Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, education, and events.
Right. The working year kicks off for a good portion of the NZ workforce today. And we’ve restarted the engine, doubling down on a few key areas, and pruning others:
What we're doubling down on:
Helping non-technical knowledge workers master AI through more targeted education content, business stories, events, and practical training. This is our new MO.
AI On The Couch returns, with Erin and I breaking down AI topics over a cuppa, starting with the backstory on building The AI Corner (planned for a while, and a timely nudge from Nadia Ellis got us moving again!). Link in the newsletter.
High-friction, high-quality video content (in a world where anyone can pump out content, we're betting on depth). Keep an eye out for longer form video breakdowns of key topics on The AI Corner podcast.
What we're pruning:
Job market tracking (it's exploded from 17 roles/week to 179 this last week!).
Event listings (low engagement, but still open to promotions in the newsletter, get in touch).
The length of the newsletter (thanks to great feedback over the break).
What's new: Claude Code has been realised as an absolute weapon for non-technical knowledge workers, not just coders. It lets you build systems impossible in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude: content curation that runs automatically, PDFs that fill themselves, life plans that surface past decisions when you need them (and tonnes more, check out my breakdown here).
You're already using AI. You're already organising files. You're already describing what you want in natural language. Claude Code just connects these three things.
I've been using it since August and found the learning curve to grasp how everything fits together to be pretty steep. So I'm building a course for non-technical knowledge workers. Testing with a small group now, launching publicly in the next couple of weeks. 👉 Reply if you're interested in early access!
Happy reading and listening ✌️
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💼 Business & Industry
82% of NZ firms to lift tech spend in 2026, 51% pick AI as the top opportunity for the year. Datacom polled 200 leaders. 31% now focus on integrating and scaling AI into core ops, up from 46% stuck exploring in late 2025.
3-min read.
Our take: Spend is shifting from cost-cutting to growth bets. Legacy modernisation will decide who turns AI into margin in 2026. The novelty of ChatGPT is fading. The hard work is app modernisation, data quality, and skills. Teams that pair engineers with AI will ship faster this year.
NZ Councils are quietly buying, using and experimenting with AI. AI is being used to scan submissions, draft policies, and pre-fill consent forms. Hutt City pledged has pledged $374k in investment and ran an AI-voiced CEO podcast and avatar video: 2,386 views, 210 clicks, 1,515 plays. All councils are using Copilot. GenAI is drafting documents across 13 councils despite early bots giving false recycling data. Officials confirm humans currently check every output.
4-min read.
Our take: Innovation usually happens in startups, not town halls. If councils are outpacing corporates on avatars, our private sector risk appetite is dangerously low. The double edged sword is we demand faster public services but Kiwis largely distrust the tools that deliver them. Bridging that confidence gap is now the primary public sector challenge.
Large language models favour women in hiring. Manhattan Institute tested 20 language models across promotion and hiring scenarios. Female candidates selected 56.4% versus 43.6% for males in favourable outcomes. Research across 20 AI systems found female candidates selected more often in promotions and admissions despite equal qualifications. Ethnic biases proved minimal.
5-min read.
Our take: This flips conventional assumptions about AI bias. The ordering effect, first candidates picked 57.2% of the time, matters more than demographic factors. AI fairness isn't unsolvable, it's ‘engineerable'. Organisations implementing these structural safeguards can deploy AI decision support with measurably better outcomes.
💼 Society & Education
AI cameras hunt our feral cat problem. Southern Lakes Sanctuary trials live AI cameras on box traps to identify and capture feral cats. Current rules require release within 24 hours until regulations catch up.
3-min watch.
Our take: Adding feral cats to Predator Free 2050 creates market incentives for conservation tech. Expect significant innovation investment as regulatory barriers lift. Combining real-time AI identification with population mapping transforms conservation from scatter-gun to surgical.
Conservation tech market gets AI boost. Further North, Northland deploys 150 AI-powered traps across Whangārei and Bay of Islands. One AT520-AI trap caught 28 possums in 14 days, operating three months without manual checking.
4-min read.
Our take: When conservation budgets shrink and labour costs rise, automation wins. Combining real-time identification, aerial surveillance, and biological intelligence creates layered defense systems. This model scales across conservation challenges.
🎙️ The AI Corner Podcast
This week’s episode is an anniversary special with hosts Mike and Erin Bayly. Hear:
How The AI Corner started as a campervan idea on a South American holiday, then grew into NZ’s most-read AI newsletter.
The playbook we followed growing from 0 to 6,000+ subscribers in 12 months, using Greg Isenberg’s ACP framework.
Why Claude Code (and automation) became the tipping point that collapsed content effort, even during the newborn phase, and what “AI on the Couch” becomes in 2026.
📚️ AI for Business
Helping leaders and teams adapt, learn, and scale with AI.
1️⃣ Claude Code for Non-Technical Knowledge Workers: Claude Code gives you infrastructure. Nine systems a non-developer built in three months, including content curation, PDF filling, life planning. All using natural language, no code written.
6-min read.
2️⃣ Ralph Wiggum Runs Claude Code in a Loop to Build Apps So You Don't Have To: Write a requirement doc, walk away. Ralph converts tasks to JSON, implements features, runs tests, commits code, and learns from mistakes, all while you're offline. Non-coders building bespoke apps.
2-min read.
