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From 15 epsHost
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Kiwi co-founded world‑builder hits $2.5 billion valuation
Jun 24, 2026
36m 45s
China’s AI and robot revolution
Jun 17, 2026
44m 21s
AI vs public sector jobs
Jun 10, 2026
57m 57s
From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage
Jun 3, 2026
43m 55s
Is Starlink eating rural NZ?
May 27, 2026
47m 30s
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/24/26 | ![]() Kiwi co-founded world‑builder hits $2.5 billion valuation | Another New Zealander has joined the global AI big league. Auckland-raised engineer Jeff Hawke is now co‑founder and chief technology officer of Odyssey, a Palo Alto‑ and London‑based frontier lab that has just raised an eye‑watering US$310 million at a US$1.45 (NZ$2.55 billion) valuation – making it one of the world’s hottest AI “world model” startups. On this week’s episode of The Business of Tech podcast, I talk to Hawke about how he went from tinkering with autonomous forklifts in New Zealand to helping shape the next era of artificial intelligence from Silicon Valley and Shoreditch. Odyssey isn’t building another large language model. The company is focused on “world models” – AI systems that learn from sight and sound to understand how the real world works and then simulate it. Instead of spitting out text, these models simulate the real world, allowing robots that learn like humans, and games that feel like living worlds. Amazon to power Odyssey’s models Global investors are piling in. Odyssey’s Series B is led by US fund Natural Capital, with Amazon, AMD, GV, EQT, IQT and other heavy hitters on the cap table, plus a who’s who of Silicon Valley angels. Amazon Web Services has also signed on as Odyssey’s preferred cloud provider, betting that its Trainium AI chips can give the lab an edge in what is rapidly becoming an arms race for compute. For Hawke, it’s the latest step in a deep‑tech odyssey. After studying mechatronics and computer science at the University of Auckland, he cut his teeth at a local autonomous forklift startup before heading offshore. Stints in the US and at the Oxford Robotics Institute led to him becoming the first technical hire at UK autonomous‑vehicle company Wayve, working alongside Kiwi founder Alex Kendall as they grew the company to a multibillion‑dollar valuation. In our conversation, Hawke explains why he thinks world models are the missing piece of the AI puzzle, how Odyssey plans to move from a “GPT‑2 era” of world simulation to its own ChatGPT‑style breakout moment, and what this means for robots, jobs and the balance of power between tech companies and governments. We also look at what his success says about New Zealand’s tech ecosystem – and why a new generation of Kiwi founders is quietly wiring itself into the very top tier of global AI. You can listen to the full interview with Jeff Hawke on The Business of Tech, available now on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 36m 45s | ||||||
| 6/17/26 | ![]() China’s AI and robot revolution | China is racing ahead in artificial intelligence and robotics – and New Zealand risks being left on the sidelines if it doesn’t pay close attention. In this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, I talk to two Kiwis who’ve just had a rare front‑row seat on China’s AI boom – Auckland-based ElementX co‑founder and chief technology officer Ming Cheuk, and Christchurch AI engineer and consultant Blake Harkness. They’ve returned from an AI discovery tour organised by the AI Forum and the New Zealand China Council that took them inside some of China’s most advanced AI labs, hyperscale cloud providers, hospitals, banks, councils and robotics manufacturers. What they describe is a country where AI has moved well beyond pilots and proofs of concept and is now deeply embedded in everyday life and industrial processes. The AI hospital In healthcare, they visited a single hospital serving around five million patients a year, where AI chatbots handle initial triage in multiple languages, imaging tools cut the time to analyse scans by 80%, and robots in the pharmacy automatically pick and dispense prescriptions. Everything is done with the scan of a QR code. For a country like New Zealand, grappling with an ageing population and over‑stretched health services, it’s a glimpse of what fully scaled AI-enabled care could look like. They also met with frontier large language model labs and firms building China’s own AI tech stack, often with a strong open-source ethos. Models that can be deployed on customers’ own infrastructure – even as part of sovereign AI arrangements – are central to China’s strategy, allowing overseas organisations to adopt Chinese AI without sending data back to Beijing. It’s a clever way to sidestep geopolitical mistrust while still extending technological influence. On the robotics front, Ming and Blake toured factories producing humanoid robots and agile robotic “dogs” that are already off‑the‑shelf tools for search and rescue, asset inspection and industrial maintenance. The sheer number of robotics companies, and the pace at which they’re iterating on hardware and control systems, underscore how serious China is about becoming a global robotics powerhouse. The tech divide Yet geopolitics is never far from the surface. Export controls, national security concerns and shifting alliances mean much of this technology may never be directly available to Western buyers. Even so, Ming and Blake see real opportunities for New Zealand in partnering around open-source models, sovereign AI builds and targeted robotics deployments in sectors like infrastructure, manufacturing and agriculture. If you want to understand where AI and robotics are really heading – and what that means for New Zealand’s economy, workforce and policy choices – this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Listen to The Business of Tech on your favourite podcast platform, or via iHeartRadio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 44m 21s | ||||||
| 6/10/26 | ![]() AI vs public sector jobs✨ | AIpublic sector jobs+4 | Brandon Hutcheson | HSOAware Group | NetherlandsHamilton | AI strategypublic sector+4 | — | 57m 57s | |
| 6/3/26 | ![]() From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage✨ | data storagetech startups+3 | AJ Tills | UberCrimson Education+3 | New ZealandAustralia+2 | data storageExaba+5 | — | 43m 55s | |
| 5/27/26 | ![]() Is Starlink eating rural NZ?✨ | rural broadbandStarlink+4 | Alex Stewart | WombatNETStarlink+1 | New ZealandGreater Wellington | Starlinkrural broadband+6 | — | 47m 30s | |
| 5/20/26 | ![]() Space Mafia: How orbital AI changes everything✨ | orbital AIsatellites+4 | Andreas Hamberger | GoogleSpaceX+3 | Silicon Valleyspace+1 | orbital AIsatellites+5 | — | 50m 54s | |
| 5/13/26 | ![]() Power play: Qiulae Wong on R&D, AI, hi-tech skills and tax✨ | R&D investmentartificial intelligence+4 | Qiulae Wong | The Opportunity Party | New ZealandLondon+1 | Opportunity PartyR&D+4 | — | 45m 14s | |
| 5/6/26 | ![]() The Business of Tech: AI is eating market research✨ | AI in market researchNew Zealand startups+3 | James Donald | IdeallyShell+3 | AucklandNew Zealand | market researchAI startups+3 | — | 43m 09s | |
| 4/29/26 | ![]() Factories in retreat: inside NZ’s deindustrialisation crisis✨ | deindustrialisationmanufacturing jobs+4 | — | Wattie’sMcCain | New ZealandAustralia+3 | deindustrialisationmanufacturing+4 | — | 45m 56s | |
| 4/22/26 | ![]() How algorithms are quietly rewriting the state✨ | algorithmsAI+4 | — | AI | New Zealand | algorithmsAI+5 | — | 40m 01s | |
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| 4/15/26 | ![]() Why big companies kill good ideas – and how to save them✨ | innovationcorporate culture+3 | James Boult | — | — | big companiesinnovation+5 | — | 49m 36s | |
| 4/8/26 | ![]() From Leaf to lunch: the Canterbury startup rethinking protein✨ | sustainable foodplant-based protein+3 | Ross Milne | RubiscoLeaft Foods+1 | New ZealandRolleston | sustainable proteinRubisco+3 | — | 39m 52s | |
| 4/1/26 | ![]() RUC shock: the future of pay‑per‑kilometre driving✨ | road user chargetransport funding+3 | Adam Johnston | Waka Kotahi | New ZealandDunedin | RUCNew Zealand drivers+6 | — | 43m 11s | |
| 3/25/26 | ![]() How AI is transforming the classroom, with Nadim Nsouli✨ | AI in educationpersonalized learning+3 | Nadim Nsouli | Inspired Edge AcademyInspired Education+1 | AucklandNew Zealand+1 | AIeducation+5 | — | 35m 15s | |
| 3/18/26 | ![]() Too small is a tech myth – Mehran Gul on NZ’s real advantage✨ | innovationtechnology+3 | Mehran Gul | World Economic ForumUnited Nations+1 | Silicon ValleyChina+3 | innovationMehran Gul+5 | — | 45m 56s | |
| 3/11/26 | ![]() AI’s Kiwi gatekeeper inside Microsoft✨ | AI modelsresponsible AI+4 | Steve Sweetman | MicrosoftOpenAI+9 | Redmond, WashingtonAuckland | AIMicrosoft+5 | — | 32m 24s | |
| 3/4/26 | ![]() Australia's new unicorn and its digital twins✨ | digital twinselectricity infrastructure+4 | Jack Curtis | NearaTechnology Crossover Ventures+4 | AustraliaTaranaki+3 | Nearadigital twin+6 | — | 39m 41s | |
