Christchurch startup Kura Dynamics has raised NZ$4.65 million in a pre-seed round co-led by GD1 and Motion Capital to develop a way of producing hydrogen underground by reacting water with iron-rich rock, rather than splitting water with electricity.
The approach targets the main reason green hydrogen has struggled to compete. Electricity makes up 60 to 80% of the cost of producing hydrogen by electrolysis, and green hydrogen currently costs more than NZ$12 a kilogram, while heavy industry generally needs it at around NZ$4 to NZ$5, according to Startup Researcher. University of Auckland modelling released in March 2026 concluded green hydrogen would play only a very limited role in cutting New Zealand’s industrial emissions before 2050.
How it works
Kura is working on what is known as geologic hydrogen. Under the right conditions, water reacting with ultramafic rock (rock rich in iron and magnesium) strips out oxygen and releases hydrogen. The company aims to engineer those conditions on purpose and build a control system for recovering the gas, combining geochemistry, geological data and advanced computing.
Laboratory research indicates up to 0.6 kg of hydrogen can be released from a cubic metre of ultramafic rock, the company says. The technology has not yet been demonstrated outside the lab, and the company is pre-revenue.
The founders
Kura was founded in January 2026 by Dr Chris Oze and Peter Joynt. Oze holds a PhD in biogeochemistry from Stanford and co-founded Aspiring Materials, which was allocated NZ$15 million from the government’s Regional Infrastructure Fund in August 2026 for a plant in Southland. Joynt spent 14 years at Seequent, the Christchurch geoscience software company that Bentley Systems acquired for US$1.05 billion in 2021.
The raise and what’s next
Outset Ventures, K1W1 and the government-backed NZ Growth Capital Partners also invested in the round. Kura plans to use the money to move from laboratory validation to field trials, gather evidence in the ground and build a defensible intellectual property position. It intends to make money by licensing the technology rather than operating hydrogen projects itself.
Jack’s take
This is the cleverest angle on hydrogen I have seen in a while, because it tries to sidestep the electricity cost instead of fighting it. But these are still lab numbers. The real test is whether it works in the ground at scale, where rock is a lot less tidy than a lab sample.