Soul Capital’s Momentum – New Deals, New Energy

Soul Capital has long been a distinctive voice in Aotearoa New Zealand’s impact investing landscape, backing ventures where impact and strong commercial performance go hand in hand. In this Q&A, the team shares insights on their recent investments — from iwi-owned renewable energy projects to innovative education, health tech, and immersive media ventures — and explains how they approach impact, partnerships, and long-term value creation.

For those who might be new to your work, could you start by telling us a bit about Soul Capital?

Soul Capital started in 2014, back when impact investment, certainly in Aotearoa New Zealand, was relatively unknown. Ten years later, we are fortunate to have more funds who care not only about the financial returns, but about the impact the investments make in the world. At Soul Capital, we’re trying to demonstrate what impact investment, at its best, can be. We see impact as a lens, through which we evaluate every opportunity. We invest in ventures, impact debt and real assets. With two funds and approx $80m FUM we are very proud of the impact and commercial outcomes that we’ve enabled so far.

You’ve backed four exciting ventures recently — Pioneer Energy, StaplesVR, Kai’s Education, and Kitea Health. What connects these companies in your eyes? What drew you to each one?

Embedded impact - no surprises there - and a strategically diverse set of sectors and asset classes. But to expand on the impact side of things, all four organisations are very different at first blush, but if you look a little deeper, all three create strong impact in their unique ways and for specific communities.

For Pioneer Energy it was both social and environmental - Soul Capital was part of a consortium of Māori investors with whom we were delighted to collaborate and to bake in an impactful exit to support iwi-Māori ownership of this nationally significant asset. And of course that's based on a shared commitment to long-term sustainable investment into Aotearoa’s renewable energy sector.

StaplesVR is a commercially compelling tech company that has a particular flavour of equity and inclusion embedded from the ground up, it is in the DNA of the organisation, which made it very compelling for Soul Capital to invest.

Kai’s education is a brilliant Kiwi company making a real difference in STEM education in classrooms all over the world, with a special focus on children who are neurodiverse and those who are vision impaired or blind.

Kitea Health is a brilliant medical device start-up company who have developed a miniaturised wireless pressure sensor implant for managing hydrocephalus. We see impact here as two-fold; its game changing for all hydrocephalus sufferers as they are able to monitor their status more on their own terms, dramatically reducing their need for hospital visits. We also know that our priority communities have worse outcomes from hydrocephalus so this innovation enables greater health equity.

So clearly a diverse range of impact and sectors, which is precisely what gives Soul Capital its unique position in impact investing in New Zealand.

There’s a lot of buzz about climate tech and renewable energy right now. What role do you see impact investors playing in making sure the transition is inclusive and community-centred — like we see in the Pioneer deal?

Part of that is keeping those assets in Kiwi hands and enabling domestic capital to be part of the solution.  With Pioneer, there was a competitive international process in which our consortium was the only shortlisted domestic player. By working together and bringing smaller investor groups into the deal, we could keep this asset a New Zealand owned business, and to optimise the structure to ensure iwi-Māori ownership in the very long term, especially for those smaller iwi organisations with emergent balance sheets. 

The case for renewables is self-evident environmentally - impact investors should use their additionality mandate to crowd-in aligned investors (instead of crowding them out), consider the social impacts of the assets, and to be intentional with their exit strategy to enable inclusivity and a community-orientation. (We’ll be announcing another energy investment shortly with really strong baked-in social impact.) With energy demands expected to increase over the next decade and beyond, who owns the assets and what their priorities are is strategically important.

StaplesVR is a different kind of story — global-facing, deep tech, but also strongly impact-aligned. What impact outcomes did you see in this deal, and how do you see them evolving as the company grows?

Gender diverse and neurodiverse creatives face systemic exclusion in the technology and immersive media sectors, limiting both their employment opportunities and the industry’s creative potential. We’re charged with investing for impact for these communities and StaplesVR addresses this gap by embedding inclusive hiring, culture, and leadership into a commercially successful, innovative business model, proving that diversity drives performance. The training made possible by StaplesVR also provides more cost effective and easier access to scarce resources resulting in training being more equitable. The StaplesVR team is also building a mini ecosystem through their involvement with Click Studios and their foundation, creating further access and inclusivity in tech.

Kai’s Education feels like a natural fit for Soul Capital — equity, education, tamariki. Why is this space important to you, and what kind of change are you hoping to see through this investment?

When you think systemically about equity, education looms as an important place to get involved.  But we’re extremely deliberate about which ed-tech and med-tech opportunities we get involved with. While many are commercially strong and generally good for the world, they rarely make a material difference for those that are underserved by existing systems. With Kai’s Education it is not just about improved STEM education, the team is committed to improving outcomes for tamariki that often get left behind at school.  Likewise, with Kitea Health, their device serves everyone with the condition, but Māori and Pasifika communities will have an outsized benefit, not because of increased prevalence, but because of their different relationship with mainstream clinical settings.

From energy to education to emerging tech — your recent investments span a lot of ground. Has your thinking shifted at all about what kinds of companies Soul Capital wants to back?

Soul Capital has always had a multi-sector and multi-asset approach. These investments do, however, demonstrate what good looks like in impact investment fund management. It is more than just about putting money into sustainable businesses - it is about discerning impact where it is not obvious, embedding and amplifying that in deal structures, and managing the asset over time. 

Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, what’s next? Are there new areas you’re exploring, or things you’re particularly excited about right now?

Our current fund, Te Pae ki te Rangi, is at a stage where we can now be more focused on which type of opportunities we’re pursuing, for the rest of this year that means some later stage venture capital deals, making further progress on our programme of housing investments. We are also aiming for one or two seed stage investments.

Thinking about the recent Soul Impact Forum, what was the biggest takeaway for you?

Comments we received from our audience was that they realised the nuance of what goes into real impact investments, as a fund manager, once you get an investment under service, i.e. someone said, ‘Woah, you guys are next level’. And we are, but that doesn't make it easy. Also reflecting on the calibre of the attendees, which speaks to the growth of impact investing as a movement. It's wonderful to compare that to our audiences back in the early years and understand the strides impact investment has made.

Finally, any reflections or messages you’d like to share with the IIN community — especially fellow impact investors, entrepreneurs, or iwi partners watching your mahi and following your journey?

We like to think we’re demonstrating what’s possible with impact investing across asset classes - deep impact with strong commercial performance. So we’re curious, what do investors want next to take impact investing to the next level in Aotearoa New Zealand? What flavours of impact, what asset mix, what commercial parameters? Drop us a line and have a kōrero.

The Soul Capital Team.