| 2/25/26 | ![]() Inside the levitation lab: OpenStar’s quest for energy’s Holy Grail | A half-tonne metal “donut” silently floating in a vacuum chamber in Wellington might sound like science fiction. But as you’ll hear in the latest episode of The Business of Tech, it’s very real – and it could reshape New Zealand’s role in the global race for nuclear fusion. This week, I sit down with BusinessDesk journalist Greg Hurrell to unpack OpenStar’s dramatic new milestone: levitating a superconducting dipole in a near-perfect vacuum and firing superheated plasma around it. It’s a key proof point for the Wellington startup’s radically different approach to fusion, one that flips the dominant tokamak design inside out. Instead of surrounding the plasma with giant magnets, OpenStar suspends a powerful magnet in the centre of the chamber and uses Earth-like magnetic fields to confine the plasma. Big ambitions, big interest Greg and I were in the room at Open Star last week as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, Infrastructure minister Chris Bishop, investors, scientists and even a representative from the United Arab Emirates watched the demonstration. For a company that has only raised a modest $10 million Series A round, hitting this milestone matters. it shows OpenStar can deliver on ambitious engineering promises, exactly what global venture capital wants to see. The government has granted OpenStar a $35 million loan via the Rural Infrastructure Fund to build a bigger prototype – Tahi. Shane Jones, Chris Bishop, and Christopher Luxon listen to OpenStar CEO and co-founder Ratu Mataira explain the plasma firing experiment. Inside-out design We dig into why this “inside-out” design could be simpler to build and maintain than giant international projects, how New Zealand-grown intellectual property in high‑temperature superconductors and flux pumps gives OpenStar a potential edge, and what comes next with its larger Tahi and Maui machines aimed at real fusion and, eventually, commercial-scale power. We also tackle the hard questions: tritium supply, neutron damage to reactor components, and whether a relatively small team in Wellington can compete with well-funded overseas rivals and decades of tokamak momentum. If you are interested in energy, climate, deeptech or New Zealand’s science system, this episode goes deep on a genuine moonshot as it crosses from lab experiment into serious industrial ambition. Streaming on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees. Show notes OpenStar Plasma Showcase Event - Youtube OpenStar completes critical step on nuclear fusion path - BusinessDesk Openstar says $35m Government loan will help it stay in NZ - BusinessDesk New Zealand fusion startup claims major advance in New Zealand trial - Bloomberg Nuclear fusion seems hot right now — but how close is fusion power? - CBC Chinese nuclear fusion reactor pushes plasma past crucial limit: what happens next - NatureSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 37m 50s | ||||||
| 2/18/26 | ![]() The OpenClaw moment and what it means for AI | OpenClaw is the moment AI stops feeling like a clever chatbot and starts behaving like something closer to a digital co-worker. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, you’ll hear exactly why. Veteran software developer and AI entrepreneurMike Hall joins me to break down what OpenClaw actually is in plain language. It’s not another prompt-and-response assistant, but a particularly smart type of AI agent that can wake itself up on a schedule, scan your data and tools, and decide for itself whether there’s work to be done. If it needs to write code to perform a task for you, it will do that too. Mike explains how that simple “heartbeat” loop, asking “Should I do something?” every minute, is the key shift that turns AI from reactive to proactive, and why that’s such a big deal compared with the chatbots most people have used so far. Skills and the hive mind We dig into how OpenClaw goes far beyond the current crop of AI agents baked into office suites and CRM platforms. OpenClaw is designed to live on your own infrastructure, plug into email, files and SaaS tools, and then act autonomously rather than waiting to be told what to do. OpenClaw has sparked a surge of interest from developers, an explosion of “skills” that any OpenClaw instance can download. The hive mind model central to OpenClaw is unlike anything we’ve seen in commercial agent products. That’s probably why OpenAI has snapped up OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger and will put him to work developing the next generation of AI agents for the creator of ChatGPT. Sandboxes essential We also cover