2025 Awards Sponsors
A big thank you to our 2025 Awards evening sponsors. Their generous support allows us to continue to bring together Aotearoa's science, research, and deep-tech communities for a night of inspiration and celebration.
Ngā mihi nui.
These sponsors believe in the power of science and research to create world-changing innovations. Find out more about them below.
Campus Plus – Networking Sponsor
Campus Plus New Zealand helps clients discover the first moments of commercialisation curiosity, nurture commercialisation confidence, and create engagement insights to drive commercialisation impact and spin-out success. Our programs, tools and solutions are designed by professionals experienced in research commercialisation and university spin-out investment. We use best practice methodologies to complement existing activities, enabling you to maximise your impact.
Our professional development and training programs upskill graduate students and researchers, identifying commercialisation talent early, empowering institutions to actively create their commercialisation pipeline. Our delivery platform provides rich engagement insights, enabling commercialisation professionals to do more with what they’ve got.
Ara Ake – Breakthrough Innovator Award Sponsor
As Aotearoa New Zealand’s future energy centre, Ara Ake focuses on advancing the country’s energy sector by accelerating the demonstration, commercialisation and deployment of critical innovations and emerging technologies into the market.
Ara Ake collaborates across the energy ecosystem to enable energy solutions to become commercially viable and support the decarbonisation of New Zealand.
AJ Park – Sponsor of the Commercialisation Impact Award
For over 130 years, AJ Park has helped companies and individuals identify, develop, protect, commercialise, manage, and enforce their IP rights in New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and throughout the world.
We use our technical expertise in patents, trade marks, commercial and litigation services to help our clients turn their ideas into assets. Within these groups, we have sector expertise in a range of industries including biotechnology, information technology, life sciences, mechanical and electrical engineering, and fast-moving consumer goods.
BNZ – Sponsor of the Research Entrepreneur Award
Bank of New Zealand was founded in 1861 and has been an integral part of New Zealand life ever since. Today the bank employs over 5,000 people in New Zealand; works with Personal, Business, Agri and Private Wealth clients; and has 135 branches and Partners' Centres across NZ.
We're committed to positive change, focusing on kaitiakitanga (caring for the natural world), and manaakitanga (caring for people and communities), and are actively taking steps to accelerate the just transition to a net zero emissions economy, one that supports the regeneration of the natural environment. We are delighted to partner with KiwiNet to support, promote and showcase research that is changing our world and which has led to commercial success.
KCA – Sponsor of the Commercialisation Professional Award
Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia (KCA) is the peak body representing research translation organisations and individuals participating in or supporting the commercialisation of Australian and New Zealand publicly funded research. It is the leading body for best practice in industry engagement, commercialisation and entrepreneurship.
KCA has existed since 1978 and is a founding member of the global Alliance of Technology Transfer Professionals. KCA currently represents an 800 plus member community of practitioners, collaborators and advisors spanning the broad publicly funded research innovation system, led by a passionate and dedicated Board of Directors.
PwC – Sponsor of the Breakthrough Project Award
PwC is part of a tech-forward, people-empowered global network that spans across 149 countries with over 370,000 people.
We provide market-leading services that include artificial intelligence, assurance, digital transformation, deals, tax and consulting, while bringing together the teams, resources and alliances you need so you can act boldly and achieve real results.
In New Zealand, PwC employs over 1,700 people and has offices in the Auckland, Waikato, Hawke's Bay, Wellington and Canterbury regions.
Over and above our traditional service offerings, PwC New Zealand also has a strong industry focus, with multi-discipline teams dedicated to key industry groups in both global and national markets. For our clients, this means the best local knowledge combined with the broadest global experience.
Sprout Agritech – KiwiNet Commercialisation Icon Award sponsor
Sprout is New Zealand's leading early-stage startup accelerator and investor, igniting the next wave of technology and innovation in the agrifood value chain.
We specialise in turning ground-breaking innovations into scalable startups that impact how life on Earth is nourished and sustained. At Sprout, we are dedicated to assisting entrepreneurs in building robust teams and scaling their startups globally. We do this by delivering carefully tailored programmes, early-stage funding, industry partnerships, and connections to key stakeholders, along with capability and company building.
Established in 2015, Sprout has 11 companies under our investment portfolio and has developed the capability of more than 250 entrepreneurs.