Australia’s A$4.5 trillion superannuation pool has a bigger role to play in venture funding of the country’s growing mining and metals technology sector, but probably not any time soon, the GRX26 conference in Perth, Western Australia, heard.
An absence of large-scale local venture capital funds backing Australian start-ups and scale-ups will mean more and more firms trek to the US for funding, but they must lift their game in what has quickly become a highly competitive “critical mineral tech” financing arena, the head of a US-based fund manager said.
If they can’t attract offshore funding there is a risk Australia falls behind in a new race to build technological capability – and industries and jobs – around leading-edge R&D and future-facing mines.
