Where Deep Tech Converges: Impactful Innovation 2025
Auckland, NZ — Bridgewest Ventures’ annual deep tech summit, Impactful Innovation 2025, marked a decisive shift for New Zealand's innovation economy. Founders, operators, and investors focused on grounding big ideas in disciplined execution, underscoring a clear and pragmatic message: results beat rhetoric in global markets, especially the competitive landscape of the U.S.
The conference, spanning three critical sectors - Life Sciences, Clean Tech, and AI - zeroed in on the non-negotiable requirement for scale: flawless execution.
Life Sciences: Building for Acquisition From Day One
Brad Klos
Colin Hill
Hanie Yee
Kicking off the day, Life Sciences discussions focused on engineering for the exit - building companies for acquisition from day zero. The message was clear: in this capital-intensive sector, achieving market viability and speed to value are paramount. Success hinges on disciplined development, early strategic alignment, and knowing precisely what a potential corporate acquirer values.
Brad Klos, Managing Partner at E-merge Capital Partners and Evolve Medtech, highlighted the strategic pathway:
“Class II devices and 510(k) pathways let you create value with less capital and faster clocks. Court strategics early, pre‑assemble diligence, and know how hospitals actually buy.
Colin Hill, former senior executive at global giants like BioMérieux and Thermo Fisher Scientific, laid out the acquirer’s distilled checklist:
“They buy outcomes. Show purpose, positioning, product viability, a believable profit path, and a team that can deliver. Replace optimism with evidence.”
The life sciences fireside with Hanie Yee, who previously led global strategy and operations at pioneering medtech firm Alimetry and held leadership roles at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, stressed disciplined design: start with validated clinical problems and design for manufacturing scale. Her final word of caution:
“Don’t confuse a global vision with a global launch. Sequence markets.”
Clean Tech: Scaling with Strategy
Melissa Bergin
Puon Penn
Richard Park
Mutahar Glasgow
The Climate Tech panel emphasized that achieving scale requires strategic partnerships and accelerating capital velocity, especially when tackling globally urgent challenges like decarbonization and resource scarcity.
Melissa Bergin, Head of Portfolio Strategy for BHP Ventures, confirmed the value of deep corporate integration for innovators in AI, CleanTech, and advanced materials:
“Corporate venture is a scale enabler if you solve real pain,”
Puon Penn, CEO of New Energy Nexus Ventures Partner and a global climate finance leader, widened the aperture on urgency, stressing the need to mobilize capital and talent at speed:
“The climate math is accelerating. Water stress and displacement aren’t tail events anymore.”
Investor and scientist Richard Park, who previously invested in hard-tech startups at Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, urged founders to wire themselves into the value chain early:
“Build for precise problems, then execute cleanly. Relationships move scale.”
Mutahar Glasgow, Co-founder of Compostify and former marketing leader at companies like Zapier and Glassdoor, summed up the prevailing investor appetite:
“Execution beats ideation. Capital will chase validated stories led by driven teams.”
AI: Cutting Through the Hype to Production Value
Aleksander Raic
Kendra Vant
Rich Tong
Carol Brown
The AI track cut through the industry's pervasive hype to focus on tangible throughput, governance, and real-world utility. The emphasis was on viewing AI as an essential business toolchain, not a novelty.
Aleksandar Raić, Global VP of AI at Bridgewest Group, and former VP of AI Transformation at Infobip, set the tone for shifting focus from demos to production workflows:
“Treat AI as a business toolchain, not a demo,”
Adding a necessary dose of realism, Dr. Kendra Vant, a pioneering force behind Xero’s global AI product suite and former leader of SEEK’s machine learning team, noted the limitations of current generative models:
“LLMs are plateauing toward usefulness, not magic. Great engineers using AI are productive. AI instead of engineers is a risk.”
Veteran architect Richard Tong, who previously led flagship products at Microsoft and co-founded venture firms Ignition Partners and Qiming Venture Partners, tied adoption failures to fuzzy scoping:
“Most projects die at the problem statement.”
In the AI fireside, Carol Brown, Country Manager for Databricks Aotearoa and Co-Chair of NZTech, urged teams to maintain a sharp focus and prepare for constant change:
“Ship AI that solves one painful problem and expect the stack to change every six months.”
She added that sovereignty concerns are currently pushing regulated sectors toward hybrid architectures and on-shore processing, underscoring that compliance must be a first-class product constraint, not an afterthought.
Founder’s Final Word
Masood Tayebi
Masood Tayebi, Founding Partner and CEO of Bridgewest Group, closed the program with reflections drawn from decades of building transformative international companies. His background includes co-founding the pioneering wireless firm Wireless Facilities, Inc., which expanded its connectivity solutions to over 60 countries, and leading global investment strategies across biotech and high-tech sectors.
“The constant is people. Hire exceptional operators, keep learning velocity high, and make decisions with simple rules you can live with for decades.”
He positioned New Zealand not just as a source of ingenuity, but as a long-horizon build site for family capital seeking resilience and values alignment.
Impactful Innovation Spotlight: Showcasing Future Builders
The Impactful Innovation Spotlight is the conference's platform designed to showcase innovative early-stage ventures. Throughout the day, attendees heard from these builders who pitched their vision to a room full of people who can bring it to life, from international and local investors to deep-tech experts and fellow founders.
The ventures featured earned their spot by proving the potential of their deep tech solutions. Here is the class of 2025, poised for global traction:
Sector: Green Tech
Innovation: Developing soil biodegradable drop-in rigid bioplastics for sustainable packaging solutions.
Sector: Medtech/AI
Innovation: Offering AI-powered skin cancer triage using advanced Raman spectroscopy for non-invasive, rapid diagnosis.
Sector: Energy Storage
Innovation: Pioneering battery anodes using high entropy oxides that demonstrate improved capacity and stability over time.
Responsible Orthotics
Sector: Medtech
Innovation: Creating an adaptive orthotics platform targeting foot pain and gait improvement, with clinical pilots already underway.
Sector: Green Tech
Innovation: Converting forestry byproducts into high-value bio-based surfactants for industrial applications.
Sector: Medtech/AI
Innovation: Providing AI-assisted diagnostics to improve the speed and accuracy of identifying respiratory conditions.
Sector: Diagnostics
Innovation: Focused on developing a proprietary photonics + AI diagnostic tool for rapid analysis.
Final Takeaways: The Execution Imperative
Impactful Innovation 2025 brought together leading voices in deep tech, sparked new collaborations, and showcased the talent driving Aotearoa’s innovation ecosystem forward. The key takeaways for founders looking to win globally are clear: engineer Medtech exits from inception, scale Climate pilots through deep corporate VC partnerships, and adopt hybrid AI stacks in regulated workflows.
The underlying principle remains: convert Kiwi ingenuity into global market share through disciplined storytelling, manufacturing clarity, and unwavering channel access.
Impactful Innovation will be back!
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