the risks OpenClaw raises. Running OpenClaw on your personal machine can expose your entire digital life, which is why sandboxes and strict permissioning are essential. What happens when you let agents install community-built skills that might contain malware? Then there’s Moltbook, the social platform where OpenClaw-powered agents post and argue with each other, and what that experiment tells us about a near future flooded with AI personas. If you’ve heard the noise about OpenClaw and “agentic AI” but still aren’t clear on what’s genuinely new here – and why it matters for your business, your data and your job – this conversation will get you there. Streaming on iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast platform. Thanks to our sponsor, 2degrees. Show notes Mike Hall, CEO Ab0t.com OpenClaw: The AI Assistant That Actually Does Things - Turing College OpenClaw, OpenAI and the future - Peter Steinberger Meta and Other Tech Companies Ban OpenClaw Over Cybersecurity Concerns - Wired OpenAI hires OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger - FT What OpenAI’s OpenClaw hire says about the future of AI agents - Fortune Is OpenClaw Closed? - Hackster OpenClaw threats: assessing the risks, and how to handle shadow AI - KaperskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 47m 52s | ||||||
| 2/11/26 | ![]() New Zealand’s energy crunch: Can innovation keep the lights on? | New Zealand loves to boast about its clean, green energy story. With around 80 to 90% of grid electricity coming from renewable sources like hydro, wind and geothermal, we look like one of the world’s quiet success cases on decarbonisation. But beneath that headline number lies a much more precarious reality. When lake levels fall and gas supplies tighten, our energy system starts to look very exposed. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, I sit down with Melissa Reynolds‑Clarke and Daniel Gnoth from Ara Ake, the national centre for energy innovation, to explore how we can lean on innovation to navigate this emerging energy crunch. The conversation ranges from process heat in dairy factories and meat plants that still run on coal and gas, to the growing risk that international customers will turn away from products that are not backed by genuinely low‑emissions energy. Ara Ake sits in the “valley of death” for new technology – that tough space between promising lab results and commercial deployment. Daniel explains how the organisation supports everything from fusion “moonshots” and hydrogen‑electric aircraft trials, to more grounded projects like battery storage at Wellington’s CentrePort, rural microgrids, and ultra‑cheap hot water control that effectively turns our cylinders into a giant, flexible battery. Melissa, drawing on decades in the rural sector and on energy company boards, highlights the brutal realities facing farmers and manufacturers who need affordable, reliable energy today, even as they’re pushed to decarbonise for tomorrow’s markets. We dig into some of the most promising levers for fast impact – smarter use of flexibility on the grid, re‑using old oil and gas wells in Taranaki for deep geothermal heat, and new business models that make technologies like biodigesters and community batteries actually stack up in a country of small, dispersed farms and towns. We also talk frankly about the capital gap that still exists between startup and scale‑up, and why system‑wide thinking across regulation, networks, and markets, matters just as much as shiny new tech. If you want to understand what New Zealand’s energy transition really looks like on the ground, and where innovation can genuinely move the dial, this episode is for you. Streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Show notes Who builds NZ’s LNG terminal? The two names being floated - BusinessDesk New liquefied natural gas terminal: 'Vital' or 'bonkers'? - RNZ Why the new LNG terminal could raise, not lower, your power bill - Newsroom Ryan Bridge: The Taranaki LNG terminal is a good idea, depending on who you ask - NewstalkZB Second interim boss appointed at Ara Ake as work continues to find next CEO - The Post Energy research centre Ara Ake secures $70 million in funding to support innovation - Stuff Ara Ake Impact Report 2025 - Ara Ake See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 43m 43s | ||||||
