New Zealand’s state of play
On this page
A flourishing AI ecosystem
New Zealand has a growing AI ecosystem, with many organisations already delivering innovative and world leading solutions in both the domestic and international markets. New Zealand’s leading AI, the AI Forum New Zealand, has grown to over 230 member organisations, providing a collaborative platform for sharing experiences, challenges, and solutions.
The AI Forum’s Aoteoroa AI Summit brings together hundreds of attendees each year, including internationally recognised thought leaders, researchers, policymakers, and innovators, to explore global best practices, facilitate knowledge sharing and showcase New Zealand’s extensive AI capabilities.
Growing adoption rates
New Zealand’s AI adoption trajectory shows promise but requires acceleration.
Larger businesses are seeing the value of AI and are investing accordingly. A 2024 Datacom survey revealed that 67% of larger New Zealand businesses now utilise some form of AI, representing a substantial increase from 48% in 2023, suggesting New Zealand is catching up rapidly (Datacom, 2024).
However, a gap is emerging with respect to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); a survey undertaken by NZIER and Spark in 2024 revealed that 68% of SMEs have no plans to evaluate or invest in AI technology (Spark New Zealand, 2024), and that the depth of AI integration remains limited.
New Zealand’s AI uptake currently lags comparator countries. For example, only 38% of Australian SMEs reported that they were not planning to adopt AI (Department of Industry, Science and Resources, 2025). This strategy aims to raise awareness of how AI can give New Zealand businesses a competitive edge and drive adoption across the private sector.
New Zealand firms are driving AI innovation
Tourism
NIWA has partnered with a commercial whale watching business in Kaikōura to give the best possible experience for tourists. Through AI, and with the combined power of NIWA forecasting and historical data on whale appearances, sailing predictions can be made and communicated to customers. This technology could be scaled up to other New Zealand weather-dependent tourism operators.
Indigenous language preservation
- Te Hiku Media, an award-winning charitable media and technology organisation, created an AI-powered automatic speech recognition model which can transcribe te reo Māori with 92% accuracy, to global acclaim.
Te Hiku Media uses this model to run Kaituhi, an automatic bilingual transcription service. Their work has inspired other indigenous communities around the world to explore using AI to preserve and share cultural knowledge. - KIWA Digital is a globally recognised, Indigenous-owned media tech company leveraging advanced technologies to uplift and support voices from cultures around the world, bringing diverse peoples together. Rooted in Māori values of trust, respect, and kaitiakitanga, KIWA maintains strong collaborations with iwi and international Indigenous partners. KIWA’s flagship “VoiceQ” AI-supported software, enables over 900 language codes, enhancing media localisation for prominent projects including Netflix hits like Squid Games and Disney’s Moana. Recognising the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty, KIWA has now launched “CultureQ”, a novel SaaS application that enables Indigenous groups to revitalise their language and culture at scale.
Healthcare:
- Toku was founded by Dr Ehsan Vaghefi and Dr David Squirrell in 2019. It developed AI to analyse eye exam scans, which can identify health conditions such as cardiovascular and kidney disease. Toku is used in clinical settings in New Zealand, Australia, the US, and the UK.
- Formus Labs, founded by Dr Ju Zhang and Prof. Thor Besier in 2016, developed software to make it easier for orthopaedic
surgeons to plan for and execute successful operations. It created the world’s first AI- automated 3D planner for joint replacement surgeries, significantly speeding up the pre-operative process by creating personalised surgical plans. - Alimetry was established in 2019 by Prof. Greg O’Grady and Dr Armen Gharibans and is focussed on supporting clinicians in the care of patients with gastric conditions. It developed a non-invasive wearable device that measures the electrical activity produced by the gut. It then uses AI to isolate and analyse this activity to deliver useful insights to clinicians to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of patients.
Land use
Lynker Analytics uses AI to capture building outlines across New Zealand from publicly owned aerial imagery, supplying Land Information New Zealand with a national database that is open and available to all. This database influences regional and national decisions, including in the building consenting process, monitoring building and land use changes, risk modelling and locating buildings in an emergency.
Agriculture:
-
Halter, founded by Waikato entrepreneur Craig Piggott, is a New Zealand based agritech company, that continues to make headlines for its innovative use of AI in transforming livestock management. Halter has carved out a niche in the agricultural sector by integrating AI with wearable technology for dairy and beef farming. Halter, with the conclusion of its latest capital raise, is now a ’unicorn’ worth USD1bn.
-
Aimer Farming provides farmers with an advanced pastoral AI platform and operating system, AIMER, to help optimise on farm productivity, profit, and environmental performance. Through a smartphone-based pasture measurement tool, AIMER Vision, AI is used to estimate pasture mass from 5 second videos even while offline. This smartphone technology, combined with proprietary paddock digital twins, saves farmers 3-4 hours labour each week and removes the need for expensive hardware such as plate meters, or tow behind devices. AIMER then analyses the farm’s overall feed situation, and provides insights and foresight to optimise pasture use and supplement feeding, and auto generates grazing and supplement plans for each mob of cattle – something farmers had to do manually before or via complicated spreadsheets.