One year ago, we launched the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region and asked a simple question. What if you could build anything you imagine in New Zealand. One year on, Kiwi businesses are starting to answer it.
Today, thousands of customers are running workloads in our New Zealand Region, and the breadth of what's happening tells the momentum story. Large agritech migrations are complete. Leading software companies are running solutions locally. Major banks are preparing significant migrations, while some of the country's largest retailers are moving their most critical systems to benefit from world-leading resiliency, security, and innovation.
Organisations such as Air New Zealand, Foster Moore, Foodstuffs North Island, Halter, Mattr, One NZ, Orion Health, Paymark, Ravensdown, Xero, and ZURU and global software companies such as Snowflake, Logic Monitor, and MongoDB are among those collaborating with AWS to build and innovate in New Zealand.
The conversations I'm having have shifted from "how do I use AI?" to "how do I use AI to change my business?"
From the paddock to product launches
Whether building locally or using our global infrastructure, organisations across the country are putting cloud and AI to work to solve real problems, from transforming how farmers manage livestock to rethinking how airlines serve customers.
Halter built Clank, an AI agent on Amazon Bedrock that has saved more than 215 hours of engineering time by helping triage system alerts. ZURU is using AI to analyse 20,000 social videos a day, helping cut product development from 18 months to five. Parrot Analytics is using Amazon Bedrock to verify content data 10 times faster at 60% lower cost. And Tower Insurance, working with Deloitte, deployed an AI-powered contact center in just 10 weeks, helping save more than one million minutes of customer call time.
New research commissioned by AWS shows the opportunity is there for every Kiwi business, but it also reveals a growing gap between businesses experimenting with AI and those with the capability to turn it into measurable value.
AI adoption is becoming the less interesting number
Half (50%) of Kiwi businesses are consistently using AI, up from 42% a year ago. What matters now is what businesses are doing with AI and whether they can turn it into measurable value.
Today we released Unlocking New Zealand's AI Potential 2026, a nationally representative survey of 1,000 businesses and 1,000 individuals across the country. The findings show AI is delivering real commercial returns, but a two-tier economy is emerging.
The research shows that eight out of ten (84%) of AI-adopting businesses report an increase in revenue. Almost a third (32%) have launched a new AI-driven product or service in the past year, while 27% say AI has helped them expand internationally. AI is no longer a productivity experiment. It's becoming a growth engine.
But that growth isn’t evenly distributed. Only 15% of New Zealand businesses have a formal AI strategy, and this group is pulling away from the rest. They're more than twice as likely to have reached advanced AI use (41% versus 19%), nearly twice as confident they can measure ROI (63% versus 34%), and more than twice as ready for what comes next (44% versus 17%).
The dividing line isn’t simply size. Startups are actually ahead of large enterprises and SMEs on advanced AI use. What separates the leaders is that they’ve made AI deliberate by deciding where it can create value, who funds it, and how it is measured.
Kiwis are learning fast. Can their employers keep pace?
New Zealanders aren’t waiting. 54% have used an AI tool to teach themselves a new skill in the past year, while only 34% received AI or digital training from their employer.
Closing that gap is an investment worth making. A lack of skilled personnel remains the leading barrier to AI adoption. It takes an average of 3.4 months to fill a digitally skilled role, and 52% of new roles are expected to require AI literacy within three years.
We've trained more than 100,000 New Zealanders in cloud skills through programmes such as AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance, AWS Academy, AWS Educate, and the AWS Generative AI Accelerator.
AI skills aren’t only about the technology. AI is increasingly a business decision too. So, for the first time, AWS is launching a new business certification category, starting with the AI Business Strategist. It’s designed for people deciding where to invest in AI, building the business case, and driving adoption across their organisation. No coding or AWS experience required.
We're also excited to bring the Breaking Barriers Hackathon to New Zealand. The program invites nonprofits and community organisations to submit a real challenge they face in areas such as education, health, or climate resilience. We match them with teams of developers who will spend 72 hours building a working generative AI prototype on AWS. The strongest solutions receive dedicated engineering support to move from prototype to production.
They bring the challenge. We bring the expertise, resources, and support to help move it forward.
Building the foundations for what comes next
The report sets out three foundations to turn adoption into economy-wide transformation.
- Make AI strategy practical. Help businesses identify use cases, fund, measure, and scale what works, especially in industries with complex operating environments.
- Build a future-ready workforce. Expand certification-linked training pathways, measure the effectiveness of skills programmes, and harness the self-directed learning already underway among New Zealanders.
- Get prepared for the next wave of AI. Accelerate adoption in the sectors with the most to gain (such as agriculture and healthcare) by making early-adopter results visible, building tailored skills pathways, and ensuring guidance reflects the operating realities of each industry.
New Zealand doesn’t have an ambition problem. Businesses can see what AI could do. People are learning how to use it, and companies are already showing what’s possible.
The challenge is now turning that ambition into capability across the economy. This means moving from experimenting with AI to having a strategy in place for it.
One year after launching the AWS Region in New Zealand and momentum across many industries is building. The opportunity now is to help more local businesses build with AI, grow with it, and compete globally with it.
Read the full Unlocking New Zealand's AI Potential 2026 report.
