The Business of Tech

“Never a dull moment” is how Wellington-based veteran consumer tech reviewer and commentator Pat Pilcher describes the year in tech after relentless product launches, an “utterly insane” Black Friday sales season and the “enshitification” of the internet, thanks in large part to AI. In our final episode of The Business of Tech for 2025, Pilcher joins the show to...

Drones have gone from hobbyist toys to decisive tools of war and essential infrastructure for industry. Few people have had a better vantage point on that shift than  FenixUAS founder Dr Andrew Shelley.  In the latest episode of The Business of Tech podcast, the economist and aviation specialist explains how a decade of incremental innovation has transformed uncrewed aircraft into platfo...

In the creaky world of financial advising, where compliance paperwork devours hours and clunky software feels like a relic from the dial-up era, a New Zealand startup is deploying AI to free advisers from the drudgery.  Marloo, co-founded by Hardy Michel, who cut his teeth as head of operations at Wellington-based share trading platform Sharesies, isn't building robo-advisers to supplant huma...

In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, Tracksuit co-founder and chief commercial officer Matt Herbert explains how the startup is using brand data to help marketers navigate an era of economic uncertainty, shifting consumer behaviour and AI-driven search.  “The edge that we brought to it was simplifying the fundamentals and making it incredibly accessible,” he says of Trac...

Reporting from the front line of the artificial intelligence revolution,  Time magazine reporter Harry Booth has a unique perspective on the technology moving markets and transforming business. The London-based University of Auckland graduate has been part of Time’s team of AI reporters for the last 16 months, his byline regularly appearing in the pages of the iconic news magazine.&nbsp...

After years of anticipation and frustration over slow progress, New Zealand’s open banking era is about to become a reality.  On December 1, official regulations come into effect , bringing sweeping change to how Kiwis access and control their financial data. Akahu co-founder Josh Daniell, whose platform already integrates with more than 85 products that draw on consumers’ bank da...

Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is making an assertive play to shake up the $1.3 billion smartphone market in New Zealand, aiming to disrupt the long-standing duopoly of Samsung and Apple with a mix of tech innovation and brand-building efforts. In this week’s episode of The Business of Tech podcast, Oppo New Zealand Managing Director Morgan Halim shares insights on how the challenger brand, w...

Rocket Lab is on the brink of turning 20 – and what began as one man’s dream in an Invercargill garage is now a Nasdaq-listed global space business valued at over NZ$50 billion.  In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, Sir Peter Beck joins me from Rocket Lab’s headquarters in Long Beach, California, to reflect on the company’s remarkable two decades of innovatio...

It’s been a year since AI agents burst onto the tech scene, driven largely by the vision and product roadmap of Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, who is betting the company’s future on the “agentic enterprise”. Saleforce’s Agentforce platform, which allows customers to build and deploy agents in days or weeks, automating aspects of sales, customer service, marketing, a...

The call for dedicated regulations governing artificial intelligence has grown louder as the technology’s power to disrupt industries and society becomes ever more apparent.  But this week’s guest on The Business of Tech podcast, Brainbox Institute director and co-founder Tom Barraclough, warns against rushing into bespoke artificial intelligence regulation. He instead argues that...

Wellington artist and animator Chelfyn Baxter has turned the darkest year of his life into a pioneering experiment in human-AI partnership, one fuelled by grief, healing, creativity and ethical ambition. In this week’s episode of The Business of Tech podcast, airing during Mental Health Awareness Week, Baxter shares how the sudden loss of his wife and creative collaborator, Helen, led to the...

How is AI reshaping recruitment in New Zealand, and what must candidates do to stand out in a crowded digital job market?  This week’s episode of The Business of Tech answers those questions with insights from Kara Smith, New Zealand country manager for global recruitment agency Talent, and Jack Jorgensen, head of data and AI at Talent’s sister company Avec.  Stiff economic h...

