opportunity to raise a larger fund with larger management fees, and write larger cheques into later stage rounds. The seed stage is perpetually vacated by its most successful practitioners.
Pre-seed and seed-stage Australian hard-tech startups are significantly undervalued relative to international peers. Kapunda invests early, at attractive prices, in a market with minimal competition for the best deals.
Renewable generation, grid infrastructure, storage, and the full stack of electrification. Targeting the technologies that solve 'Gridlock': the challenge of storing and moving cheap electrons.
Advanced materials, robotics, autonomy, and industrial efficiency. Companies applying cutting-edge technology to sectors that have seen decades of underinvestment in innovation.
Precision agriculture, supply chain innovation, and agri-biotech. Unlocking Australia's potential as the food bowl of the Indo-Pacific through technology-led productivity gains.
Kapunda's three target sectors align directly with the priority areas of the National Reconstruction Fund (NRF) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the two largest pools of government co-investment capital in Australia. This alignment means that portfolio companies are able to access, but do not depend on, government capital in the form of concessional debt, guarantees and co-investment, extending runway between equity rounds and de-risking the path to commercial scale. See how our portfolio aligns with NRF priority areas →
Hard-tech returns follow a power law: a small number of positions generate most of the returns. We backed these companies before the market understood them. Now they are taking off. These rounds were not competitive because they were too technical for most investors to underwrite.
Backed at seed in Wollongong. Sicona’s silicon-graphite anode material now sits in the qualification pipelines of Tesla, Panasonic and SAIC, with pre-feasibility complete on a first US gigafactory alongside Bechtel and a first IP licensing agreement signed.
Within two years Crux had deployed its first 60 modular battery sites across five Sydney council areas, on time and on budget, commenced energy trading, and secured approvals for a further 6,000 sites. The binding constraint on suburban storage was never the battery. It was permitting, and Crux engineered around it.
The sovereign supply chain thesis, validated by government capital at scale. In June 2026 the US Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital committed US$500m in conditional financing to Phoenix, anchoring an approximately US$1bn initiative to rebuild American rare earth processing. Backed in 2021, when rare earth independence was still a policy paper rather than a procurement line.
Backed at seed in 2022, when drag-reducing riblet film was closer to a physics demonstration than a product. Four years on, Mako has closed an A$28m Series A with International Airlines Group investing directly, flies with Delta on the 767, and has flight-tested with the US Air Force. The market re-rated Mako at Series A. We were there four years earlier.
Drone-based transmission line stringing, now operating across three continents: a multi-year MSA with Powerlink in Queensland, MSAs with Adani and Sterlite, India’s two largest private transmission developers, and operations established in the USA and Canada with PG&E and OPG. Commercial traction is accelerating faster than any other company in the portfolio.
On marks and liquidity. Unrealised positions are held at last priced round. Two positions have reached liquidity, and neither was our choice: an acquisition and a listing run to the market’s timing, not ours. Bueno returned 1.4× on acquisition in January 2026; Sea Forest 2.2× following its ASX listing in November 2025. Both were marked below the portfolio’s 3.1× blended average. Both returned capital.
Past portfolio built through deal-by-deal syndicate model as one of two founding partners of Bandera Capital
Every company in the portfolio reduces emissions or resource intensity, not as a mandate, but because efficiency is good for business.
Prefabricated, rapidly deployable solar arrays with superior energy density. Ideally suited to remote locations such as mine sites.
Smart building analytics platform that monitors electrical equipment and automatically generates maintenance work-orders. Marquee customers include Woolworths, Disney and Google.
World-first high-efficiency miniaturised chillers that reduce energy consumption by ~50% in commercial buildings and data centres.
Hyperlocal weather forecast for ships at sea, enabling AI-based routing algorithms that save more than $1,000 in fuel each day.
Small modular suburban batteries: installable in days with no grid upgrades or council approvals required. 60 units deployed in Sydney and a further 6,000 sites secured.
Cloud-connected dosers on cattle water troughs enabling unprecedented consistency, precision and traceability in nutritional supplementation while reducing labour costs.
AI-based machine-vision algorithms determining livestock weight to 98% accuracy using a standard iPhone camera, enabling real-time health and growth monitoring without manual weighing.
Semi-autonomous free-swimming hull cleaning robots that remove biofouling and improve fuel efficiency by up to 30%. Customers include SF Bay Ferry and Maersk.
Drone-based power line stringing and monitoring: cheaper, safer and faster than legacy helicopter-based approaches. Expanding across Australia, India, USA and Canada with Adani, PG&E and Powerlink.
Project developer connecting industrial facilities, EPCs and capital providers for waste-heat to energy projects, turning stranded thermal energy into a new revenue stream.
AI-based solar generation and demand forecasting enabling utility-scale asset owners to optimise energy trading. Selected by the US Department of Energy to pilot its F-AST tool.
Drag-reducing riblet film that improves aviation fuel efficiency by up to 4%. R&D partners include the US Air Force, Delta Airlines, Vueling and Singapore Airlines.
