Tech in 2024: what happened and what’s next

We're joined by four stellar journalists who discuss what they saw over the last year and look ahead to what may be yet to come. 

BusinessDesk’s senior markets reporter Rebecca Stevenson offers a deep dive into Rakon's failed takeover and unpacks Gentrack’s success – and the questions that success raises. 

Rob O’Neill, senior reporter at IT industry news outlet Reseller, unpacks the waves of redundancies and talks about AI in big business. 

Finn Hogan, a writer at startup-focused Caffeine Daily, talks through the coolest tech startup highlights, the ups and downs of finding funding, and the industries worth watching. 

The Spinoff founder and media writer Duncan Grieve outlines his concerns over the future of the news amid big tech’s continued domination of the media landscape.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Business of Tech powered by two
Degrees Business, the big tech news that define twenty twenty
four and what may lay ahead for twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
It was just like thousands of hours of work and
millions of dollars fielding a bed that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
The industry's gone from a kind of a boom time
to a time where we're seeing the potential for some
kind of brain drain happening nuclear fusion.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
It's almost this hubristic level of ambition, right.

Speaker 5 (00:29):
Are you not concerned in the displacement of New Zealand
companies to non tax paying tech companies? Am I crazy here?
Or is this a bigger problem?

Speaker 6 (00:38):
We're joined by the leading journalists who have covered some
of the big tech stories from AI installed government IT projects,
to takeover attempts, and some big exits for our startups.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
I'm Ben Moore and I'm Peter Griffin with our eightieth
episode of the Business of Tech and our penultimate episode
for the year. Ben, Who've we got on the show
this week?

Speaker 6 (00:59):
We've got four journalists, each with unique perspectives on a
particular aspect of tech. We've got our business desk colleague
Rebecca Stevenson. She's the senior markets journalist who has been
keeping an eye on our listed tech companies this year.
There's Rob O'Neil, senior writer for Reseller News on the
big movements in the enterprise tech space. Finn Hogan who
writes for Caffeine Daily and also does some work for

(01:22):
dig a tech focused PR company, and he's wrapping up
what twenty twenty four held for our tech startups. And
finally Duncan Greeve, founder and media writer at The Spinoff,
who has been keeping a close eye on big tech
this year.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, great lineup, and we were initially intending to have
them all into ended MEHQ for one big conversation until
we realize the challenging logistics of doing that. So instead
we've got four short, sharp segments featuring this week's guests
on various aspects of tech in twenty twenty four. Where
shall we start, Ben.

Speaker 6 (01:56):
Let's start with the z X and a couple of
listed tech companies that have been on Rebecca Stevenson's radar
this year. So you are the markets reporter, extraordinary business desk.
If I say to you that what is the biggest
story enlisted tech of the year in New Zealand. What's
the first thing that pops into your mind, Well.

Speaker 7 (02:15):
It would have to be two things.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I'm afraid break on Who's the advanced still high tech
manufacturer of all sorts of interesting bits that go inside
high tech systems and it's failed takeover bid was a
huge story for listed tech companies this year. And then
on the flip side we had gen Track, which is
the utility software provider, which was also listed on the exchange.

(02:40):
It just seems to be going from strength to strength
and continually I guess, surpassing analysts expectations, winning customers, increasing
revenue and doing incredibly well. So it's blasted into the
ZX fifty last year and people thought, you know, well,
maybe it would start to sort of top out sometime soon,
not at all. It recently reported its full year result

(03:03):
which was very strong, increased its revenue by about twenty
five percent, and that sat its share price spike up
really quite high on the day, up to about fourteen
dollars at one point, I think. And then now its
market cap is more than one point four billion, and
it started the day while under that, so a couple

(03:24):
one hundred million in a few days for gen Track.

Speaker 6 (03:27):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a We had Gentrack CTO
new CTO Mark Ree, a former CTO of Zero, on
the podcast not long ago, and the market for what
they are producing globally, I think is really strong because
there are so many of these utilities companies that are
needing to upgrade their systems and get something modern, digital

(03:48):
and flexible to meet the changing demands.

Speaker 5 (03:51):
You know.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
And that sounds like I'm literally spouting gen track pr
but actually it's also true. So what is what has
been the news and market response to Genrack's success. I'd
imagine there'd be quite a bit of buzz. Yeah. I think.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Look, it's just the best performing share on the exchange,
you know, and you really can date it back to
the leadership of Gary Miles. I was crunching the numbers
actually today and he started in October twenty twenty, and
I think the shares are up more than nine hundred
percent since he joined. So it's just been extraordinary, just

(04:28):
a crazy ride in the share price since. And then
somewhat ironically, perhaps that's also created some blowback, a little
bit of blowback around his remuneration and the incentives for
the senior leadership as I put it, they've kind of
been hoist on their own petard a little bit because
of the success of the share price they had to

(04:50):
reach about ten dollars, Well it's gone way past that,
trading today at about thirteen dollars ninety ish, and also
had some earnings per shares targets that Gary Miles and
the other senior leaders had to hit to get some shares,
more than nine million shares vested to them for hitting
these targets. But there's been a little bit of criticism

(05:12):
about that from the New Zealand Shareholders Association, who.

Speaker 7 (05:15):
Felt the thresholds were too low.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
However, you know, as Gentrek would say, well, we certainly
didn't think that last year. And you know when Gary started,
Gary Miles started, I think the shares we wrote about
a dollar seventy. So to be saying ten dollars was
too high or too low, now, you know, it's the
benefit of hindsight perhaps.

Speaker 6 (05:34):
Yeah, that is interesting, the idea that you set these
targets that you see as kind of almost outlandish, like
had they ever reached that level, and then when you
have a runaway success, you do end up with shareholders going, oh,
hang on a minute, we hoped for this, but now
we've got to clamp down and make sure that we're
not spending too much where we're not supposed to be.

