Kiwi firms putting their own spin on international AI technology
Sunday, 12 July 2026
According to AI, New Zealand’s AI startup scene is booming.
The rise of artificial intelligence is seeing new businesses and industries popping up across New Zealand, but one expert warns the rapid rise of the AI-adjacent industry puts startups at risk of being wiped out by international giants.
The homegrown AI industry is producing a string of interesting tech businesses, everything from firms that create assistants for doctors and nurses and issue-spotting note takers to damage assessments and instant repair estimates, with local entrepreneurs embracing - and putting their own spin on - AI technology to create niche offerings with global ambitions.
The global AI market is valued at between US$300 and $600 billion, and forecast to reach US$4 trillion by 2033.
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It is expanding rapidly, with major investments in software, cloud infrastructure and enterprise adoption picking up pace.
Spending on AI is forecast to skyrocket to $2.5 trillion in 2026.
Global tech giants are pouring billions of dollars into building AI infrastructure, and products and services that help consumers and organisations utilise the rapidly scaling technology, some partnering with private equity firms, banks and consulting firms to do so.
And on the other end of the spectrum, the same is happening among the start-up community here, 10,000km away from the heart of development in San Francisco.
Auckland-based entrepreneur Andrew Wierda, co-founder and chief executive of AI-powered legal, tax and accounting research startup Nylon (formerly Law Cyborg), is one of a growing number of companies building businesses using AI.
The former EY tax lawyer started the company two years ago, and already has 1650 customers across New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
Nylon, which markets itself as a faster way to conduct legal tax research, is fast growing. Wierda says each month this year the company has onboarded more customers than the previous month.
“We're seeing huge uptake in Australia and the UK for what we do,” he tells the Sunday Star-Times.
Working in the “AI application layer” of the technology, Wierda says “the lines are getting blurred more and more”, with the company creating “a harness for AI” - in essence a way for it to be able to access files and information easier, so it can get to a more accurate answer.
“There is a swift pattern where professionals, at least in our industry, are realising that AI can really assist them in producing higher quality output.
“The common view on AI is that it would be a cheap way of doing something, and maybe even a lower quality way, however, with specialist services like ours, the profession is realising they can use AI for higher quality output and do things to a higher standard than they would have been able to do manually.”
Accountants, tax consultants and organisations are engaging with Nylon to drive productivity, says Wierda. “They use our product to often review thoughts they already had. They might have thought the tax implications of a certain transaction was X, so they put it into our tool and double check it is in fact X, and they're basically given all the primary sources, so they can double check their own thinking in accordance with the law.”
Wierda describes Nylon as “like a Claude that looks much more thoroughly through the case law, legislation, and tax authority guidance to come to an answer that is much more accurate in less time” and is bullish about the opportunities for growth ahead.
The company, which recently rolled out its live tax issue-spotting note taker, employs a team of 30 and develops its technology in central Auckland. It also has a UK office, where business is growing rapidly.
“We are constantly hiring and onboarding new customers. We expect that we will at least double in size this year.”
Wierda believes New Zealand’s next unicorn will be an AI company, arguing that the country’s lifestyle advantages helped attract strong international talent. The main drawback is New Zealand’s capital‑poor environment, but he notes that recent advances in AI have made it possible to build software far faster and with far less capital, reducing what had traditionally been the biggest barrier to starting and scaling a company here.
That is why so many local entrepreneurs are embracing the technology in their ventures, he says, especially where there was a lot of paperwork.
Entrepreneur Jamie Green is of the same view. His own AI-native firm Tutaki, whichcreates board management software and acts as an “AI chief of staff” that manages meeting agendas, minutes and document sharing for organisations, is throwing out the paperwork - and fielding early success.
Tutaki was set up two years ago, and the team of six is experiencing exponential growth. Last month it signed on five new boards, and it works with 50 different organisations, including Sealord and Sharesies.
Green says most New Zealand AI companies are using LLMs from large companies such as AWS or Anthropic, to create their own applications and expertise, and new ones are popping up all over the country.
“AI abstracts intelligence, it’s opened up a whole realm of new founders that might not have been technical founders that have business knowledge and context around that, that can now start stuff.
“There’s a lot of AI businesses popping up, some driven by money, some by narrative, but I would heavily expect a lot to be because it has opened up a world where a) something that wasn't possible now is, and b) that possible thing can be built a lot faster/more cost effectively than previously,” Green says.
