Venture fund Uniseed has added five new university partners

University-owned venture fund Uniseed has doubled its number of university partners which will boost its commercialisation opportunities.

Uniseed CEO Peter Devine (left) and UniSuper chief investment officer John Pearce.

University-owned venture fund Uniseed has doubled its number of university partners in a major expansion that will boost the number of commercialisation opportunities it considers each year.

Monash University and a NSW consortium consisting of the University of Newcastle, University of Technology Sydney, Western Sydney University and Macquarie University have joined, which will boost Uniseed’s capital and give it access to research from the five new institutions. They join the five current members, the universities of Queensland, NSW, Melbourne and Sydney, and the CSIRO.

Uniseed chief executive Peter Devine said the expansion meant the fund would expect to support more than half the commercial spin-out companies from Australian research institutions, up from 42 per cent previously.

He said Uniseed would now be likely to examine about 750 research commercialisation opportunities each year, up from about 500 at the moment. “If we increase the number coming in there’s a better chance we get some good investment opportunities away,” Mr Devine said.

Since it was established in 2000, Uniseed has help fund 66 start-up companies based on university and CSIRO research, and 17 had achieved commercial deals with international companies, Mr Devine said. These include this year’s deal between University of Sydney spin-out Kinoxis Therapeutics and global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingel­heim worth more than $270m.

Last year UniSuper committed $75m to Uniseed to invest in start-up companies. That has helped the fund overcome the reluctance of many investors to commit to early stage venture capital in a high interest rate environment.

UniSuper chief investment officer John Pearce said the $75m investment “takes that concern off the table for Uniseed”.

UniSuper’s stated goal from the investment is to back industries of the future such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, quan­tum computing and green energy. “Uniseed and UniSuper is an obvious marriage,” Mr Pearce said.

Monash University chief commercialisation officer Alastair Hick said Uniseed’s deal with UniSuper, and the access to extra capital, was a key reason for the university to join. He said Monash would probably spin out seven or eight companies this year after averaging five to seven in recent years.

“These companies keep growing and the amount of capital required continues to grow very significantly,” Dr Hick said.

University of Newcastle pro vice-chancellor industry and engagement Warwick Dawson, who represents the consortium of four new NSW universities on the Uniseed board, said that research commercialisation and translation to applications was particularly important post=Covid as Australia realised the importaance of developing sovereign capacity.