(05:57):
Is that a common story enlisted companies or is this
something that hasn't really been too much of a problem before.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Well, you have to be in it to win it,
I guess, you know. And so in Genrack's case, they
did have a special general meeting in September last year
specifically for this issue and to change some of the
sort of triggers around and the sort of rules around
whether or not Gary Miles and the senior leadership team

(06:24):
would be able to get those incentives and those new shares.
Andy Green, who was the chair, basically said that we
believe that we need to do this to keep them
to perform well for the next three financial years. So
this is for the twenty twenty four financial year, twenty
twenty five and twenty twenty six, so it's not all

(06:45):
a one hit wonder. They have hit the first earnings
per year target for twenty twenty four because they just reported,
but they're still twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six
to come, and obviously it sort of ramps up from there.
They have to hit higher targets to get that full whack.
What Gary Mayles said to me when I met up

(07:07):
with him recently was that they're in a really competitive
environment for talent and private firms can pay higher. You know,
they are public firms get the scrutiny and are benchmarked
like this and everybody can see what they get. But
also gen Track is competing in this global talent poll
where you know, public tech companies can offer you know,

(07:29):
really generous incentives. So he said that they're trying to
strike a balance, and they say they've gone basically in
the middle of what sort of a public firm perhaps
benchmark New Zealand listing incentive scheme would be, and between
a private equity listing because they want to get the
best talent because, as you said, this is a massive

(07:49):
global transformation program that's happening for utilities providers and they
really they want to be number one here. They want
to win all these contracts, they want to win across
the world.

Speaker 7 (08:00):
And all these different countries.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
So you know, they believe they need to yeah, really
be attractive and have those incentives in place.

Speaker 6 (08:07):
And that's a big conversation generally, but in tech specifically,
this idea of private companies being able to just splash
around more money on talent compared to public companies. And
I think it's especially true of New Zealand, where salaries
are generally a little bit lower than globally in tech
as well. So definitely worth keeping an eye on to
get a sense of how that pressure is impacting a

(08:29):
New Zealand company. Yeah, let's look now at the other
story you talked about, which was Racon and they had
a difficult time with a takeover offer. But companies get
takeover offers all the time, right, and some work out
and some don't. What made this one so controversial.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, it was a little bit fraught from the start.
I mean it sort of popped up in December when
we were lots of us were on holiday, and they
felt that their hand had been forced, that they were
forced by media reports in Austria E to make the
bid public and then they were basically a sort of
on record and they had a lot of pressure from
shareholders to keep them updated because this was quite a

(09:09):
juicy premium, you know. I think it was valued them
at about a dollar seventy per share. Well, Raycon shares
have been trading at about fifty nine cents lately, so
you can understand why people wanted to know what was
going on with this bit. Now, this sort of rolled
on for a few months, this kind of not much

(09:31):
going on in terms of updates. Raycon said, you know, look,
when we know something, will tell you. But it was
a difficult and expensive process for the business. You know,
the chair got up at their own your general meeting
and said, it was incredibly onerous going through this process
with what we think was a Nasdaq listed Apple supply,

(09:54):
a huge company called Skyworks, and basically they had to
bring in consultants, they needed legal advice, yes, just management
had to be available, you know.

Speaker 7 (10:02):
The CEO, the board.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was just like thousands of hours of work and
millions of dollars actually as well that it cost Raycon
and Fielding a bid that was ultimately unsuccessful. Since then,
the share price has just been falling away really because
you know, it felt a little bit like the one
that got away. People were like, well, why did it fail?

(10:26):
Raycon said it was material complexities were uncovered as part
of the process, so really a bit of a question
mark there about I guess potentially the future of Raycon.
You know, a lot of people say it is really
a good acquisition target now and it should perhaps be
bought by someone bigger. However, you know they'll want the

(10:48):
price to be right.

Speaker 6 (10:51):
What does material complexities actually mean? Because in my understanding,
if there is a material issue with a company, it
needs to be disclosed if they're listed. So how does
that interact with this concept of material complexities that prevented
a takeover?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
The thing is, we really we don't know much. You know,
Raycon just continues to say that, you know, they're keeping
the market informed of anything that they need to know. Basically,
I mean, we don't know. There's been a lot of
speculation about why this deal actually fell over. One person
that I spoke to who has knowledge of these sorts

(11:31):
of deals, pointed to just the general complexities of the
markets that Raycon operates and you know, and sort of
pointed me to the fact that, you know, we have
a chip war going on between the US and China,
and you know, Raycon is obviously active in those sorts
of industries and it is incredibly complex, you know, tense,

(11:53):
sort of secretive. People are worried about their IP and
then you've just got this idea of you know, who
owns the check apps as well at the heart of
it all. So they said, you know, it's a really complex,
difficult sort of agreement to get across the line when
you're trying to sell a business like Raycon that is highly,
highly technical, highly secretive, you know, customers, we're not even

(12:18):
allowed to you know, they don't talk about their customers
a lot of time or name them. You know, everybody's
trying to protect their patch and protect their competitive advantage.
You know, particularly, I guess with the rise and rise
of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data centers and all of that.
You know, Raycon really wants to be playing in that
sphere and be an important player. So there's a lot

(12:39):
of commercial sensitivities and non disclosure agreements and things. So yes,
they said, yes, it is materially complex.

Speaker 7 (12:47):
The whole thing.

Speaker 6 (12:50):
Interesting. Well just by out of time unfortunately, because there's
so many more companies that we could talk about. Obviously,
there was the big listing of being AI this year
and some material complexities going on as we speak with
being AI, so we'll hopefully get some stories about that

(13:10):
coming out in the near term. Any other companies that
you think are particularly worth a shout out on the
tech listed front before we wrap up.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Well, look, I mean Spark has absorbed a lot of
energy this year, which you're probably closer to, you know,
than I am, But I think they're a classic example
of perhaps some of the things that have also been
affecting Raycon as well. You know, we saw the sort
of infantry stock piling and a lot of expenditure throughout
COVID as you know, mobile networks providers and things were

(13:43):
worried about not having parts, so you saw Raycon and
people like that, you know, get a bit of a blip.

Speaker 7 (13:49):
From that, but all that has retrenched now.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
So the global economic sort of pullback has really been
affecting a lot of tech companies. In terms of a
little company that I keep an eye on, there's our Frio,
which is the refrigeration sensor and software company, which someone
sort of perhaps sarcastically said to me, you know, if
you had sort of a dollar for every time they

(14:13):
said they were going to be making it, you know,
you'd probably be quite wealthy. But you've got to admire
the persistence of that business. But they've got some really
interesting things happening as well, and kind of like similar
to gen Track in a way. It's that, you know,
looking at energy use and energy consumption.

Speaker 7 (14:31):
Is a really a big theme. I think that's running
through for a lot of these sort of listed.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Companies in tech companies, and how you can create savings
cost savings and give customers more information about how they're
using energy and how they can save energy. I think
is going to be a huge trend for like a Freo,
gen Track, et cetera in the coming years.

Speaker 6 (14:52):
Yeah, and Eerod's another one who similar in terms of
driving down costs around transportation duration and those kinds of areas.

Speaker 8 (15:03):
Cool.

