Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and education.
Another robot video that caught our attention this week. These robots flipping and dancing on stage take entertainment to the next level.
Looking forward to seeing robotic sports teams in future operating at a pace / strength / level of strategy that we humans won’t ever reach.
This week’s highlights:
NZ's first AI education playbook
Holiday AI reading list for 2026
Five Kiwi teams chase $70M AI prize
12 Days of AI Christmas predictions
McCrae Tech's health AI orchestrator
Damon Kelly: 290-hour task cut to 10
DairyNZ launches AI farming assistant
AI transformation is 99% people, 1% IT
LawVu hits $400M valuation with AI play
Happy reading and listening ✌️
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MIKE’S MUSINGS
Holiday Reading List for Building Your 2026 AI Edge
The AI ecosystem won’t slow down over summer. Big Tech will keep shipping because the Northern Hemisphere “shutdown” is in days rather than weeks like ours, and maintaining a lead in this space means moving at a relentless pace.
This list covers themes rather than step by step courses to build alongside. Enough to stay sharp without turning your beach break into homework.
12 DAYS OF AI CHRISTMAS
The 12 Days of AI Christmas is a short daily series from The AI Corner NZ sharing 2026 predictions from 20+ Kiwi AI leaders.
Each day focuses on one theme so readers can spot patterns forming across the NZ.
EDUCATION & AI
NZ gets its first AI education playbook.
Ako Aotearoa releases first comprehensive research on AI integration in NZ tertiary education, surveying 104 educators (65% of surveyed educators have 10+ years experience) and 15 AI experts throughout 2024. Insights:
Zooming in:
ChatGPT dominates usage. Microsoft CoPilot follows. Most use AI for content drafts and admin.
The sector lacks systematic training. Educators want upskilling, but few institutions provide it.
Volume 1 sets the foundation. Volumes 2 and 3 will deliver practical applications and governance.
Our take: Our tertiary sector faces funding pressure, demographic shifts, and competition from international providers offering AI-enhanced learning. Most institutions are in passive adoption mode. Educators using ChatGPT ad hoc with no governance. That's a risk, but also an opportunity. The 34% with minimal AI experience represents untapped potential, not resistance. Educators are cautiously optimistic, wanting to experiment but lacking institutional safety nets. The report calls for "a culture of experimentation where educators feel empowered to try new AI tools without fear of failure". Institutions that move first on structured AI integration could differentiate themselves before the gap between AI capable and AI absent providers becomes insurmountable. The smart money is on professional development investment now. Adaptive learning platforms responding in real time to individual needs could transform outcomes for ākonga who've struggled in traditional settings.
💼 Business & Industry
78% of ANZ leaders trust AI, but only 40% have governance. SAS research across 60+ organisations shows a dangerous gap between confidence and safeguards. Agentic AI adoption sits 14% below global average. The hidden cost isn't models - it's data pipelines, governance and talent.
1-min read.
Our take: This trust mismatch will cause problems. Companies deploying AI without governance frameworks are one bad outcome away from stalling their entire AI strategy.
Only 47% of NZ employers encourage staff to use AI at work. Employment Hero research shows workers experimenting with AI faster than employers are enabling it. 62% avoid job applications because processes are too frustrating. AI predicted to become default in hiring by 2026.
4-min read.
Our take: There's a capability gap opening between workers who master AI and those left behind. Science & tech workers commanding $55.80/hour median shows where premiums are heading.
Invercargill Council adopts AI use policy as software embeds AI features. Staff instructed not to use private or sensitive information with AI tools. Policy covers transparency, accountability, privacy and security. Invercargill and Carterton councils adopting policies for AI use. Focus shifted from privacy concerns to accuracy and reliability. Staff warned to exercise caution with AI-generated content.
3-min read.
Our take: Regional councils setting AI policies signals how mainstream this has become. The one-year review cycle shows they know the landscape is shifting fast.
Auckland's McCrae Tech launches world's first health AI orchestrator. Orchestral combines data platform, AI agent library and tooling for agentic workflows. Spun out of Orion Health. "Most health IT is either a big dumb bucket of data or isolated pockets of AI cleverness”.
1-min read.
Our take: Ian McCrae built Orion Health into a global company. Orchestral is his next bet, and if diagnosis accuracy is as bad as the data suggests, the market need is massive.
LawVu hits $400M (NZD) valuation with $9M raise and acquisition of European AI company. The NZ legal tech company acquired Belgian contract automation firm ClauseBase, rebranding it LawVu Draft. Recorded 50%+ global revenue growth in 2025. Customers include AFL, Monash University and AMP.
2-min read.
Our take: Another NZ tech company going global from a small domestic base. The contract automation play turns them from a workflow tool into an end-to-end AI legal workspace.
DairyNZ launches AI assistant trained on 1,100 pages of farming knowledge. DAiSY searches 880 tools and resources to answer farmer questions instantly. Built by Tribal Aotearoa using only DairyNZ and verified sources. Designed to work from milking sheds to paddocks.
2-min read.
Our take: Instead of farmers searching websites for answers, they get AI-summarised responses from decades of research in seconds. This puts trusted information within reach without waiting for business hours. If anyone knows of a farmer using the tool who wants to chat about their experience with DAiSY, be great to get in touch.
