The Great Barrier Reef is the most extensive coral reef ecosystem in the world, inscribed on the World Heritage List for outstanding ecological value. Like coral reefs around the world, the Great Barrier Reef is threatened by coral bleaching, ocean acidification and cyclones exacerbated by climate change. At-scale interventions to restore corals and support adaptation are urgently needed. To achieve scale, deployment needs participation beyond researchers and investment much greater than that for field trials. As a research activity in the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, we interviewed 34 potential deployment partners to fill a critical knowledge gap on social dimensions of scaling coral restoration and adaptation interventions. We learned that a diverse range of sectors are interested in playing a variety of roles in potential future deployment strategies (e.g. investment advocate, community mobiliser) besides implementing interventions. They are interested in a wide range of co-benefits including many that are non-financial and interconnected. More importantly they saw trust, equity, respect and transparency as core values for collaborating. These findings can contribute to answering questions on how to design business models and arrangements to create the identified co-benefits and embed core values for collaboration as part of broader deployment planning considerations.