Speaker 6 (15:03):
Well, thank you very much, Rebecca. It's super interesting and
I look forward to seeing some more in the adventures
of the zet X from you in the next year.
It's tumultuous year for tech companies and speaking to Beck's later,
she also said Vista Group had quite a bit of

(15:24):
drama at the board level, which is worth reading about
and you can check out Rebecca's excellent reporting on that
at Business Desk as well.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sort of mixed bag for our listed tech companies and
that really went for the whole enterprise. It space to
the big tech projects in the corporate world and in
the government sector. Here's Rob O'Neil on some of the
big developments he covered at reseller News this year. Rob O'Neil,
Welcome back to the Business off Tech, the man who

(15:53):
likes to get down in the weeds in enterprise tech,
coming to us from fong Array. How are you doing.

Speaker 8 (15:58):
Good? Good, good to be here, Pete. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah, and we just spent some time together in California
recently we went to a SpaceX launch together. So busy
end to the year and a busy year for enterprise tech,
which is really all about what companies are doing with technology.
So what are your big picks for the big developments
in enterprise tech this year?

Speaker 8 (16:21):
Well, I mean the first one will come as no surprise.
It's AI. It's not so much that AI is new.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
It's been developing quite strongly over the last few years,
but it has kind of reached that inflection point during
this year where people are really starting to roll it
out and develop use cases for it. But the real
reason why there's been this breakthrough an adoption is because
the vendors have developed the tools. You know, It's not
like companies are trying to develop their own AIS or
which some were you know, even just a few years ago,

(16:47):
but the tools are now available, so you know, it's
become much more achievable. Like with any I system, there
will be integration challenges if you want to apply AI
across systems and across processes. I think it's called multimodal AI,
for instance, maybe incorporating sensors and IoT devices as part
of that network. You know, that's really where things are
going to be heading and trying to do that in

(17:08):
a safe way, in a controlled environment where you don't
get hallucinating AIS contaminated with external data of some sort.
I think those are the things that will be going
on right now.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
We've heard so much about the supposed productivity gains that
come with using the likes of Microsoft Co Pilots. Apart
from the vendors who all quote great progress in this
area because they're pushing their own services, have we seen
any real evidence among our own companies that they I
seeing those productivity gains. We saw report out from the
Australian government which did a trial of Copilot and said

(17:42):
actually the public servants using it saving you know, for
thirty or forty minutes a day. Have we seen any
more evidence like that, particularly here in New Zealand, that
it's actually delivering return on investment.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
You hear it anecdotally, don't you. And I think there's
always the problem. You're going to get people who just
want it now, you know, the early adopters, and they
will build it into their.

Speaker 8 (18:02):
Own work habits very very quickly.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
And then you've got other people who maybe are not
quite as quick on the on the uptake and need
to be guided a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Now.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
It's the other thing about all of these software tools
is that they bring creative possibilities. How the application is
applied is a is a creative challenge for the user,
and that's where some real innovation can happen because of
course the users are the ones who are most familiar
with the with the value as in the data, where
the problems are, the need to be solved, what the
problems are, and how to do that safely. So I think, yeah,

(18:32):
those will be the sorts of issues that have been
being grappled with now. The impact on jobs, of course
is the is the follow on from that, and that's
actually part of something we'd like to maybe like to
talk about next.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, So talking about jobs particularly, one of the big
trends this year really in New Zealand has been the
head count reduction in the public sector. We've just seen
in the last couple of weeks, you know, the proposals
to really slash headcount again at health which will impact
the data and dig division there, huge reduction. What's your

(19:04):
take on how this is sort of playing out in
terms of affecting government's ability to digitally transform. It's got
a aggressive roadmap DEIA just put it out at Service
Modernization Roadmap. It wants to do all of this sort
of stuff. Do we actually have the resources to push
this through now?

Speaker 3 (19:24):
They've also come up with another one market lad initiatives,
which will allow players in the market to suggest projects
that might might improve service, so you don't necessarily have
to go through a full tender process when you go
through that. So they are greasing the wheels of innovation,
you can say, with some of that within the public service.
Let's just get some numbers on the public service cuts.
For starters twenty two there were sixty two forty three

(19:45):
public servants twenty three there were sixty three, five hundred
and thirty seven and As of yesterday, eight hundred and
sixty five layoffs had been reported. Right now, that's still
relatively early days, but as you can see, it doesn't
actually take us down below the twenty twenty two number.
So everything's a matter of perspective.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Really.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
I believe that some of those I haven't quite worked
up the exact relationship, but some of those positions that
are being vacated are not filled at the moment.

Speaker 8 (20:13):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
It could be an anticipation of these losses that the
agencies have already decided to allow head counter shrink naturally
when they have an opportunity to do that. That's probably
my reading of it. But yeah, I mean, we think
of them as huge cuts, and they could well be
in the future huge cuts, but right at this point
in time, it's not appearing that huge.

Speaker 8 (20:36):
Still early days, We'll wait and see.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
We heard so much at the start of the coalition
government's term. They stopped three Waters, that was a big
IT project, tip the Kinger. They sort of unwound that
MSD has big transformation project on the go. What's really
your sense on the state of some of these big
government tech projects. There has been sort of freezing of
some budget and that some of those big ticket items

(20:59):
still rolling along the likes of three Waters.

Speaker 8 (21:02):
Three Waters is basically pretty much right off.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
It had advanced quite a bay, but not to the
point where it could really be rolled out anymore. So
you're looking at a two hundred and two hundred million
right off of three Waters. In terms of TEA the
King of they've they're still working on the project there.
They've rejigged it so it's able to be a deployed individually,
almost like a SaaS application, I guess, with an instance

(21:25):
for each institution, and for the ability for institutions, the
smaller institutions to group together and share an application like that,
So you might have three smaller regional training organizations deciding
to join forces and run on one set of financial
systems and so forth. So that's really what's happening with
TIFA Kinger. The right offs there have been very small. Yeah,

(21:46):
of course, all of the stuff, you know, the loss
of staff, they're clamped down on spending. The change in
these two big keynote projects has a wash on effect
into the industry, right so in things like employment within
the tech industry. I was just having look at some
staff numbers for data Coom. For instance, twenty twenty two,
data Com had nearly seven thousand employees and in twenty

(22:08):
twenty four they had six thousand, one hundred and thirty one.
So that's pretty much a ten percent reduction in the
space of two years. And I don't think that's stopped,
so we might see some more news on that in
twenty twenty five. So yeah, that's quite a deep cut.
And the industry's gone from a kind of a boom
time it was very very hard to find people to

(22:28):
a time where we're seeing I guess the potential for
some kind of brain drain happening.

