Aspiring Materials - Investment Notes

We’re delighted to have led Aspiring Material’s $4m pre-seed capital raise to fund the design of NZ’s first industrial carbon capture pilot plant facility.

Aspiring Materials is a Christchurch-based climate tech company that was introduced to us by our close friends at Icehouse Ventures.​ Their technology enables the exciting possibility of the capture of large amounts of industrial carbon dioxide emissions using commonly found volcanic rocks.

Their unique mineral processing technology unlocks a suite of high-value, low-emissions outputs from a single rock input: carbon-capturing magnesium hydroxide, reactive silica for low-carbon concrete, green hydrogen, and even battery-grade nickel-cobalt-manganese hydroxide.

Unlike traditional carbon capture solutions that bury CO₂ underground, Aspiring permanently locks it into magnesium carbonate, a stable solid.It’s a genuine upstream platform innovation, cleanly processing waste rock into materials vital to decarbonising construction, heavy industry, and energy storage.

The lab work conducted by the company at the University of Canterbury to date is very exciting. On one of our visits, the company showed us actual direct air capture being conducted on a small scale. If you look at the carbon dioxide monitor in this video, you will see the carbon dioxide reading slowly decrease over time - proof that the materials are literally sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.

The next step is for the company to move out of the lab and build a pilot plant, which will be New Zealand’s first industrial carbon capture facility. It will be capable of processing large volumes of feedstock that will then be used for industrial point source carbon capture, direct air capture, and supporting much needed decarbonisation initiatives.

We’re delighted to have invested $1m to support Mark, Chris, Allan, Matt, Megan, Jared, Tegan, Kathy, Josh and Bradley on this mission. It is an exceptional example of world-class kiwi technology that has significant commercial and impact prospects in helping the world decarbonise.