The latest sale of New Zealand-developed film-making technology to a global company has generated strong returns for local investors.

Start-up Moxion has been acquired by creative industries technology company Autodesk for an undisclosed sum. Exiting investors include Alt Ventures, Punakaiki Fund, Flying Kiwi Angels and individual angel investors.

Hugh Calveley and Michael Lonsdale founded Moxion in 2015 and developed new software to produce daily ‘rushes’ required in film and television production. The Moxion technology has become established as a leader in its field. 

According to Autodesk, Moxion’s technology “enables professionals to collaborate and review camera footage on-set and remotely with the efficiency and immediacy required to make creative decisions during principal photography”. This reduces the need for re-shooting.

Autodesk, which also produces technology used in architecture, engineering, and product designing, sees the Moxion acquisition as accelerating its vision for production in the cloud, building on its recent acquisition of cloud-based animation pipeline software from Canadian company Tangent Labs. Incorporating Moxion’s technology will extend Autodesk’s services upstream from post-production to on-set production where many of the most critical decisions are made.

Caveley, Moxion’s chief executive, said: “Bringing together industry-leading on-set and post-production workflows will help unite data and increase collaboration across the production process to improve project efficiency.”

Caveley, Lonsdale and the entire Moxion team have joined Autodesk.

Prior to the Autodesk acquisition, Punakaiki Fund held about 10% of Moxion via convertible notes and in addition held options it had acquired from staff and others.

The fund invested last year anticipating a long hold as Moxion further developed its technology and grew its market.

Punakaiki chief executive Lance Wiggs said: “We earned a good multiple on our investment and, because our average holding time was just over 100 days, a rather ridiculous annualised rate of return (IRR) of several thousand per cent.

Alt Ventures and Flying Kiwi Angels are in a similar position as they also invested last year.

Alt Ventures founder and managing partner Chris Jagger said: “Not quite what we were expecting, but clearly Autodesk saw the same top team and great product that we did.”

The technology operations of New Zealand company Weta Digital, the visual effects studio co-founded by movie director Sir Peter Jackson, were recently acquired by Unity Technologies for $US1.625 billion (APE&VCJ, Dec 2021).