Speaker 6 (22:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
So yeah, we're facing that sort of crunch on funding
in the private sect there, amidst that, we've got transformation
projects rolling on, some of them not going particularly to plan.
Might A ten probably a big one that's got a
lot of publicity this year for its sort of struggling
SAP implementation.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's one of a long line,
and I guess on this topic, I've put it under
the headline persistent project failure. So not particularly picking on
MINA ten, but MITO ten is quite a spectacular example,
and it's also the one that I think was hard
to see coming. So it's been in trouble for a
couple of years now. But I guess, I guess everything
that I'm hearing is that the AS is part of

(23:15):
the project understanding the processes that were actually being used
in the stores and in the warehouses before you start
rolling out software, before you even procure your software, that
that might have been underdone. That's the story I've heard, right,
and so that in that sense you could almost call
it human error rather than take technology eraor.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
In terms of green shoots sort of stuff. That's optimistic.
I mean, this is the year finally after a lot
of hype and talk that one of the hyperscalias is
rolling out of data center region in New Zealand. Microsoft
we saw from their accounts from recently doing very well
in New Zealand one point three billion in revenue, but
also spent the best part of a billion dollars on
building these data centers in the New Ukan region.

Speaker 8 (23:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, no, I mean this is this is potentially a
big boon for New Zealand. You know, I think everybody
likes the model of having your data within easy reach,
within your own legal system and your own protections and
that kind of stuff and still having the kind of
backup of a company like Microsoft or AWS or whoever
SAP for instance, if you on your ERP applications. So yeah,

(24:19):
I mean it's finally happening. I mean it's been a
long time, hasn't it. We've been reporting on these these
deals for ages. And there's a bunch of other ones
as well. You know, those are the headline ones. You know,
there's a bunch of other data center players in there,
including data com So it's an exciting time. The AWS
one appears to be suffering from a few setbacks. They
had a bit of a water problem on the site.

(24:39):
It's a bit damp. You don't really want that around
your computers. So I think they've done some engineering to
get past that and they're underway again. So we'll just
wait for them to come on stream as well. But yeah,
I mean first mover advantage. That looks like it's going
to be Microsoft.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
And finally rob Looking to twenty twenty five, if there's
sort of one thing that's going to be big in
tech and in enterprise tech as well, what's your pick.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
I'm really interested in the emerging battle between satellite and
terrestrial broadband. You know, investment in fiber has been huge,
obviously in New Zealand and around the world and still ongoing,
but there is at least in the US a bit
of a disinformation I think going on at the moment
around fiber. You know, if people connected with Elon Musk

(25:24):
perhaps sort of suggesting why are we spending all this
money on Fiver when you've got satellite now, that there
is a pretty good reason for that. It's that is
that Fiver is still the gold standard. You may be
getting very good service on your satellite connection now, but
what happens when another one hundred thousand or two hundred
thousand people decide to.

Speaker 8 (25:40):
Go that way. The early adopters of Starlink.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
And New Zealand, a lot of them in rural areas,
were cocker hoop about it, and quite rightly so, because
I mean, you know, they didn't have an option and
it performed really well. But we just have to be
a little bit circumspect, I think, And this is where
that market lead lead development.

Speaker 8 (25:58):
Things thing comes in.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
You know, we had John Hannah from Tuaali First Fiber,
which deals with a lot of remote customers, welcoming that
idea that that somebody like Tuatari could propose very specific
fiber rollouts and directly to government and get support for
that outside of the UFB structure for instance. Okay, so
that's that's one possibility for extending fiber further in the future,
and it would be led to some extent by the

(26:23):
by the telcos involved, and they would be able they're
in the best position to work out how they can
make a service like that, which might otherwise be marginal
a profitable one one worth doing within the with fiber
through a commercial construct or actually they might decide to
use satellite technologies as well, who knows, but it'll be

(26:44):
horses for courses, i'd imagine.

Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (26:45):
So yeah, that's that's an exciting time.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
I mean, I think the disruptive potential of star Wars
Staralink is obviously significant. We've got some numbers on that
now they've become subject to the Telecommunications development and that
means we know that they are only three point eight
million in revenue in New Zealand starlink Wow in the
twenty four year and they got thirty seven k customers

(27:09):
at the end of the twenty four year, so that's
very significant.

Speaker 8 (27:12):
Growth from zero over maybe a couple of years. Yeah,
hustlers keep it, keep an eye on that.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
And of course that changes the way you can network things,
you know, for instance, evasive networking, which which will become
one of the fees that goes into the AIS we
talked about earlier, where you have IoT devices distributed all
over the country, monitoring and possibly connected to systems that
can take remote action over infrastructure, for instance, when things

(27:40):
start going wrong. So I mean, I think that's going
to be open a world of possibilities.

Speaker 6 (27:50):
A difficult year for enterprise and government tech twenty twenty
four was there rather underwhelming year for capital raising for
startups internationally, with venture funding down fifteen percent year on
year by tech Crunch's estimate, But it actually wasn't a
terrible year for our own startups. Here's Finn Hogan from
Caffeine Daily and dig pr on some of the highlights. Hello,

(28:12):
Finn Hogan, Welcome to the Business of Tech podcast. Thanks
for joining us.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
Always a pleasure to chat with you.

Speaker 6 (28:17):
Ben. The first thing I'm kind of interested in, I
guess is for you, what is the most interesting story
of twenty twenty four in the startup world.

Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well, there's so much to kind of chat through there, right,
if you want to talk about like the big deals
in any sense of the word, I feel like Kami
or Trade to Phi has to be mentioned just in
terms of like the amount of capital getting injected back
into the system. You know, KARMI getting valued at that
three hundred million dollar mark, sort of record returns for
New Zealand Growth Capital partner Trade Phi over one hundred

(28:46):
MILLI as well, just sort of really gave a boost
in the arm of the ecosystem, really sets that confidence
moving forward after what's been a pretty rough year across
the board and the kind of macroeconomic climate. If you
just want to talk about like the interesting nerdy heck
stuff always which is exactly and I'm so glad you
got me in for this, I think the open staff

(29:06):
for me just has to be mentioned. Because nuclear fusion,
it's almost this hubristic level of ambition, right, you're kind
of harnessing the power of the sun and the palm
of your hand. Literally. The plot of Spider Man two
and the fact that New Zealand has a company that's
actually taking genuine strides in that with some kind of
really fascinating bits of engineering, and obviously I have done

(29:29):
some work with them through my work with dig PR.
So if anyone wants to just disregard everything I say
as being a shell, absolutely understand. But I will back
myself because I've been covering these guys for years, particularly
since my time at news Hub, and I think their
reactor design is fascinating. It's built on some work that
happened previously overseas, but they've really innovated it. And the

(29:50):
fact that they got first plasma this year and we
actually got to see it, we got to see that
bright purple flash. I think that was a really spectacular
moment and it really speaks to the kind of ambition
that the startup community is capable of.

