Motion Capital: Scaling Decarbonisation Solutions in Aotearoa

We’re thrilled to do our first deep dive on Motion Capital and the incredible work they’re doing, as well as the companies they’re supporting, in the decarbonisation space. Since launching in 2023, they’ve quickly become a key part of Aotearoa’s climate investing community. To help our community get to know them better, we sat down with the Motion Capital team for a Q&A to hear more about who they are, what drives their work, and what’s ahead on their journey.

Who is Motion Capital, and how are you driving impact investment in Aotearoa?

We are a venture fund focused on decarbonisation. Our investment thesis is simple: the fastest way to scale climate impact is to back technologies that make it cheaper to save the world than to destroy it. We invest in companies that can compete on cost and performance, not just on climate credentials.

What inspired the launch of Motion Capital in 2023, and what gap in the market are you addressing?

We see climate mitigation as one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time. At the time, much of the climate tech investment market was chasing policy incentives and green premiums, rather than focusing on solutions that could win on their own through cost advantages and quality at parity or better. Motion Capital was created to shift that focus, by backing companies that can drive market-led adoption and unlock scalable, commercially sustainable responses to climate change.

What sectors and types of businesses are you most excited to back in your climate investment portfolio?

We invest across the climate tech spectrum, with a focus on sectors where decarbonisation benefits from commercial scale impact, such as: energy, industrial processes, the built environment, agriculture, and others. We look for strong teams tackling large markets with solutions that can scale globally on commercial merit.

Can you introduce some of Motion Capital’s portfolio companies and why you chose to invest in them?

Our portfolio includes companies like Zincovery, which has developed a low-carbon zinc recycling process that operates at a fraction of the energy intensity of current methods. Another example is Miruku, which has developed a way of genetically modifying plants to produce dairy proteins at a reduced cost both commercially and environmentally. In each case, we were drawn to teams solving large-scale climate challenges with commercially competitive solutions that can scale without depending on ongoing subsidies or policy incentives.

We are happy to introduce anyone interested to the rest of our portfolio companies.

What’s your perspective on the state of climate and decarbonisation investing in Aotearoa right now? What’s working— and what’s still missing?

What’s working is the focus on companies with strong commercial drivers, where climate impact is the result of their growth. What’s missing is access to later-stage capital, both equity and debt, to help these companies scale beyond the pilot and early commercial phases.

What challenges and opportunities do you see for early-stage climate solutions in New Zealand?

The biggest challenge is that we have world-class science and engineering talent but limited domestic scale. For hardware-intensive climate solutions, this often means founders need to expand overseas much earlier than in other sectors, which brings capital intensity and execution risk. On the opportunity side, New Zealand is a great testbed for climate innovation, we have a diverse set of industries, from agriculture to heavy industry, and relatively nimble regulatory processes, which makes it easier to pilot solutions here before exporting them globally.

Impact measurement can look very different across sectors and stages. How are you approaching impact measurement and reporting at this early stage of Motion Capital’s journey?

At the early stages of deep tech climate companies, emissions reductions are often minimal while core risks are being retired. Where relevant, we ask for a simple CO₂e measure of emissions reduced or avoided compared to the market standard, for energy companies, this is grid-dependent, and for industrial processes, it is benchmarked against the incumbent method.

What advice would you give to other investors or funders who are keen to support climate innovation more actively?

Focus on commercial viability as the primary lever for climate impact. Technologies that win on cost, performance, or convenience will outcompete incumbents and scale faster than those that rely on climate credentials alone. This also means taking the time to understand unit economics and realistic scaling pathways. Finally, collaborate, the climate challenge is too big for any one fund or investor to solve alone, and syndication is key to getting these companies the capital and networks they need.

What’s next for Motion Capital?

We’re continuing to build out our first portfolio with a focus on technologies that can decarbonise at gigaton scale while delivering strong commercial returns. We have a couple of new investments in the pipeline that expand our reach into industrial decarbonisation and energy storage. On the operational side, we’re growing our network of co-investors in Australasia and globally, and building strategic partnerships that can help our portfolio companies access customers and scale internationally.

Any final reflections for Aotearoa’s impact investing community?

We’re optimistic about the future of climate-aligned investing in Aotearoa. The capital, talent, and ambition are here, the challenge is connecting them in a way that supports companies from inception through to global scale. If we can work together to bridge the capital gaps, share expertise, and back founders with the courage to take on the biggest problems, we can position Aotearoa as a global leader in commercially competitive climate solutions.

It’s been great to hear from Motion Capital and learn more about how they’re approaching climate tech and impact investing in Aotearoa. It’s exciting to see how quickly they’re becoming a key part of our impact investing community, and we can’t wait to see the innovative companies they support as their portfolio grows.

If you want to learn more about Motion Capital, their portfolio, or their approach to scaling climate solutions, you can check out their website.