Five Kiwi teams compete for $70M AI research prize. Five concepts shortlisted from 100+ submissions. Wētā FX leads the creative AI bid, University of Auckland tackles agentic AI, and universities target farms, forests and factories. Each gets $250K to develop detailed proposals before final selection mid-2026.
3-min read.
Our take: This is NZ's biggest coordinated bet on AI research. The mix of creative tech (Wētā) and physical AI (farms, aerospace) plays to our strengths rather than chasing Silicon Valley's game. We're not focused on building chatbots, we're building systems for paddocks, hospitals and studios where conditions aren't predictable. The Wētā FX creative AI bid is the sleeper here. If anyone can crack computer vision and digital twins at world-class level, it's the team that made Avatar.
Microsoft's NZ datacentre hits one-year milestone. Spark signed the country's largest public cloud deal. Whakarongorau Aotearoa reports three-quarters of Copilot users seeing strong productivity lifts. Microsoft targets 100,000 Kiwis upskilled by 2027. The datacentre runs 100% renewable energy via Contact Energy.
3-min read.
Our take: The Spark deal signals where enterprise NZ is heading. Local data residency removes the last excuse for sitting on the fence with cloud migration. The agentic AI pilot at Whakarongorau is worth watching - it's testing how AI agents can keep people engaged until humans are available, a model other services will copy.
📚️ AI for Business
Helping leaders and teams adapt, learn, and scale with AI.
1️⃣ AI transformation is 99% people, 1% IT: "Change management is the problem. IT's role is to buy the licenses and get out of the way." Ten takeaways from a panel with execs from Fonterra, Overdose, and academyEX on what's actually driving AI ROI.
2-min read.
2️⃣ The safe vendor choice is now a liability: 63% of enterprise AI spend is going to startups, not incumbents. The gap is widening because legacy players wrap AI around old databases while new entrants rebuild workflows from scratch.
2-min read.
🎙️ The AI Corner Podcast
This week's guest is Damon Kelly, Founder and CEO of Enlighten Designs. Hear:
How Damon slashed a 290-hour recruitment process down to just 10 hours using AI agents.
Why NZ businesses need local GPU infrastructure as AI becomes mission-critical for operations.
Damon's prediction that the next five to ten years will be "a total bloodbath" for AI laggards.
🌍 Tech Updates From Global
The selected top headlines from each major AI tech company.
OpenAI
ChatGPT App Directory launched with Spotify, DoorDash, Canva as partners; GPT-5.2-Codex released at 56.4% SWE-Bench Pro (SOTA); GPT Image 1.5 early release with 4× speed boost; DOE Genesis Mission MOU for fusion energy across 17 labs; Model Spec U18 teen protections with APA; OpenAI Academy for journalists launched; $100B funding round talks at $750-830B valuation plus separate $10B Amazon investment discussions
Anthropic
Agent Skills open standard released working across Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor with Notion/Figma/Stripe integrations; DOE Genesis Mission partnership for 17 national labs; Claude in Chrome expanded to all paid tiers with scheduled tasks and workflow recording; User wellbeing report showing 98.6-99.3% appropriate high-risk responses and 70-85% sycophancy reduction; Claude Code updates with Chrome integration and MCP fixes
Google/DeepMind
Gemini 3 Flash released as default in Gemini app at $0.50/1M tokens; Gemma Scope 2 largest open-source interpretability suite released; DOE Genesis Mission providing AlphaEvolve, AlphaGenome, WeatherNext to national labs; Palo Alto Networks ~$10B deal for Gemini security agents; 2026 AI Agent Trends Report published; 20% of 2025 AI hires were returning ex-employees
Microsoft
365 Copilot update with Work IQ memory and GPT-5.2 integration; Copilot Vision text editing for Windows Insiders; Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader in AI App Dev Platforms; SQL Server 2025 released to CSP partners; Fairwater AI datacenter announced with 800 Gbps GPU interconnects
Amazon/AWS
$10B OpenAI investment talks including Trainium chip usage at 40% cheaper than Blackwell; Leadership reorg with Peter DeSantis leading AI/silicon/quantum and Rohit Prasad departing
xAI
Grok Voice Agent API launched with 100+ languages and sub-1s latency at $0.05/min; Musk predicts ~10% chance Grok 5 achieves AGI by 2026 with $20-30B annual funding; Samsung 2nm chip manufacturing deal for early 2026 production; $15B round closed at $230B valuation; Hiring Android engineers for Grok mobile
Perplexity
iPad app redesign with split-view multitasking and enhanced research mode
Meta AI
Smart glasses Conversation Focus hearing assist in Early Access; Yann LeCun's AMI Labs confirmed at ~€3B valuation focusing on world models; "Mango" (image/video) and "Avocado" (text/coding) models revealed for H1 2026; 2025 retrospective noting 1B Llama downloads
Apple AI/Siri
Analysis shows Apple lagging at $12.7B capex vs $380B combined competitors; personalised Siri delayed to iOS 26.4 reportedly powered by Gemini
NVIDIA
RTX PRO 5000 72GB Blackwell GA for professional desktops; DOE Genesis Mission partnership; H200 China sales review with potential 25% govt fee; Nemotron 3 family with 4× throughput; SchedMD acquisition for Slurm workload management
🤦 ️ AI Funny Of The Week
We all love AI, but it’s certainly far from perfect …
👋 Mike & Erin