Speaker 6 (30:03):
Yeah, I think that that's been a fascinating story to
watch play out. Seeing the video of those first sparks
is pretty amazing. And you know, some people have said,
you know, it's such a long shot, and the kind
of response to that is, well, deep tech is a
long shot, like it's supposed to be a long shot,
but if it pays off, man, is it going to
pay off exactly?

Speaker 4 (30:23):
I mean, the concept of unlimited energy, carbon free for
everyone forever is obviously sounds like a pipe dream, and yes,
of course Fusion's always been thirty years away. But when
you look globally now at the moves, it's not just
open style. There's genuine momentum in this direction, and the
idea that New Zealand has a hand on that ball

(30:45):
on any level is.

Speaker 6 (30:46):
Just Spectator absolutely a very cool company. So what were
the things that happened in the startup scene this year
that were maybe surprising to you? I mean, obviously the
big strides in tech are surprising, but was there anything
that you saw happened that you weren't expecting.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
I think what surprised me just from twenty twenty four
perspective was when I spoke to founders. When I'm interviewing
people for CAFM, there's this real sense of carimaraderie and
community in the startup scene, and there's this kind of
willingness to help each other that I wasn't necessarily expecting
when I came in. There's this this idea that this

(31:23):
quite sharp elbows, that we're competing for relatively limited funds
and so we're going to be really we're going to
harbor our secrets and we're going to be competing in
a zero S game, but every single person I speak
to was just gushing with praise for another person in
the community that helped them on their path and talked.
Every time I asked them of who helped you, they

(31:45):
would just rattle off a list of names from sometimes
competitive company, saying, well, this person was so useful. This
person connected me with this person, And it made me
realize that the startup community in New Zealand is this
lovely mixture of small enough to be a village, but
large enough to sort of steed be a shining city
on a hill, sort of vibe of that we've got
these large, spectacular successes that get eyeballs on the community,

(32:07):
but it's small enough that it can still have that
community vibe of collaborating together and helping each other. And
so I think that's what surprised me most year talking.

Speaker 6 (32:18):
On that kind of concept. That small village thing can
really be a benefit, but it can also have its
downsides in terms of people don't want to talk about
bad experiences, people don't want to kind of get on
the wrong side of the village and kind of end
up excommunicated. Have you had any sense of the darker
side of the close knit community.

Speaker 4 (32:38):
Yeah, I think that positive side is in some ways
a shadow of what you're talking about. Right, Everyone is
extremely positive about each other because they worry that if
they say something negative, it's going to very quickly get
back to that person.

Speaker 6 (32:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
So yes, I think, as often happens, a positive trait
is in some way a shadow of the negative trait.
And so I think you're absolutely right and on that
kind of And I think the other element, in terms
of that sort of small kiwi community that we have
in the startup scene, it can work against people as well.
And I was speaking to the guys from a grow
Ai which recently closed a record breaking pre seed round,

(33:13):
about how they went straight to San Francisco to get
that raise, and they talked about how to do that.
They really had to cast off this sort of reflexive
village humility that New Zealand sometimes has, because it's such
a baked in part of our DNA that we are
reflexively humble, that tall poppy synd your own clean you know,

(33:33):
insert cliche here, And they realized how much that would
work against them when they're sort of fishing in that
money pool in sand fram and they talked a lot
about how harnessing our key weness, you can take the
good parts of it, of the novelty. People are going
to be fascinated by you. You know, insert Lord of
the Rings joke, hare whatever. But you've really got to

(33:54):
cast off that we've come from the small pool and
we've just come in here on our jendles and please
give us money. If you actually walk in boldly and
back yourself, people are going to take you seriously. People
already take New Zealand seriously, and you really need to
take yourself seriously at the same time, otherwise going to
do yourself at a service.

Speaker 6 (34:10):
Unfortunately, New Zealand sometimes has its constraints when it comes
to raising capital. And we saw a massive spike and
raising and like twenty twenty one, and then we saw
a real constraint after that. Where are we starting to
sit now, How are people feeling in the industry about
their ability to raise money, where that money's coming from,

(34:31):
and you know that their outlook on the success if
they do start something well.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
I mean, obviously the macroeconomic climate has not been great
just in terms of raising money for the past couple
of years, but I think we're starting to see the
kind of green shoots of that. Obviously, as the top
tier interest rate comes down, money starts to get a
little bit cheaper. But yes, every founder I've spoken to
this year has talked about the difficulties of raising and

(34:58):
it genuinely is a sense in the community that it's
been a very, very tough year. People are watching their
money very very closely. I think there is also a
bit of a concern around that top tier, that top
stream level of funding, which is usually taxpayer funded. We're
coming from grants and coming from research institutions because that

(35:18):
pool of money has been drying up over the last
few years, and I think something that not a lot
of people will be aware of in terms of the
deep tech area, so much of that relies on sort
of deep tech research funding that comes from government. Fundamentally,
it comes from research institutions, whether it's counterhand or anything else.
And I think, particularly with the moves we have seen

(35:40):
from government recently putting those different criteria on the MARS
and fund really cutting down on the ability of people
to have that blue sky kind of thinking. I think
companies that rely on having that before investors are even
going to have a look at them that kind of
research that is only ever going to be funded. From
a university perspective, I think there is a real concern

(36:01):
that some of that deep tech technology is going to
really struggle to get off the ground because at that
top end of the stream, that money's drying out.

Speaker 6 (36:08):
Yeah, it reminds me of a company Captivate Technology. They're
a carbon capture startup. Still, I think pre Seed and
the founder came out of a university. He just kind
of stumbled across this metal framework called muff sixteen. Tried
to convince them it needs a name change. They weren't
having it.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Idy talking about it.

Speaker 6 (36:29):
That's great, but muff sixteen which captures carbon dioxide, right,
And it was only because he was experimenting with these
frameworks that he found it. It wasn't like he was like,
I'm going to go and search for a carbon capture technology.
And so that's that representation of how blue sky can
actually lead to major breakthroughs, which there are plenty of.

(36:52):
So yeah, it is sad to see. Well, it's important
that we do have a focus on commercializing some of
the technologies. I wonder if implementing that at the base
stage of funding is probably that maybe the wrong place
to put it. Well exactly, I'm opining here though.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
No, I yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think
so many of these innovations come from stumbling across something
or having to front load proving where the benefit of
this technology comes from. Is putting the cart before the horse?

