National Reconstruction Fund Corporation chief executive David Gall says Australia’s scaleup pipeline is stronger than people think. “We’re not anywhere near running out of opportunities at the moment,” he told Commercial Disco.
As the head of the federal government’s $15 billion fund, Mr Gall says the idea that Australia lacks mid-tier scaleups is outdated and that the real bottleneck is the availability of long-term capital that is willing to stay through a company’s full commercialisation journey.
He says the NRF is intentionally ready and enthusiastically capable of filling that gap while also crowding in private and institutional investment.
Mr Gall said the NRFC is actively working with about 60 companies at any one time, with a pipeline that has already produced 14 investments in its first year.
“Since commencing, we’ve reviewed a bit over a thousand proposals,” he said. “The opportunity set is there – it’s about getting the right capital at the right moment.”
Mr Gall said founders consistently tell him that while Australia has money, it often doesn’t arrive in the form they need: too short-term, too risk-averse, or too mismatched with the long development cycles that define deep tech, advanced manufacturing and medical science.
“Some of these businesses need investors who can support a 14- or 15-year commercialisation arc,” he said. “That’s where patient capital like the NRF makes a difference.”
One of the NRF’s most conspicuous early moves was its investment in Synchron, the Australian-founded brain-computer interface company now headquartered in New York.
Some questioned why the NRF was backing a US-domiciled firm, but Mr Gall said the decision was strategic: Synchron has committed to building a commercial hub in Australia and conducting clinical trials here once its US FDA process concludes.
“It’s a story of trying to bring great Australian innovation back home again,” he said.
The investment also demonstrates Australia’s comparative strengths in clinical trials and medtech, Mr Gall said – capabilities he believes the NRF should consciously amplify.
“Australia punches well above its weight,” he said. “That’s a competitive advantage we should be exploiting.”
A more traditional industrial investment, the NRF’s $200 million commitment to Arafura Rare Earths, shows how the organisation thinks about crowding in capital.
Mr Gall said the deal required Australian government support across multiple agencies, foreign government participation, and private investment. “It’s taken the combination of all that to get the deal moving,” he said.
Asked whether the NRF is moving money out the door fast enough, Mr Gall said the corporation is on target: $584 million committed in its first year, slightly ahead of plan, and now aiming for $1.5 billion in commitments this financial year.
“There’ll always be lumpiness,” he said. “A lot of that is driven by companies hitting the milestones we’ve asked them to reach.”
Mr Gall said he expects investment sizes to continue ranging widely – from early-stage Series A-type cheques of $10 million–$20 million, through to major structured-finance deals of $100 million or more.
The average investment size sits around $50 million, but the NRFC’s aim is not to be the dominant financer.
“We want to crowd in private capital,” he said. “We want to invest alongside superannuation funds and strategic partners.”
He also emphasised the importance of impact reporting, not just financial returns, but jobs, regional development, value-added production and support for under-represented cohorts.
While full performance reporting begins after five years, Gall said the NRFC intends to communicate early markers of ecosystem impact as those indicators mature.
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