Two affiliated start-ups are finalists in the 2026 KiwiNet awards

6 August, 2026

KiwiNet today announced that two MacDiarmid Institute affiliated start-up companies have been selected as finalists in the 2026 KiwiNet awards.  

Welcoming the announcement, MacDiarmid Institute Director Professor Nicola Gaston congratulated the researcher-founders of start-up companies Liquium and Captivate Technology, and said the short-listing once again demonstrated the fundamental science behind commercial success of deep tech start-ups.

‘Over the past 24 years, the Institute’s researchers have built a strong track record of translating research into commercial ventures. Each year, more start-up companies emerge from our researchers, spanning deep tech and increasingly the rapidly growing cleantech sector,’ she said. ‘Nearly all of these companies are based on Intellectual Property (IP) developed and discovered in the lab, often years before a company is conceived of,’ she added.

She said good science takes time – often decades – before it can be translated into financial returns and cited KiwiNet CEO Dr James Hutchinson’s comment in the KiwiNet press release today, where he noted that these successes do not happen overnight and are the result of years of deep research, expert commercialisation support and entrepreneurial drive.

‘Here at the Institute we see the evidence to back this up; many of our affiliated start-up companies can trace their original scientific discovery or IP back to research funding – either Marsden funding or MBIE Endeavour or Smart Ideas funding- that their founders received more than six, ten, twelve years before the company was even close to being spun out,’ she added.