Speaker 8 (37:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (37:17):
Yeah, So we're at the end of twenty twenty four,
twenty twenty five, what are we expecting to see. What
is the perspective that you're hearing from the people you're
talking to in the sector.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
I feel like we're going to start seeing the rubber
meat the road in terms of actual AI applications that
really start generating value. I think a speaking to arcaneum AI.
I think they're in a really interesting example of where
a gentic AI or AI that's starting to act a
little bit more autonomously is going to start proving itself
as an actual real value creator and boosting productivity. And

(37:53):
I think as these underlying models are improving at pace,
even if that pace slows down, even if we see
a modest increase in capabilities next year, most people applying
this technology are still scrambling to harness the full potential
of technology that existed six months ago, let alone what
happens in six months down the line. So I think
agentic AI is going to start becoming a bigger part

(38:14):
of the conversation in twenty twenty five. I also think
mid tech as well. I think when we saw the
bio Aura getting their funding and looking to build a
facility in christ Church, I mean there was some very
very big numbers thrown around a quarter of a billion
dollars added to GDP. But even if we don't take
that seriously, I think the combination of advances and underlying
technologies in the mid tech space, combined with the government

(38:37):
looking to loosen some restrictions, particularly around advances in gene
therapy and gene editing techniques, I think that's anaria that's
going to be really interesting. I think mid tech overall
is really undervalued. I think mid tech is such a
massive growth industry, and I think it also from an
investor perspective, is quite de risked because there's the underlying technology,

(38:59):
There is so much R and D, there is so
many hurdles that they have to get through from a
regulatory perspective that I think it's not like a drug
company just of this drug works. It either does or
it doesn't. The technology itself has so much value and
is dear risk because of so many regulations it has
to clear before it can even get to market. So
I think like a Cadear Health for example, looking at

(39:19):
their rays this year, that was an incredible piece of technology,
world first microcomputer brain implant, and they're very focused on
a very specific illness, but the at potential applications of
that underlying tech are incredibly broad, and so I really
think the medtech space and our advances in that area
are going to be a big story in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 5 (39:41):
Cool.

Speaker 6 (39:41):
Yeah, that is I think an area that has a
lot of potential for New Zealand because we have a
really strong med tech underpinning and bioengineering underpinning that people
don't actually really know, so it'd be really exciting to
see that grow super well. And that's about the time
that we have, so thank you so much for joining us,
Finn Hogan on the Business of Tech podcast. It's been

(40:02):
a pleasure to talk to you and chat startups.

Speaker 4 (40:05):
It's always a pleasure having back anytime.

Speaker 6 (40:08):
Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
So we're going from startups to what they can become
when left to their own devices, which is big tech companies,
and between the battle for supremacy in AI and antitrust
action against them in the US and Europe, they've dominated
tech news once again. Duncan Greeve has done some great
stories this year looking at the ways that they are

(40:31):
increasingly influencing the digital economy in New Zealand and how
little we really are doing to put checks on their power.
It's been a busy year for you, Duncan and the
spin off, a bit of a challenging year for anyone

(40:53):
in the media. You've been really busy with the Fold,
your own podcast about the media. You've also been keeping
a pretty close eye on big tech companies, and a
lot has happened this year. A lot of antitrust activity
in the US really yet to bear fruition, but definitely
some seismic changes potentially underway in the home country off

(41:17):
these big tech companies, less so in our part of
the world. You wrote a couple of weeks ago that
the tough approach of Australia's regulators and policymakers towards big
tech is paying off for its citizens, who are getting
far stronger protections than New Zealanders. That was in relation
to a move over there. The Australian government said that

(41:42):
if you want to advertise on Facebook over there, you
will have to verify your identity so have government issued
ID to actually place adverts, which will potentially do away
with a lot of the scams and fraud that goes
on on that platform and other platforms as well. But
really this year, I think what you've been tapping into

(42:04):
in your stories is really just that dichotomy that there's
all this activity going on just across the Tasman in
comparison we're doing so little.

Speaker 5 (42:13):
Yeah, it feels like the whole story of the year
to me that you kind of have these two countries
that you know, we've got a common economic zone and
we like to think of ourselves as kind of siblings
in a lot of ways. Big technology feels like it's

(42:33):
the sort of signal challenge of our time is how
you as a country retain your sort of sovereignty, take
the good of what they do, and try and deal
with the externalities that come with them. And yet Australia
is arguably the global leader. You know, maybe the EU
could could could be kind of considered that too. But

(42:55):
suddenly as a global leader in dealing with them in
a sort of joined up, in multifaceted way in New Zealand.
Is just it's close to a zero, which is it's
it's quite a hard thing when you're sitting here in
one of the sectors that's impacted, but one means the
only one to kind of watch with envy, to be

(43:16):
honest at what's happening across the Tasman and see that
there's just so little energy or interest from our politics
and regulators over here.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
In some of your pieces, you've sort of tried to
get to the height of that. Is it a resourcing issue?
John Smaller said, Look, we just don't have the budgets
of the a triple seed to go after big tech,
which has the best lawyers in the world. This is
an expensive undertaking. We don't have the expertise to do it.
But I mean we could have piggybacked on a lot
of what the Aussies were doing this year. Maybe we

(43:47):
would have had a lot more critical mass if we
sort of joined force. It's not necessarily on everything. The
social media ban, for instance, I think this terrible legislation
and ram through in the last week of pil so
we can pick and choose. But on the anti competitive stuff,
I mean, Australia is about to potentially put a bill
through which would mean that a company, at big tech

(44:10):
company that was preventing a customer from switching to another
platform or being anti competitive fifty million dollar fine. So
they're going out with a really big stick on anti
competitive activity in the digital economy. I mean, what's to
stop us teaming up and going after this together.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
Yeah, it seems really strange, right, because these are complex issues.
I don't want to kind of downplay that. You know,
the we've signed a lot of you know, free trade
agreements which again, like so much of our legislation didn't
imagine how just how borderless commerce and communication was going
to become, and probably had we been able to do that,

(44:51):
we would have taken note of the impact on our
you know, just how complicated it would make legislating in
some respects. But the the response of Australia is, you know, yes,
maybe some of the tax ideas are going to be difficult,
but at least we can try and find them into

(45:11):
altering their behavior. And even sometimes you don't even have
to get that far. Sometimes you can just assure a
report that makes something plain and start the process of
looking at it and magically things change, you know. You
see that with Netflix, for example, which has got an
ANZ office. It's tided to commission big Australian shows, but

