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IP Group Australia and AMSL Aero – decarbonising aviation
IP Group Australia and AMSL Aero
AMSL Aero’s concept for zero-emissions aviation has prompted investment from IP Group Australia.
[Music starts. The opening title page shows a blue panel with the Australian Government, Department of Industry, Science and Resources crest and logo appear in stack format. The panel also shows the video title and subtitle: AMSL Aero, IP Group Australia, Venture Capital Case Study Series.]
[A video appears of Andrew Moore, Max Yorke and Siobhan Lyndon entering a white warehouse.]
[The video shifts to Andrew Moore seated inside the warehouse a dark grey aircraft behind him. He is speaking to the camera. His full name, occupation and company name appear at the lower left hand side of the screen. It states:
Andrew Moore
Co-Founder, Chief Engineering Officer
AMSL Aero]
Andrew Moore: So AMSL Aero is a company that is developing the world’s most efficient electric and zero emissions vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
[The video cuts to Max Yorke, seated inside the warehouse with a white aircraft behind him, which shows a printed logo which states “VERTIIA”. He is speaking to the camera. His full name, occupation and company name appear at the lower left-hand side of the screen. It states:
Max Yorke
Chief Executive Officer
AMSL Aero]
Max Yorke: And our vision is to really decarbonise aviation and to provide a much better option for travel in the air than currently exists.
[The video shifts to Siobhan Lyndon seated with a dark grey aircraft behind her, while she is speaking to the camera. Her full name, occupation and company name appear at the lower left-hand side of the screen. It states:
Siobhan Lyndon
Co-Founder, Chief Operations Officer
AMSL Aero]
Siobhan Lyndon: Hopefully so everyone who's listening to this will be able to fly in it one day soon.
[A scene of the camera zooming out on one of the dark grey Vertiia aircrafts appears].
[The camera cuts to Mike Molinari seated with a white aircraft to the side of him as he speaks to the camera. His full name, occupation and company name appear at the lower left-hand side of the screen. It states:
Mike Molinari
Managing Director
IP Group Australia]
Mike Molinari: In 2017 we launched IP group Australia and that was in partnership with each of the Group of Eight universities, the leading research universities in Australia and the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
[The camera changes to show Siobhan Lyndon. She is speaking to the camera.]
Siobhan Lyndon: So, we started working with IP Group, I think I met them back in 2018.
[The camera cuts back to Mike Molinari speaking. The video then changes to showcase the aircraft inside the warehouse.]
Mike Molinari: We were introduced to them through one of the incubator and accelerator programs that they were participating in, and we were incredibly excited by the vision of Andrew and Siobhan for electric aviation, and the potential to decarbonise transport.
[The camera cuts back to Andrew Moore speaking. The video then changes to show technicians inside the warehouse.]
Andrew Moore: The team from IP Group Australia, were engineers from CSIRO from hydrogen startups who had a great background, we connected really well, and the relationship has grown and blossomed from there. So, what AMSL Aero are doing, what our aim and what our vision is, is to really change the way we think about transport in this country.
[The video changes back to Max Yorke. He is speaking to the camera. As he speaks, a manikin is shown on a stretcher inside a white Vertiia aircraft, to show an example of what the new technology may be used for.]
Max Yorke: So initially I think we will have a hugely positive impact on regional Australia. This aircraft can provide, really the lifeblood of the community in delivering mail, cargo, patients, passengers.
[The camera cuts back to Andrew Moore. He is speaking to the camera.]
Andrew Moore: It is essentially the perfect zero emissions, thin route on demand transport technology that's needed for a country with this dispersion and geographical size.
[The camera cuts to Siobhan Lyndon. She is speaking to the camera.]
Siobhan Lyndon: From our experience, venture capital has been critical to keeping us alive, but also allowing us to accelerate at the pace that we need to, to be able to move at speed to market and meet our customers’ needs on time.
[The video changes to Max Yorke. He is speaking to the camera.]
Max Yorke: In Australia there's so many innovations that are happening that are currently supported and will be supported in the future, and they just wouldn't happen otherwise.
[The camera cuts back to Mike Molinari. He is speaking to the camera.]
Mike Molinari: The tax concessions associated with VCLP have been really important for us at IP Group Australia. They provide a mechanism and a tax treatment that is similar and equivalent to the tax treatment that our investors are able to get investing offshore, and it gives us the platform to attract that capital into Australia to support the companies that we invest in.
[The video changes to show technicians working inside of the warehouse. The camera then cuts to Andrew Moore speaking to the camera.]
Andrew Moore: One of the big challenges for early stage companies, of course particularly, if you are building complex hardware like an aircraft is, it does need capital and there's not enough of it in Australia to do all the great things that us as a nation are capable of.
And so, venture capital is critical, you just can't do it, you would not be able to do it without venture capital. It’s a critical piece and it plays a critical part in enabling companies like us to do great things.
[The video cuts to Mike Molinari. He is speaking to the camera.]
Mike Molinari: What our companies do is hard. We are taking technologies from visionary founders and visionary inventors and turning them into products that can have a major impact on the world. By definition, these are things that no one has ever done before.
[The camera changes to Siobhan Lyndon. She is speaking to the camera. The video changes to show a short clip of people in an office, and then cuts back to Siobhan Lyndon speaking.]
Siobhan Lyndon: At AMSL Aero, and this is one I’m extremely proud of, is we've created over 60 jobs simply within our own organisation. We've also, you know, engaged with many Australian suppliers these you know, there's many more and many universities that we engage with, and so we are creating, you know, through our technology and our investment from venture capital, a number of jobs through that whole ecosystem.
