Woolworths AI builds your shopping basket

Our take: AI is only as good as your data infrastructure. NZ banks are learning this the expensive way, through multi-year, capital-intensive transformation programmes. Kiwis won't see the infrastructure work, but they will notice the outcome of banking apps and digital services finally catching up to what Australians already have. The deeper theme is that every organisation that delays foundational investment eventually faces a moment where catching up costs far more than staying ahead would have.

Our take: The convenience is huge, but so is the question of whose interests does the algorithm serve? Brands paying for placement could secretly shape what ends up in your basket. Once AI pre-fills your cart, you're less likely to question the selections. It's convenience that slowly transfers choice from shopper to algorithm. Richter's GPS analogy is apt: we stopped questioning directions, and we'll stop questioning recommendations. That's what the model depends on. Transparency in how product recommendations come to be will be important.

Our take: Another Kiwi founder building at the global frontier. The pattern is familiar: start here, scale there. The question remains: how do we keep more of this value at home? The answer isn't preventing departure; it's creating conditions where global companies choose to keep meaningful operations here.

Our take: When advisers spend less time on admin and more time on strategy, customers get better outcomes. This is AI doing what it should, which is amplifying human expertise rather than replacing it. The interesting second-order effect: advisers who lean into this will serve more clients better, while those who resist will fall behind.

Our take: Light-touch, risk-based regulation is the direction. The public service is positioning itself to enable AI innovation while maintaining trust, a balance worth watching. The Framework isn't binding, but it signals direction. Agencies that ignore it will stand out, and not in ways that help them.

Our take: Cloud localisation doesn't undo dependency, it institutionalises it within Western ecosystems. The data may reside onshore, but the infrastructure, software, and legal obligations are governed by foreign-owned platforms. Managing this strategically is now a core business and policy challenge, and most organisations haven't grasped the implications.

Began testing advertisements in ChatGPT for free-tier users in the United States, marking a major shift toward ad-supported monetisation.

Acquired healthcare startup Torch for approximately $60 million to build unified medical memory capabilities across health data sources.

Participated in Merge Labs' $250 million seed round for non-invasive brain-computer interfaces, writing the largest cheque in the round.

Reports emerged that OpenAI's first hardware device "Sweetpea", a screenless audio headset designed by Jony Ive, is on track for H2 2026.

Rolled out a behavioural Age Prediction Model to identify users under 18 based on usage patterns to enforce stricter safety protocols for minors.

Launched Claude for Healthcare, allowing users to sync health data from phones, smartwatches, and medical records whilst excluding all health data from model training.

Appointed Irina Ghose as Managing Director of India ahead of opening Bengaluru office, the company's first in India and second in Asia Pacific.

Released fourth Economic Index report showing 49% of jobs now use Claude, with estimated US labour productivity gains of 1.0–1.2 percentage points annually.

CEO Dario Amodei predicted AI could replace "all software engineers" within 6-12 months and reach Nobel-level scientific research within two years.

Waymo launched robotaxi service in Miami covering 60 square miles, with plans to expand to 15 cities by end of 2026 targeting 1 million rides per week.

DeepMind announced partnership with Boston Dynamics to integrate Gemini Robotics models into the Atlas humanoid robot for automotive manufacturing.

Faced global regulatory crisis as six countries blocked or investigated Grok over non-consensual intimate imagery including Indonesia, UK, Ireland, and Philippines.

Center for Countering Digital Hate reported Grok generated an estimated 3 million sexualised images including approximately 23,000 depicting children in 11 days.

Announced Grok will operate inside Pentagon network providing access to 3 million military and civilian personnel at Impact Level 5 security clearance.

Philippines lifted its Grok ban after xAI agreed to modify the tool for the local market, potentially setting a template for other countries.

Unveiled Meta Compute initiative committing to build "tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time" for AI infrastructure.

Closed four VR studios (Armature, Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru, Oculus Studios Central Technology), pivoting resources from metaverse to AI.

Showcased Ray-Ban Display teleprompter mode and Meta Neural Band wrist device converting handwriting on any surface into text using muscle signal capture.

Superintelligence Labs delivered its first high-profile AI models "Avocado" (text) and "Mango" (video) for internal testing, expected release in first half 2026.

Implemented global pause on AI character access for teenagers to develop a "PG-13" version with enhanced parental controls following backlash.

Announced $1 billion AI co-innovation lab with Eli Lilly focused on drug discovery, combining Lilly's domain expertise with Nvidia's BioNeMo platform.

CEO Jensen Huang described AI at Davos as the foundation of "the largest infrastructure buildout in human history" with "trillions more to build".

Planning China visit in late January to reopen crucial market, with Chinese tech firms reportedly ordering over 2 million H200 GPUs for 2026.

Championed "Sovereign AI" at Davos, urging nations to build domestic GPU clusters and treat AI as a sovereign right rather than a luxury service.

CEO Satya Nadella delivered his strongest warning yet about AI potentially becoming a bubble, stating they will "quickly lose social permission" if AI doesn't deliver results.

Released GitHub Copilot CLI with four specialised agents (Explore, Task, Plan, Code-review) running in parallel with persistent codebase memory.

Thousands of customers experienced an 11-hour outage affecting Microsoft 365 services including Outlook and Teams.

Elon Musk's lawsuit seeking $79-134 billion from OpenAI and Microsoft will proceed to jury trial in late April 2026.

CEO Andy Jassy at Davos pledged Amazon will self-fund AI data centre power needs and cast doubt on OpenAI's $1.4 trillion infrastructure claims as "ambitious".

Named Peter DeSantis, 27-year Amazon veteran, to lead new organisation combining Nova models, custom silicon, and quantum computing.

Amazon S3 Vectors reached general availability with per-index capacity increased 40x to 2 billion vectors and storage architecture reducing costs by up to 90%.

Plans to revamp Siri into a full AI chatbot codenamed "Campos" for iOS 27, supporting voice and text interactions, web search, image generation, and coding assistance.

Developing an AI-powered wearable pin roughly the size of an AirTag with dual cameras and three microphones for possible 2027 launch targeting 20 million units.

Gemini-powered Siri unveiling planned for second half of February 2026, with upgraded assistant to be part of iOS 26.4 releasing publicly in March or April.

iOS 26 adoption remains unusually slow at 15-16% of active iPhones months after release, signalling market caution about Apple Intelligence features.