(45:32):
it's only doing that for Australia, and it's only doing
that because the government made the fact of it's doing
none of the local content stuff that TV networks are
doing such a political issue that we'll try and get
out ahead of it. Now that's an imperfect process, it's
not finished, but it's transparently a better outcome for Australia

(45:54):
the nothing, which is what we have with Netflix in
New Zealand. And you can see the same thing with
the scams, which are a massive problem here, you know,
somewhere between two hundred million and two billion dollars a year.
And yet Meta is almost kind of making fun of us,
right like they're doing the absolute bare minimum, which is
trying to verify that people advertising financial services in Australia

(46:17):
are in fact Australian businesses. And when I ask them directly,
are you going to do the same thing here? You know,
would be a very easy thing to do. Google is
doing it. They've just said no plans. You know that
they will eventually, But the fact that we could be
having just the most basic levels of consumer protections here,
were we just to be talking about it publicly is

(46:40):
It's shocking to me that it continues to be something
that our ministers, our government, even our opposition parties, to
be honest, don't seem to be making a big thing
out of it.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah. I mean, we've got this permissive environment here, you know,
and I think a lot of MP's would argue that
that encourages innovation, but we haven't seen all the innovation
from big tech. They do the bare minimum here, They
have a bare number of people here. They give us
the same sort of vanilla offering that everyone else gets,
but they don't have to jump through nearly as many hoops.

(47:12):
And I guess the one area this year that there's
actually been some activity and is the Digital News Bargaining Bill,
which showed some promise bilateral sort of support for that.
With the new government coming in, they took that up
and ran with it. But by the end of the
year it looks like it's very much in jeopardy that

(47:32):
this thing is actually going to happen. What's your take
on that this was one.

Speaker 5 (47:35):
Of the most flawed in terms of not necessarily so
early its intention, but the way it has played out,
because what you've seen in Australia is that those initial
deals that were struck between Meta and Google and no
one else, which is one of the issues, they expired
after three years. Google began the process of renewing, but
Meta didn't, so it became effectively a single company tax

(48:01):
and it wasn't a tax because you didn't have any
transparency around what the scale of those deals was. There
has been within media a bit of a divide about
whether to sort of push through the legislation and see
if Google, which has said it will pull out of
news distribution and break all its seals, see if they're
being honest about that or if they're bluffing, or others

(48:22):
who say, actually, that's quite a dangerous thing to do
in many respects. But it's by no means the only
legislation over them, so they could have picked up other
things and said that these can advance at different speeds.
But the biggest thing, I think, the biggest reason that
Australia has made so much progress is actually through the
a Triple C, which has got a kind of a

(48:45):
constantly operating sort of survey of digital spheres and competition
in the same way that we do with telecommunications, with
electricity and now increasingly with supermarkets. To me, it's so
obvious that is a sphere that needs to be scrutinized
in the same way as those other ones, arguably more
than for example, tele communications, and yet the ComCom have

(49:11):
said we're just out resourced or mandated to do it,
so we're not going to do it.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yeah, you've called for a Minister of Big Tech, which
I absolutely agree with. Do you think anything is going
to change under this government?

Speaker 5 (49:22):
They're a year old, right, and you know I've spoken
extensively to Andrew Bailey, who's the so called Minister for scams,
met with and spoken with Paul Goldsmith who's the Media
and Communications Minister, on multiple occasions. But they're not unaware
of the issues here. So I'm not without hope that

(49:44):
this could kind of raise up the political agenda.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
On the social media ban. I mean you can relate
to this. I guess you ran a harrowing story feature
article about a young woman in Wellington and her horrendous
experien parents with basically a stalker who was able to
carry this on for years through online platforms, and just

(50:08):
a woeful response from those online platforms which she repeatedly
complained about it. So I guess we can all sort
of relate to this and see the harm that is
being done. But really, is this a workable solution technically
and even costs wise. I mean, our government has been
very reluctant to spend anything in enforcing any sort of

(50:31):
rules in this area. That's going to be an expensive
undertaking for the Aussies having a third party company running
potentially a digital identity verification system. It's going to cost
tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
Yeah, I think this is the hardest part, right is that?
Think about YouTube and TV and zed as functionally, both
of them have video content on their websites and they
make their money by selling advertising that sits between that
video content. TV and zaid employees. Well, it's less by
the day, but it's around six hundred people. When it
makes a profit, which it hasn't been this year, it

(51:04):
pays company tax on the whole of that profit. And
I just think it's a kind of a perfect little
encapsulation of the way that the contributors to the economy,
to the tax base, to the employment base have a
huge amount of rules and both unspoken and literal legislative

(51:25):
that they operate by. And then you have the big
tech companies, which contribute no tax create all these problems
which the tax paying companies ultimately have to fund. And
I sort of just very hands off about those sort
of externalities. And that's where, you know, one of the
things I was trying to stand up earlier this year
was trying to speak to the Minister of Revenue about

(51:46):
this because I'm like, if nothing else, is there not
a are you not concerned from our tax based perspective
in the displacement of New Zealand companies to non tax
paying tech companies, And you can't get people interested in
At a certain point you're like, am I crazy here?
Or is this a bigger problem than you're litting on?

Speaker 1 (52:03):
No, You're not crazy, And you know, just finally dunk
and looking to twenty twenty five, we've seen in the
US a lot of antitrust action play out. The Department
of Justice over there has taken suits against Google and others.
Google was found to have a monopoly in digital search,

(52:24):
and there's a decision pending on its digital advertising business.
It also lost the Blizzard case around its app stores,
so that may have to be opened up. Is a
lot of this stuff and the frustrations we have going
to sort of be overrun by bigger events in the
US that may see some structural answers to this, or

(52:46):
is do you think it's just going to roll on
and on in court and appeals for years to come.

Speaker 5 (52:50):
Court action remains probably the most likely source of sort
of structural change in the industry. You can see that
with it's not strictly court action, but courts have confirmed
it with the TikTok ban, which could still happen in
a bit over a month in the US, which would

(53:10):
be an enormous change. But I think that that also
points to one of the big problems, and it is
that this is both a trade and a geopolitical issue
as well, and that if you're the US, you know
that these companies are behaving in ways that are anti
competitive and using their scale and the opacity of their

(53:33):
sort of systems and the ways that they can kind
of combine their different audiences and products in a way
that is kind of quite overwhelming, but on a sort
of a the fact that those companies are global and everywhere,
but still based in the US, so you derive enormous
benefits to the fact that your share markets hold those

(53:57):
companies to the vast bulk of their most and your
employees are in your country, and that when they finally
do repatriate money, it comes into this very dynamic in
a very innovative economy that you still have. So do
you accept some harm in your domestic interest because you're
you know, your overall geopolitical interests or advanced. This is

(54:17):
the thing that especially with you know, one of the
great entrepreneurs of history right next to the administration, Elon Musk,
I'm still not quite sure that they have an answer
to that. So even with these cases going forward, I'm
not one hundred percent sure that that won't kind of
lead to it just a continuation of the sclerosis that
we see, you know, around the world with a lot
of this stuff.