| 2/4/26 | ![]() MethaneSAT: Unpacking New Zealand’s $30 Million space gamble | In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, we look at the rise and fall of MethaneSAT, the $30 million national space project that was supposed to cement New Zealand as a serious spacefaring nation. Instead, it became a case study in governance failure, misaligned incentives and lost opportunity. Launched in March 2024 and lost in June 2025 after persistent spacecraft glitches, MethaneSAT’s methane-sniffing science payload worked but the rest of the system carrying it in space failed. Working in space is risky, and satellites do fail. But as this week’s guest on The Business of Tech, University of Auckland physics professor Richard Easther points out, New Zealand’s involvement in the international MethaneSAT project raised questions from the start. “What happened… is that we found this opportunity and then we found reasons to do the opportunity,” he told me. “If someone had come to us in 2018 and said, here’s $30 million, I want you to develop things that will lead to startups, things that will provide the workforce… we could have come up with a plan and it would have been much, much better than MethaneSAT.” Picking winners: "A terrible job" Easther is careful not to scapegoat individual scientists or engineers. His critique is aimed squarely at how New Zealand chooses its science priorities and partners. “We do a terrible job of choosing science priorities in New Zealand,” Easther said. “And the people who pushed MethaneSAT were not scientists and do not have visible track records of testing proposals for excellence and competence.” From governance issues to the gap between what officials were told privately and what the public heard, Easther argues MethaneSAT exposed deep problems in how we govern high‑risk, high‑cost science. But this isn’t just a post‑mortem of a failed satellite. Easther draws a direct line from MethaneSAT to today’s multi‑million‑dollar bets on AI and quantum, warning that without transparent, contestable processes – of the kind used in US “decadal reviews” – New Zealand risks repeating the same mistakes at even larger scale. The Government yesterday announced another significant science investment, committing $35 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund to help start-up OpenStar Technologies develop a new, specialised facility for its new fusion machine. Easther says major science investments shouldn’t come at the cost of long‑term, curiosity‑driven funding, pointing to world‑leading local strengths in high‑temperature superconductors and quantum devices that were quietly underwritten by the Marsden Fund decades ago. Tune in to The Business of Tech to hear Professor Richard Easther on what MethaneSAT got wrong, and what we should learn from it. Streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees. Show notes An eye in the sky to detect methane emissions - RNZ Taxpayer-funded climate satellite MethaneSAT finally reveals what's behind delays - RNZ Taxpayer-funded satellite had 'deep-seated problems' from launch - RNZ MethaneSAT Report: Advancing space capability and climate science - MBIE Government pulls back from full membership of Square Kilometre Array - RNZNew Zealand pulls out of the Square Kilometre Array after benefits questioned - Physics Today See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 47m 17s | ||||||
| 1/28/26 | ![]() Robots and the new physical AI gold rush | Two Kiwi engineers who helped build the future of self‑driving cars in Silicon Valley are now quietly laying the foundations for the next great tech wave: physical AI. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, I talk to Harry Mellsop, co‑founder of simulation startup Antioch, and Adrian Macneil, co‑founder and CEO of data platform Foxglove, for a fast‑paced tour of where robotics is really at as Elon Musk talks up his Optimus humanoid robots. Both founders cut their teeth at the pointy end of autonomy. Harry worked on Tesla’s Autopilot, watching first‑hand how much time and money is burned putting robots into the real world safely. Adrian led key parts of Cruise’s self‑driving infrastructure and developer tooling, helping build the internal platforms that let engineers understand what a robot “saw”, “thought” and did on the streets of San Francisco. Big dollars for physical AI startups That experience has now crystallised into two companies sitting at the infrastructure layer of physical AI – and investors are paying attention. Foxglove has raised US$40 million US in Series B funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Icehouse Ventures on the cap table, to build the data and observability backbone for robotics teams. Antioch has secured US$4.2 million US dollars in pre‑seed funding, with Icehouse Ventures again involved, to bring Tesla‑grade cloud simulation to any robotics