Clean low-cost electrochemical process for extracting and refining rare earth elements and enabling a secure sovereign mine-to-magnet supply chain.
Electricity-based seed priming that creates faster-growing, more robust seedlings and increases harvest yields across agricultural crops.
Renewable land access platform providing regional landowners with market information, standardised documents and financing to unlock the value of long-term energy leases. Originated 2.5GW of projects.
Seaweed-based livestock feed supplement that reduces methane emissions and improves feed conversion efficiency. Listed on the ASX in November 2025. Customers include Teys Cargill, Rangers Valley and Fonterra.
Proprietary silicon-graphite anode materials that increase battery range by 20% and reduce charge time by 40%. Customers include Tesla, Panasonic and SAIC.
Target returns are net to LPs. Fund model available on request.
Pre-seed and seed is where most venture capital value is created. It’s also where competition for the best Australian hard-tech deals is the weakest. Entering early maximises ownership, provides the greatest influence over company direction, and builds the relationships that generate the best deal flow. It is also where our networks and sector expertise are strongest.
An A$20m fund is unviable for a multi-partner firm but perfectly suited to a solo GP with the right support infrastructure in place. Solo GP structure enables speed, conviction and accountability in an asset class that rewards contrarian decision-making. It provides a mandate to back the “weird” and “difficult” hard-tech that institutional funds with consensus-based decision-making processes cannot. Supported by high-calibre Investment Committee, Advisory Board and founder network. How the Solo GP model works →
All capital deployed upfront. No reserves held for follow-on. This maximises initial ownership (targeting 10%), eliminates signalling risk at later rounds, and creates a large pool of pro-rata allocations that LPs can access for direct follow-on investment.
Fund designed to align GP and LP incentives and to enable LPs to compound exposure to the best companies in multiple ways:
Uniform investment sizing and standard deal terms for every portfolio company reduces legal cost and closing time for both parties. This both enhances Kapunda’s reputation and enables greater time allocation to activities which actually drive returns: sourcing deals, doing diligence and supporting portfolio companies.
No board seats taken. Advisory support focused on high-leverage network introductions and commercial discipline, not administrative burden. Enables prioritisation of companies that are succeeding and maximises time spent on activities that drive returns.
Early-stage venture capital is a high-risk, high-return asset class. A significant proportion of portfolio companies will not return capital and investments may take many years to generate returns. For further detail on Kapunda’s approach to risk management →
Jeremy is an experienced early-stage investor who has built a portfolio of leading Australian hard-tech startups across the energy, industrials, and agriculture sectors as co-founder of Bandera Capital.
Prior to founding Bandera, Jeremy was a founding employee of the corporate venture capital funds of Lane Crawford Joyce Group and Woolworths (W23), where successful investments included Eucalyptus, Sonder and Samsara.
He began his career as a management consultant at LEK Consulting, where he developed analytical due diligence skills working on Private Equity transactions. He holds a BCom (Liberal Studies) from Sydney University with First Class Honours in Economics.
Jeremy is supported by an experienced team at Foxglove Capital, who chair both the investment committee and advisory board and act as an on-demand resource for investment sourcing and research.
This strategy requires a specific combination of skills, experience and relationships that Jeremy has spent a career building.
Six years backing Australian hard-tech founders has built a reputation that generates its own deal flow. Deals are referred by founders, friends and other funds. The best deals arrive through trusted relationships, not through a process.
Jeremy has a proven ability to identify winners early, pricing technical risk that later stage funds avoid. A first-principles approach to technoeconomic due diligence honed over many years, backed by a network of subject-matter experts that generalist funds can’t replicate.
No two startups need the same help, and what they need on day one evolves as they grow. Knowing when to lean in, when to step back, and who to connect a founder with at the right moment is a skill learnt only through experience. The support that matters most is helping founders get to the US, and this is something Kapunda is specifically set up to do.
"Jeremy dives deep into the tech, gaining a more thorough understanding of the problem than any other VC we have dealt with, thereby giving him a greater appreciation of the significance and need for the solutions he backs."
"Jeremy didn't just write a cheque. He rolled up his sleeves and guided us through the messy jump from pre-seed uncertainty to an over-subscribed seed round. He added commercial discipline and real momentum, materially accelerating our march to climate-smart farming at scale."
"Jeremy stands out as one of the very few Australian venture investors willing to back deep-tech breakthroughs at the earliest stage. His conviction in Sicona's vision, driven by rigorous research into our silicon anode technology, gave us the ability to accelerate our plans."
"Jeremy backed us early with a deep understanding of the sector and a clear view of why we matter in it. He has been sharp, responsive, and easy to work with the whole way through."
Kapunda Ventures Fund I is raising A$20m to back Australia's best early-stage hard-tech founders. Targeting first close Q4 2026. Minimum commitment A$200k. ESVCLP structure.
jeremy@kapunda.vc