Speaker 6 (54:40):
So there we have it. In many ways, I think
it's been a bit of a landmark year for technology
in a lot of ways, everything from AI and these
big enterprise companies that have had to do a lot
of restructuring, the continued growth of startups in New Zealand
and the startup industry, Big tex can virtial power being questioned,

(55:02):
and the ups and downs of our nzat X listed tech.
So overall, it's been an interesting year to be following tech.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, and I'm really interested to see what happens with
the Trump two point zero administration. You've got I think
I read somewhere his cabinet which has a lot of
sort of tech related people in there, the likes of
David Sachs, one of the PayPal mafia, is going to
be his crypto advisor. I read somewhere that their combined

(55:33):
net worth if you include Maska, isn't in cabinet, he's
the doge Master, is about three hundred and forty billion dollars,
so by far the richest cabinet ever. And these are
all super smart, super ambitious, egocentric people, and a lot
of them have very firm views about technology. They're techno optimists.

(55:58):
They think tech is the answered to most things, and
that unfettered innovation is the answer to climate change and
all of these problems that we face in the world.
So how is that going to manifest itself in policy
in the Trump administration over the next four years. What
will it mean for all of those lawsuits that are

(56:21):
happening against the big tech companies. Is bees as going
to be able to, for instance, influence Trump to the
extent that he orders the Department of Justice to sort
of dial back its action against Amazon. These are sorts
of questions I think are going to be answered quite

(56:41):
quickly in twenty twenty five. And then the other one
really is where is AI going to go? We've got
chat GPT five has sort of been delayed the technology
underpinning that. There's a lot of talk in the industry
that these large language models, the transformer technology is sort

(57:01):
of running out of steam in terms of their capability.
They've hit some walls in terms of what it's capable of,
So there's a bit of worry about that. How are
they going to overcome that. We've got Sora and things
like that that are just now being released. So we
will see the impact of AI generated video probably a

(57:22):
lot more in twenty twenty five, and of course the
rise of AI agents, which has been talked about and
hyped up a lot in the second half of this year,
but we haven't really seen them in action yet, So
next year we will see them rolled out because a
lot of them, the way they're designing them at Microsoft
and Salesforce and others is to just drag and drop.
You don't need to code or anything. If you've got

(57:45):
the data, you can feed those into an AI agent
to automate a sales process or a conversation. Companies will
definitely be taking those up next year. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (57:55):
I had a story just go up recently about the
kind of expectations of the timeframe of a generative AI
being integrated into enterprise company systems. I think it's something
we need to keep in mind as well. You know,
they are drag and drop, so you can just kind
of feed them data. But at the same time, there
is a certain level of integration work and data cleaning

(58:16):
and all those things that you actually need to do
to make them functional. So we're starting to learn a
lot more about how the implementation of these technologies is
going to what that's going to look like. I think
it's been similar to kind of cloud migration. You know,
it's going to take time and people are going to
have to figure out how to do it and where
the challenges are and what's actually most impactful. But once

(58:38):
we get into it and things get rolling, we are
going to start to see some pretty drastic changes.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Yeah, the in terms of some of the sort of
ticky stuff next year, you know, I think the driverless cays,
we've seen so much progress this year in the US
in particular and China, so we're just going to see
a lot more that, maybe in the UK an official
launch there. We've got Kiwi Alex Kendall who's taking his
technology to the US. We're just going to see that

(59:06):
really start to hit critical mass. I think we'll also
see some of the first prototype small modular reactors. Nuclear
reactors go into development and maybe production in conjunction with
the big tech companies that are funding them because they
need more energy to run their data centers. And literally

(59:27):
today Microsoft launched its own data center region in New Zealand.
So we will see if that pays off for them,
what demand is, like, is their good uptake off those services?
They certainly think there will be. They put a billion
dollars of investment into that, and speaking to them, they
say it's going to be a slow burns. This is

(59:48):
a long term commitment for them, but to what extent
our company is going to accelerate their migration to the
cloud as a result of having this hyperscale infrastructure on
their doorsteps. And what is it going to mean for
the economy? Will those productivity gains were so desperate to
achieve start to be realized as a result of having

(01:00:10):
all this great infrastructure. Won't happen in twenty twenty five,
but will we start to see some really great use
cases emerging that inspire others in corporate New Zealand to
adopt it as well.

Speaker 6 (01:00:23):
Yeah, I mean there are some big promises that big
tech has to keep in terms of the return to
the economy. Billions and billions of dollars, the numbers they've
thrown around around how much this is actually going to
benefit New Zealand Inc. So hopefully we start to see
some of that playing out and keep an eye on
whether that is actually happening to what extent. So, Yeah,
in particular, those productivity gains are going to be highly anticipated,

(01:00:46):
I would imagine by many people, So let's see if
we can get there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Yeah, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on all of
that every week here on the Business of Tech. So
that's it for this week. Thanks to resellers Rob O'Neil,
Rebecca Stevenson from Business Desk, Finn Hogan from Caffeine Daily,
and a spinoffs Dunk and gree for joining us links
to some of the big tech stories they've covered in
the show notes at Business desk dot co dot ezed.

(01:01:12):
Head straight to the podcast section to find them.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
You can stream the podcast there as well as on
iHeartRadio or of course, your podcast platform of joyce and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Get in touch with your feedback, ideas, suggestions for topics
and guests for twenty twenty five. Email Ben on Ben
at Business desk dot co, dot.

Speaker 6 (01:01:30):
Zed Our final episode will be next Thursday. It will
just be me and Peter are reflecting on some of
the best, worst, most interesting, ridiculous technologies that we got
our hands on in twenty twenty four, and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
We'd really like to hear your picks for the best
gadgets you bought or test drove in twenty twenty four,
the ones that were absolutely worth the money in your view.
Head to the Business of Tech LinkedIn page to tell
us what tech absolutely brought you joy or made your
life easier.

Speaker 6 (01:01:58):
Have a great week and we'll catch you one last
time for twenty twenty four, Next Thursday.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
See you next week.