startup that wants to test thousands of edge cases virtually before a robot ever leaves the lab. Integration testing for atoms We explore how these platforms turn messy real‑world sensor feeds into structured insights, shorten development cycles from weeks to hours, and dramatically reduce the risks of unleashing autonomous machines into warehouses, construction sites and farms. Harry explains why “integration testing for atoms” is the missing link in robotics, and how simulation can slash the cost of safety validation. Adrian unpacks the idea of a data flywheel for robots – logging everything, surfacing the rare but dangerous failures, and feeding that back into better models and better code. If you want to know where AI goes next, why humanoids are still relatively clunky despite the viral demo videos, and how New Zealand founders are quietly shaping the infrastructure every serious robotics company will rely on, tune into episode 133 of The Business of Tech, streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor, 2degrees. Show notes Kiwi Harry Mellsop raises $7.3m for his physical-world AI start-up Antioch - NZ Herald Physical infrastructure AI firm Foxglove, headed by Kiwi Adrian Macneil, raises US$40m - NZ Herald The Missing Infrastructure Holding Robotics Back with Adrian Macneil - The Machine Minds Show Rise of the robots: the promise of physical AI - AFP Physical AI: robotics are poised to revolutionise business - FT Humanoid robots take over CES in Las Vegas as tech industry touts future of AI - CNBSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 56m 07s | ||||||
| 1/21/26 | ![]() Frontier or followers? How NZ can catch up on AI | New Zealand likes to see itself as an agile, innovative tech nation. But when it comes to artificial intelligence, the story is more sobering than triumphant. A new survey of 4,000 business leaders from around the world by research group IDC has revealed that just 8% of companies in Australia and New Zealand can be classified as “frontier firms” when it comes to their uptake of AI. That compares to the global average of 22%. Around half of our firms are classed as “laggards” and risk falling behind. Are we shrewdly waiting on the sidelines for AI to really prove its worth. Or are we merely dabbling with the tech, ill-equipped to embed it in our businesses? AI can be more than “fancy Google” In the first episode of season 4 of the The Business of Tech, I sit down with Sarah Carney Microsoft’s national chief technology officer, to explore an uncomfortable question: are Kiwi companies quietly locking in a decade of underperformance by moving too slowly on artificial intelligence? Carney has a front‑row seat to how “frontier firms” around the world are using AI to rewire their businesses, not just write better emails. In this episode, Carney, a ten-year veteran of Microsoft, spells out why that matters for jobs, growth and competitiveness. She also challenges some of the myths holding local leaders back. Is AI really a threat to entry‑level roles, or could it create better ones? Is governance a brake on innovation, or actually the catalyst that lets people take bolder bets? And why is our national cynicism becoming a liability in a world where experimentation is the new survival skill? If you’re a founder, executive, policymaker or just trying to work out what AI really means for your job and your business in 2026, this is an episode you do not want to miss. Streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 39m 47s | ||||||
| 12/17/25 | ![]() AI slop, smart rings and riding the S-curve: The year in tech and what’s ahead | “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 break down the biggest trends of 2025 and what’s coming in 2026, from AI agents and smart rings to humanoid robots and the debut of solid‑state batteries. Apple, AI and the year of the fold Pilcher starts with the elephant not in the room: Apple’s slow play on generative AI. “Every tech player and their pet poodle had an AI offering except Apple,” he said. “This is just crazy. This is a company that sets the trends that everyone slavishly follows, and they missed the bus on the biggest AI trend probably of the decade.” Yet he thinks there is method in the apparent madness, arguing that “stepping back… until they get a mature offering” may prove “quite sensible” in such a fast‑moving space. That patience, he predicts, will collide with hardware in 2026. Pilcher is convinced 2026 is going to be the year of the iPhone fold, following in the wake of foldables leader Samsung. AI slop, deepfakes and the S-curve of tech adoption AI dominated 