“The bulk number of companies starting is largely driven by the fact that it’s opened up an entire new suite of things to work on. Like Tutaki, we started because we saw this gap in the market of how directors prepare and a gap in the market around board operating systems being old and clunky, and a lot of the process can be largely systematised by an AI engine; we couldn’t have done this as fast as we have in the way we have five years ago.”
Training for the future
Futurist Mark Laurence, founder of AI consultancy Ten Past Tomorrow, has been studying and working with AI well before it was brought into the mainstream with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
As a skills training company, Laurence works with management of large organisations to teach them the tools and skills to competently use AI in their jobs and to shape strategy.
He says demand for the technology is strong and growing.
“We don't view AI as a tool, this is an intelligence, and therefore AI is less of a technology challenge, and it's more a leadership and cultural change challenge,” says Laurence, who has worked with more than 150 New Zealand organisations over the past three years.
He says that when AI first emerged, the nature of demand was quite different, with early conversations focused on reconnaissance. Leadership teams were trying to understand what AI actually was and appeared to be sitting on the fence, unsure whether it would prove to be another metaverse or crypto‑style fad.
“Now, fast forward 3½ years, the conversations are very different. The technology's proven itself, and the conversations are now whole business conversations, asking what does this mean for every single role and department and how do we not just evolve the skill sets but evolve everything around it.”
Laurence says AI is “the single most transformative influence that we'll see on our organisations and also on society in our lives, and probably the lives of our children's generation as well”.
He says “the pace and the power of the technology” is only accelerating which is why so many were wanting a piece of the pie.
Whole new industries were emerging around the technology, with AI native companies being created alongside AI-adjacent firms that help traditional businesses and sectors evolve.
“We view it like water; it's seeping into every nook and cranny of every industry and every organisation.”
He agrees there is a lot of money surrounding AI, no doubt fuelling many of the new offerings and services popping up.
It’s seen as a lucrative industry but he urged people to be cautious of where they put their money. “There's a tendency for people to see this as a tool, and there is a lot of supply coming into the market for quick, cheap services that train you how to use a tool.”
But he argues these offerings became obsolete almost immediately because the tools themselves are changing and effectively making their own training redundant every few months.
“There's a lot of moths flying to the flame, and that's actually a challenge for the market,” Laurence says.
“[It makes it hard] to cut through that and find support that involves not just how to use the tools, but how to align the technology with the human side of your organisations, to make sure people are evolving with it, not being flattened by it, and also that the organisation holds on to the human side of what's made it successful in the past.”
Big-business attacks
Technology consultant Colin Bass, project manager of service innovation at Business Mentors NZ, says starting an AI-adjacent business comes with risks, namely that billion-dollar giants can easily swoop in and steal business.
“When I learned about Numa and Arcanum, I suddenly thought, 'Oh that's probably going to be superseded by Claude for Small Business’, because these big AI companies have so much resource, and they're so aggressive that if there's a really cool opportunity in the market that someone's earning a lot of money from, I just can't help but believe that those big guys are going to step in and just grab it,” the veteran businessman says.
“There's a risk in that AI space, thinking we're going to make a lot of money from this.”
Business Mentors NZ developed its own AI-enabled mentoring platform which combines human expertise with artificial intelligence to improve its service, reduce the administrative workload, and make business knowledge more accessible to local business owners, using Microsoft tools.
Developed as an add-on for the not-for-profit’s service, Bass says making money out of a specific AI product or service wasn’t the goal, but it would supercharge its service “to potentially be globally significant”.
Bass encouraged firms building their business around AI or embedding it within their organisation to be mindful of the security of personal data.
He also warned those using AI to build their businesses to stay within tightly defined niches, saying this may help protect them from larger players releasing products across multiple sectors — citing Anthropic’s launch of Claude for Small Business in May as an example.
“Multi-billion-dollar businesses have the general market pretty much sewed up, but I would say that to build businesses of value based on AI, you would want to niche really hard.”
The AI gap
New Zealand falls behind the global average for AI adoption and utilisation. Laurence calls it a skill and utilisation gap, a lack of understanding in this country, where business and Government do not understand how to fully allow the technology to be used to its potential.
He says the capability it is at - and in use - overseas was at the level equivalent to that of a professional with 15 years’ experience, but was used to a much less and more simplistic degree here.
“It's a massively missed opportunity,” he says.
“Our Government needs to be supporting this. There are so many developed nations now who are rolling out very well funded AI literacy and skills training programs for their citizens and businesses, not just investing in the technology to build data centres, but investing in the literacy and the skill of their citizens. We're not doing that yet, and I believe it's because our Government and our ministers aren’t skilled and literate themselves.”