[The video changes to Mike Molinari. He is speaking to the camera. The camera then cuts to a scene of two men walking into a white warehouse through a flat grassy field. The video then changes to show two men speaking in a warehouse, and the camera cuts back to Mike Molinari speaking. The video then cuts to Andrew Moore, Max Yorke and Siobhan Lyndon speaking inside the warehouse with one of the Vertiia aircraft, and then back to Mike Molinari speaking once more.]
Mike Molinari: Given the scale of this vision, it's going to require significant capital where the VCLP program is very helpful to attract and invest that capital, but it is also going to mean building significant operations here in Australia all the way from manufacturing, through to downstream operations in training, maintenance. And so, we see a huge impact coming from AMSL’s success and the broader roll out of Vertiia here in Australia.
[The camera cuts back to Siobhan Lyndon speaking. The video cuts to one of the dark grey Vertiia aircrafts inside the warehouse. The video then cuts to Max Yorke, Siobhan Lyndon and Andrew Moore walking out of the warehouse with a smile.]
Siobhan Lyndon: What I would hope, is that we've created this incredible Australian manufacturing company building, you know, by the thousand per year plus Vertiia aircraft that are taking to the skies, providing emissions free flying for everyone here and abroad.
[The video shows a dark grey variant of the Vertiia aircraft. It has large windows on the sides and front, and its shape is rounded.]
This will be a global product and it really will return rich jobs, you know, highly skilled aviation manufacturing and design jobs to Australia.
[The video changes to show Max Yorke, Siobhan Lyndon and Andrew Moore standing outside in front of the entrance of the warehouse.]
[Video ends with a final blue panel showing the Australian Government, Department of Industry, Science and Resources crest and logo in stack format at the top left of the screen. This URL also appears at the bottom left: business.gov.au/grants-and-programs/venture-capital.]
[Music ends]
Overview
- IP Group Australia is a venture capital firm working in partnership with major Australian universities.
- AMSL Aero is a Sydney-based company developing a vertical take-off and landing, electrically powered, hydrogen-fuelled aircraft with zero tailpipe emissions.
- IP Group is AMSL Aero’s cornerstone investor.
- This relationship was made possible by the Australian Government’s VCLP initiative.
About IP Group
IP Group began in 2000 as a partnership between a group of financiers and the University of Oxford to address the problem of ‘How do we get great ideas from a world-leading research university out into the real world and combine them with capital to have a real impact and make a difference?’ (Michael Molinari, Managing Director, IP Group Australia). It now works with most of the leading research institutions in the UK.
IP Group Australia was launched in 2017 on the same model, partnering with the group of eight major Australian universities and the University of Auckland.
Globally IP Group has made over 500 investments in university spin-outs, investing more than £1.2 billion in science-based businesses to date.
AMSL Aero and developing Vertiia
AMSL Aero is developing the world’s most efficient electric and zero-emissions vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.
Our vision is to develop the closest thing the world has to teleporting.
Andrew Moore, an aeronautical engineer and pilot who worked on helicopters in the Navy, ‘realised early in the piece that electrification and zero-emissions technology like hydrogen fuel cells and some of the other enablers like digital flight control systems mean we can radically change this space and lead the world’. In 2017 he and Siobhan Lyndon founded AMSL Aero to build a new type of aircraft that uses these technologies.
The unique feature of this aircraft, the Vertiia, is that it takes off like a helicopter but flies like an aeroplane, which is a much more efficient way of flying. It has fewer parts than conventional aircraft and uses much cheaper energy sources: batteries and hydrogen fuel. In its current iteration it has a range of up to 1,000 km.
A prototype Vertiia achieved a tethered vertical take-off, hover and landing in 2023, and test flights are about to begin with an upgraded version. AMSL is working closely with the Civil Aviation Authority on certification to civil aviation standards. The first civil use is likely to be providing medical evacuation and essential services to regional and remote Australia.
At the same time, AMSL is working on an autonomous Vertiia for the Army to use for casualty evacuation. Production on these could begin as early as 2025.
Longer term, AMSL sees potential to deliver a low-cost, decarbonised model of passenger air travel between and even within cities.
In 10 years’ time, we want to be making 1,000 aircraft a year and we want to be changing the way transport works in this country and around the world.
How investment from IP Group Australia has helped
AMSL Aero’s founders and their compelling concept for zero-emissions aviation came to the attention of IP Group Australia in 2018. IP Group helped to develop the project into an investment-ready company. It invested in AMSL’s first funding round in 2019, and in multiple further rounds as the company has grown.
We provide more than just capital; we regard ourselves as co-founders with capital. We work very closely alongside our founding teams to help to at first get a company up and running and then to grow and scale the company.
Particularly if you’re doing something hard like building an aircraft, you need an investor who’s patient, who understands that it’s a hard, long development process. IP Group is that investor.
AMSL Aero has also received funding from the Australian Government to modify the Vertiia for remotely piloted firefighting.
AMSL currently has around 60 employees and has raised more than $50 million from private and government sources. Its growth is creating a ripple effect of wider benefits.
In addition to our team, we also engage with many Australian suppliers and key contractors. So we are creating a number of jobs through that whole ecosystem.
Venture Capital Limited Partnerships
The Australian Government’s VCLP program provides tax incentives for venture capital firms to invest in Australian startups in the early stages of commercialising their inventions.
It aligns closely with similar incentives that are available internationally. This is extremely important in bringing venture capital into Australia.
I’m not sure that without the VCLP program we would have been able to do what we do. A structure like the VCLP is fundamental to attracting capital, both local and international, into Australia and into our sector to be able to support high-impact deep technology companies to grow.
More information
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Visit the IP Group Australia website.
IP Group Australia -
Visit the AMSL Aero website.
AMSL Aero -
Find out more about Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships.
Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships (ESVCLP)