2025, working its way along the classic S‑curve of technology adoption. While an enthusiastic user of generative AI tools, Pilcher is blunt about the downsides, from “AI slop” filling Facebook, X and LinkedIn to academics “pulling their hair out” as students outsource learning to chatbot tools. With hyper‑realistic video models like Sora3and an election year looming, Pilcher says “the general public needs to be a lot more critical, a lot more sceptical – and they’re not”. Pilcher chooses Cory Doctorow’s famous term “enshittification” to sum up a key, regressive trend of 2025. “You subscribe to a service, it sounds fantastic and it’s only $5 a month. Three months later, it’s $25 a month, does less, requires more of your information and they can’t guarantee your privacy and by the way, your password’s been stolen,” he said. Pilcher sees this as evidence that the business model underpinning AI is dubious, with companies investing “billions and billions of dollars in massive data centres” in a period of “geopolitical instabilities and macroeconomic instabilities”. Silicon became “the new global currency” in 2025, from Nvidia’s dominance to Google’s Tensor processing units (TPUs) and China’s push to go beyond 40nm (nanometers) under US export bans. Smart glasses, smart rings and genuinely smart homes If 2025 was AI’s year, Pilcher also thinks it was when home and wearable tech quietly levelled up. He rates Meta’s new Ray‑Ban smart glasses, which can describe what you’re looking at and translate signs on command. Future prototypes, he notes, combine wristbands that track “tendon movements” for hand‑gesture interfaces with augmented reality (AR) overlays that could do everything from lie detection in negotiations to live 3D navigation in unfamiliar cities. Smart rings are another sleeper hit, with Pilcher praising rings for being “unobtrusive” and “tiny” while monitoring health stats well enough to “tell you proactively when you’re coming down with a cold or a flu a week before you start noticing symptoms”. In his own testing, backed by a blood‑pressure cuff and digital thermometer, a smart ring delivered accurate results. On the home front, Pilcher says the long‑promised smart home is finally here, thanks to the Matter standard, which means new gadgets “will basically work regardless if you have an Alexa, Apple, Siri or… Google Home”. EVs, robots and the 2026 futures Pilcher also covers the post‑rebate slump in EV sales, the rise of value‑packed Chinese brands like BYD, and the misinformation around EV fire risks, pointing out how a petrol vehicle, not a battery, was to blame in a widely shared bus fire incident. Putting his futurist hat on, Pilcher talks about smart contact lenses with built‑in displays and gesture‑tracking bracelets that could make smartphones “look as quaint as a Model T Ford”, always‑on access to AR shopping lists and navigation, and the first serious wave of humanoid robots. With cheaper AI silicon and compact models, he “wouldn’t be surprised if in late 2026… humanoid robots become the next must‑have consumer electronics category for the well‑heeled”. He also expects to see the debut of solid-state batteries as an alternative to Lithium-ion batteries that power everything from laptops to EVs, expecting new breakthrough technologies to offer longer battery life and durability. Tune in to Episode 131 of The Business of Tech, powered by 2degrees Business, for the full conversation with tech guru Pat Pilcher, streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 1h 04m 24s | ||||||
| 12/10/25 | ![]() How cheap drones became the defining weapon of modern conflict | 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 platforms that can reshape modern warfare, agritech and even search and rescue. From DIY quadcopters to smart weapons New Zealand’s first drone rules arrived ten years ago, when the technology was still rudimentary and often home‑built. “Pretty much every part of drone technology has improved,” Shelley said. Better batteries and lighter and stronger materials have almost doubled flight time, while mass‑manufactured airframes have brought the price of drones down. and far more capable sensors and onboard software. Other advances, such as sensor technology and onboard software, have flowed into features many consumers now take for granted, such as obstacle avoidance, rock‑solid position hold and follow‑me modes, as well as increasingly autonomous flight profiles. The Ukraine war, now approaching four years in duration, has been characterised by the use of drones by both Ukrainian and Russian forces. The changing face of warfare Shelley