3️⃣ An AI driven Life Planning System That Surfaces Your Past Decisions Automatically: Built in 90 minutes with Claude Code and Wispr Flow. Annual plans, decision journals, and review templates that invoke themselves when you need them. Lives in Obsidian, syncs everywhere.
2-min read.
4️⃣ Aaron Levie: Context Engineering Is the Real AI Transformation: It's not about doing the same work faster. It's restructuring how context gets captured and deployed to agents. ICs shift from executors to agent managers. Competitive advantage is context infrastructure.
3-min read.
5️⃣ Claude Code Isn't a Coding Tool, It's a Leverage Tool for Everyone: Its creator writes 100% of his code with it. A Google principal engineer solved in an hour what his team spent a year on. If they're seeing 10x gains, what's the non-technical knowledge worker’s excuse?
1-min read.
6️⃣ Building Software Where Agents Are First-Class Citizens, Not Add-Ons: A technical guide for designing agent-native applications rather than legacy ‘AI bolt on’ software.
8-min read.
🌍 Tech Updates From Global
The selected top headlines from each major AI tech company.
OpenAI
Healthcare Expansion: Launched ChatGPT Health (consumer) and OpenAI for Healthcare (enterprise), integrating with provider systems at Cedars-Sinai and Stanford Medicine.
GPT-5.2 Deployment: Began rolling out the latest model to Enterprise users, featuring "Agentic Persistence" for multi-session workflow memory.
Stargate Infrastructure: Partnered with SoftBank/SB Energy to invest $1 billion into a 1.2-gigawatt data centre in Texas, the first physical footprint of the $500 billion Stargate project.
Microsoft Restructuring: Finalised a 27% ownership stake for Microsoft, including extended IP rights through 2032 and a new "expert panel" process for declaring AGI.
Anthropic
Claude Code v2.1.0 Release: Dropped on January 9 with over 1,000 separate changes. The update transforms Claude Code from a "coding assistant" into an autonomous agentic framework, including Agentic Orchestration allows developers to run multiple agents simultaneously., Forked Sub-Agents supporting "forking" a task into a sub-agent context,, and Skill Hot-Reloading, enabling modification of AI "skills" (custom scripts) in real-time without restarting the terminal session.
The Allianz "Human-in-the-Loop" Model: Beyond just a partnership, Anthropic and Allianz revealed on January 9 that they are co-developing a Regulatory Audit Logging System. This system creates an immutable record of every AI "thought" and decision, specifically designed to satisfy EU insurance transparency laws.
Funding Specifics: The $10 billion raise (at a $350 billion valuation) is confirmed to be a "pre-IPO" round.
Overhauled Gmail for 3 billion users with Gemini 3 as the default interface, introducing "AI Inbox View" and thread-wide "AI Overviews".
xAI
Series E Funding: Completed a $20 billion round at a $230 billion valuation on January 6, supported by Nvidia, Cisco, and the Qatar Investment Authority.
The "MACROHARDRR" Cluster: Confirmed a $20 billion investment in a Mississippi-based data centre to push total compute capacity to 2 gigawatts.
Enterprise Entry: Launched Grok Business ($30/user/month) and Grok Enterprise, featuring the "Enterprise Vault" with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK).
Meta
Nuclear Power Surge: Announced 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear energy agreements with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo to power the Prometheus AI supercluster in Ohio.
Manus Acquisition Stalled: China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) opened an investigation into the $2 billion acquisition of agent-startup Manus, citing potential technology export violations.
Nvidia
Vera Rubin Platform: Announced that the next-gen Rubin platform (successor to Blackwell) is in full production, offering 10x reduction in inference costs.
Inference Consolidation: Confirmed a $20 billion deal with chipmaker Groq for its LPU technologies to secure a dominant lead in the inference-serving market.
China H200 Deal: Preparing for Beijing’s approval of over 2 million H200 chips (valued at ~$54 billion), requiring full upfront payment from Chinese firms.
Amazon / AWS
The "Amazon Nova" Family Reveal: At CES 2026, AWS detailed the full hierarchy of its new Nova foundation models, moving beyond "Bedrock" as a mere host to becoming a primary model developer:
Infrastructure Strategy: The $50 billion US Federal investment (breaking ground later this year) is confirmed to add 1.3 gigawatts of capacity specifically for AWS Top Secret-West and GovCloud-East.
Microsoft
NRF 2026: The "Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)": On January 8, Microsoft introduced ACP, a new technical standard designed to help different AI agents (e.g., a "Customer Agent" and a "Merchant Agent") talk to each other to negotiate prices and check inventory.
Shopify Auto-Enrollment: All 1 million+ Shopify merchants were auto-enrolled in Copilot Checkout (with an opt-out window), effectively turning Microsoft’s search engine into a global storefront overnight.
Miscellaneous
Microsoft: Launched Copilot Checkout, enabling native in-chat purchasing through partnerships with PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe.
iRobot: Filed for bankruptcy; a proposed takeover by Shenzhen Picea Robotics (China) is currently under CFIUS review due to home-mapping data privacy concerns.
US Regulation: State-level AI laws in Texas (TRAIGA) and California (TFAIA) officially took effect January 1, 2026, creating a fragmented compliance landscape for developers.
🤦 ️ AI Funny Of The Week
We all love AI, but it’s certainly far from perfect …
👋 Mike & Erin