Luxon trumpets Amazon’s $7.5b, 1000-job investment in NZ. Labour ‘embarrassed’ for him
Tuesday, 2 September 2025
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched New Zealand data centres, a move it says is worth $7.5 billion and a thousand jobs.
Its plan for New Zealand was first announced back in 2021. The company, celebrating the opening of its New Zealand-based cloud servers, avoided giving specific detail about what those jobs would be or how that money would be spent.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who spoke at the Aotea Centre launch of the AWS New Zealand service, predicted Amazon’s investment was “the largest ever publicly announced technology investment” in the country and could have a direct “impact on our GDP”.
Labour ‘embarrassed’ for Luxon
Luxon pre-empted the announcement during a radio interview on Tuesday, before Amazon’s official launch of the service started later that morning.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said it was “an embarrassing faux pas” for the prime minister.
“He’s the FIGJAM Prime Minister. He spends so much time and energy claiming everything Labour did was wrong, now he’s claiming Labour’s achievements as his own,” Hipkins said, using the acronym meaning ‘F… I’m Good Just Ask Me’.
“I’m embarrassed for him. Labour was in Government when this began, and it is exactly the kind of investment we need. Not wealthy foreigners buying up New Zealand homes and driving up the price of houses for Kiwi families,” he said
But Luxon said he never intended to take credit for encouraging Amazon to invest in New Zealand.
“I acknowledge this is a piece of that’s been in progress, I think since 2020 - since 2021. It’s just that it’s being launched live today,” Luxon told Stuff on Tuesday.
He said the Government was speaking with other international investors looking to establish New Zealand data centres.
At least three data centres
In 2021, Amazon said the $7.5 billion would be spent over the next 15 years. The company’s former country manager for New Zealand, Tim Dacombe-Bird, said it would pay for “a cluster” of at least three data centres, as well as operational costs.
Ahead of Tuesday’s announcement in Auckland, Amazon’s current country manager, Manuel Bohnet, said the 1000 jobs and $7.5 billion estimates were long-term forecasts which included the ongoing bills such as a power costs and expected jobs from the “supply chain” to operate these facilities.
Asked if there were plans to build more data centres, he said: 'The centres are up and running. They are live today. We made our choices to bring them online today.“
He wouldn’t confirm whether the $7.5 billion figure being used by Amazon and Luxon was still for the 15 year timeframe that was announced in 2021. However, he did confirm it would include day-to-day costs such as the power and water bills.
Deal with Mercury for power
He said Amazon’s deal with Mercury, its power provider for the data centres, had already led to investment in renewable energy. Two years ago, Amazon signed a 15-year deal with Mercury to buy 51 megawatts of electricity.
Amazon was aiming to have sites powered fully by renewable energy, he said, but it did rely on the national grid - which was itself relying on coal generation last year during when lake levels fell.
“The long term agreement we have with Mercury is part of the reason the Turitea South Wind Farm was actually built at the size and scale that it operates now,” Bohnet said.
With the opening of the New Zealand cloud services, Bohnet said customers would be able to choose to have their data stored in New Zealand. He said this would improve data sovereignty.
“We are not disclosing the exact location of these data centres, obviously, for security reasons. But they are in and around Auckland, with enough distance to withstand a scenario like flooding or power outages, but close enough for low latency,” he said.
About AWS
Owned by American tech giant Amazon, AWS offers more than 200 services to businesses via its cloud computing platform.
In New Zealand its customers include Air New Zealand, BNZ, Ministry of Health, TVNZ, University of Auckland, Xero, Vodafone, Sharesies, Deloitte, and Orion Health.
In 2021 Amazon's cloud computing business moved into a flagship office in Auckland and had aimed to grow its New Zealand business, but at the time wasn’t ready to commit to building one of its state-of-the-art data centres here.