The way the New Zealand government buys technology is about to change in a big way.  A Cabinet paper from Judith Collins, the minister for digitising government, has outlined and approved a plan to centralise IT and digital-related government procurement decisions within the Department of Internal Affairs. Facing up to $13 billion in planned technology spending, with only two-thirds of it fun...

Three months ago, Mark Rocket strapped in for a ride aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard sub-orbital launch vehicle, and in the process became the first Kiwi to enter space.  The experience was a culmination of years of anticipation and some unexpected twists for the tech entrepreneur who was a pivotal, early investor in Rocket Lab and went on to form his own venture Kea Aerospace. Joining...

Australia has grown wealthy by exploiting its vast mineral resources, but successive governments have also identified the need to move beyond extractive industries and have invested in science to come up with alternatives. On The Business of Tech this week, I sit down with Dr Cathy Foley, Australia’s former Chief Scientist, and a 40-year veteran of the CSIRO, Australia’s highly respect...

Amazon Web Services’ highly anticipated launch of its New Zealand cloud region unravelled this week as it nonplussed journalists and the public alike with PR spin that failed to mask the cracks in its narrative.  In a special episode of The Business of Tech podcast to round out the week, Ben Kepes joins me to break down the blunders, highlighting misplaced numbers, poor communication, a...

Nasdaq-listed tech services company Rimini Street is challenging the status quo in New Zealand’s enterprise IT market, offering a striking alternative to the upgrade treadmill set by big software vendors.  On this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, Seth Ravin, founder and CEO of Rimini Street, and Joe Locandro, global CIO, share their vision for how New Zealand enterprises an...

New Zealand’s workforce is bracing for the rise of artificial intelligence, but University of Auckland economist and organisational behaviour expert Dr Kenny Ching argues it’s not the jobs apocalypse many fear. AI will reshape roles rather than eliminate them, and thanks to a resilient agriculture-based economy, the country is better positioned than most to adapt and even lead in agric...

As the global race to develop quantum computers heats up, New Zealand is working on specialist areas of technology that could add crucial elements to the quantum supply chain. That’s according to the University of Oxford’s Professor Andrew Daley, a principal investigator in the UK’s national quantum programme tasked with developing more accurate and functional quantum computers....

As US tech companies double down on artificial intelligence, pouring billions into new data centres and offering eye-watering compensation packages to secure the best talent, a different path is emerging for New Zealand. Catalyst Cloud co-founder Don Christie returned to The Business of Tech podcast this week to lay out his vision for sovereign AI, one where open source models and local infrastruc...

This week's episode of The Business of Tech marks a historic moment: the 60th anniversary of Datacom, New Zealand’s largest homegrown IT company.  I was joined by Datacom’s Group CEO Greg Davidson, who has overseen nearly two decades of remarkable change, steering the Christchurch-founded company through tidal waves of technological innovation.  “It is older than me, I'...

Concrete might be the backbone of modern society, but it comes at a steep carbon cost. As global climate pressures intensify, the business of “greening” this essential material is heating up, and few are more determined to crack the code than Zarina Bazoeva, co-founder of Neocrete. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, Zarina sits down for an in-depth interview about how her N...

With Big Tech hyperscalers investing billions in local data centres and the Government taking a cloud-first stand, the migration of our data and applications to cloud platforms is in full swing. But as David Reiss, my guest on this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, told me that moving to the cloud isn’t necessarily the panacea if you are looking to lower the ongoing costs of runn...

One of New Zealand’s most ambitious startups, Zenno Astronautics, is undertaking pioneering work with superconducting magnets to address one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity’s future in space - space junk. On The Business of Tech podcast this week, Max Arshavsky, co-founder and CEO of Zenno Astronautics, charts his journey from the steppes of Siberia to the University of...

J.D. Trask, the Wellington-based entrepreneur behind global software success Raygun, is back with a new venture, one he believes could have an even greater impact than the internet itself.  In the latest episode of The Business of Tech podcast, Trask sat down with me to introduce Autohive , a platform designed to make AI automation accessible for every business, not just those with deep techn...