recalled watching footage of a small first‑person‑view drone in Ukraine flying straight past a Russian electronic warfare vehicle “festooned with antennas” and striking the armoured vehicle ahead of it. The drone was trailing a hair-thin fibre-optic cable, allowing it to avoid radio jamming systems. “To a certain extent, what we’re seeing in Ukraine is that the old is new again,” said Shelley, pointing out that the current generation of drones echo some of the cruise‑missile tactics from the early 1990s. Shelley traces a clear line from ISIS workshops that assembled drones from AliExpress parts, through Turkey’s TB2 Bayraktar successes and Russia’s use of DJI’s Aeroscope detection tools, to today’s battlefields where consumer‑grade quadcopters handle intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and precision strikes. The West, he argues, has been complacent: “Turkey was leading the way with its Bayraktar TB2, Iran is clearly leading the way with its Shahed series drones and we are playing catch-up,” he said, pointing out that the US is now reverse‑engineering an Iranian drone rather than setting the pace. Artificial intelligence is only beginning to make its mark in commercial uses in New Zealand, but Shelley says the leading edge is already visible in applications like Christchurch‑based SPS Automation’s large agricultural drones. These systems can autonomously identify wilding pines and apply “a small amount of chemical herbicide” to individual plants, an approach he argues could transform conservation economics by reaching areas that are “almost impossible on foot” or too expensive to service with crewed aircraft. Agritech, data and the search and rescue gap If the military implications dominate headlines, Shelley sees at least as much untapped potential in agritech and emergency response. He cites spray drones that can drop slug bait on vulnerable crops in muddy conditions where tractors would churn up soil and helicopters are cost‑prohibitive, turning marginal blocks into productive land. Pasture management is another frontier. Instead of consultants walking paddocks with pasture meters or towing instruments behind quad bikes, he expects drones to fly automated grids soon to map grass cover and optimise feed wedges across entire farms, backed by “clever software” to interpret the imagery. Search and rescue, he argues, is “one of the things we haven’t done well with”, despite New Zealand’s vast coastline, mountains and national parks. Shelley believes agencies need to change their mindset and accept that in bad weather or hazardous terrain, “we have to move into a mindset where we’re happy to lose the technology,” risking a $100,000 drone instead of a multi‑million‑dollar helicopter and its crew to find people in distress. Building a drone industry – and workforce FenixUAS sits at the centre of the fledgling drone ecosystem, training over a thousand civilian and government operators a year, including the New Zealand Defence Force, and certifying many of the country’s advanced drone operators. That gives Shelley what he calls a broader overview of what everyone’s doing with drones than perhaps anyone else in the country, from agritech to infrastructure inspection. While firms like Tauranga-based Syos, and SPS Automation point to a growing UAV scene, he says the real bottleneck is software talent, with drone companies crying out for mechatronics and software engineers who can turn raw imagery into usable insights. Listen to Episode 130 of The Business of Tech podcast featuring Dr Andrew Shelley, streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Your weekly tech reading list The year the tech billionaires won (again) - BusinessDesk Canaries in the code mine: what AI is doing to first jobs for Generation Z - BusinessDesk ChatGPT’s New Internet Browser Can Run 80% of a One-Person Business - Entrepreneur The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course - New York Times AI-Powered Browsers Are Failing Badly - Futurism China set to limit access to Nvidia’s H200 chips despite Trump export approval - FT Australia's ban on social media for users aged under 16 comes into effect; platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to AU$49.5M - The Guardian OpenAI Staffer Quits, Alleging Company’s Economic Research Is Drifting Into AI Advocacy - Wired SpaceX to Pursue 2026 IPO Raising Far Above $30 Billion - Bloomberg From Llamas to Avocados: Meta’s shifting AI strategy is causing internal confusion - CNBC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | 44m 27s | ||||||
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