Heat without boundaries

“It was actually my wife who gave me the idea,” says Xplora Ventures founder Dr Nan Yang. “She was complaining about the energy bill during the winter. It was double, sometimes triple, compared to what we paid in summer. She said, ‘You’re a material scientist, you should do something.’” 

In 2024, Nan founded Xplora Ventures and has since been working on a truly exciting technology that addresses winter energy demands. From agriculture to residential to transport applications, efficient heat storage opens countless possibilities. “We’re moving heat beyond boundaries; not just the boundary of time, but also the boundary of location.” 

Nan explored several possible solutions but found he kept running into either heat-loss or economic-viability issues. “Storing heat for a day or two is easy, but for weeks or months, across seasons, that’s where most solutions fall short.” In the end, Nan found inspiration in the self-heating packs you might find on a ski field as hand warmers or those applied to an injury. “The basic principle of a battery is quite similar; it’s all reversible chemical reactions. The difference with a battery is that it’s using electrochemistry; we’re using thermochemistry.” 

One of the technology’s potential applications will be agricultural. Before Xplora Ventures, Nan worked at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. There, he supported businesses impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. “One of our key goals was to support the agricultural businesses. I saw their main expense was maintaining greenhouse warmth during the winter. Here was the problem a second time.” 

Nan stands beside a lab-scale prototype of the technology being developed. The unassuming object, shaped like a Christmas cracker and wrapped in tinfoil, has proven the viability of the technology. “It mainly consists of some common salts and some coarse material like clay,” says Nan. 

Key to their growth and success has been the three million dollars in funding secured in 2025 from Callaghan Innovation. Institutional investors, including deep tech incubators and local angel groups, have also backed them. “WellingtonNZ have been really helpful too,” says Nan. “They connected us to different stakeholders and acted as a sounding board. They introduced us to the Taiawa Tech Hub, where we were based for about a year.”   

Now based at the Gracefield Innovation Quarter, Nan says the location is better suited to deep-tech startups like Xplora Ventures that require lab space. There are several other companies based at Gracefield. “We’re initiating cross communication between teams here because we’re all part of the science community. We get together to share similar challenges and reflect on our similar journeys.” 

With the support of investors and the science community, things are moving fast at Xplora Ventures. “Currently, we’re really on track. We’ve developed a material, filed an IP, and we’re scaling up from the lab-scale prototype.” The next step for Nan and his team is to find a pilot partnership to help demonstrate their product’s commercial value. Nan hopes that the partnership will be up and running within two years, storing the heat from summer to keep us warm in winter.