Published on the 18/03/2025 | Written by Newsdesk
AppWrap March 2025 19.03 Tourism New Zealand has partnered with Minecraft to make New Zealand ‘the first fully playable destination’ in the Minecraft world. Six Kiwi destinations, including the Waitomo Caves, Abel Tasman National Park and Doubtful So
AppWrap March 2025
19.03 Tourism New Zealand has partnered with Minecraft to make New Zealand ‘the first fully playable destination’ in the Minecraft world. Six Kiwi destinations, including the Waitomo Caves, Abel Tasman National Park and Doubtful Sound, are downloadable in a move Tourism NZ says is expected to generate $50m in visitor spend this year. The content coincides with the release of A Minecraft Movie next month.
19.03 Meta is fighting to shut down a memoir from Kiwi whistle-blower and former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams. An emergency arbitration ruling this month saw Wynn-Williams ordered to temporarily stop personally promoting or distributing copies of the book, but does not stop the publisher or its parent from distributing or promoting Careless People. Slate says the memoir is filled with scandal and a portrait of Facebook’s execs as flawed, awkward and hypocritical humans.
15.03 OpenAI and Elon Musk have agreed to fast-track a trial over OpenAI’s ‘for profit’ shift, though a decision on whether the case will be by jury or judge-alone has been delayed, Reuters reports. Musk has accused OpenAI, which he cofounded, of straying from its founding mission of developing AI for the good of humanity, rather than corporate profit.
12.03 UK business management software provider The Access Group has snapped up Kiwi job management platforms GeoOp and GeoNext for an undisclosed sum. The Access Group says the deal will expand its offering in ERP software.
12.03 Spain’s government has approved a draft law imposing fines of up to €35 million for not correctly labelling AI-generated content. EuroNews reports the bill classified incorrect AI labelling as a serious offence with penalties of €7.5m to €35m or 2-7 percent of a companies global turnover. Startups and medium-sized companies could receive lower penalties. The move is designed to limit deepfakes.
11.03 Rocket Lab plans to raise up to US$500 million (NZ$877 million) to support future acquisitions, corporate expansion and working capital needs. The company has lodged documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission detailing its plans for an ‘at-the-market’ equity offering.
11.03 2degrees has inked a deal with AST SpaceMobile and says it will provide satellite broadband to smartphones from next year. 2degrees says it will build its own dedicated ground station in New Zealand and that the deal will expand connectivity beyond existing infrastructure.
07.03 NZ mid-sized businesses are looking for government-led programs to support their digital upskilling and cyber-resilience, according to MYOB’s The Bigger Picture report. Improving international trade relations through FTAs or other trade deals was the top desire to help businesses grow, followed by addressing interest rates and inflation. The report shows mid-size businesses will be crucial to helping New Zealand ‘reclaim its exporting mojo’.
07.03 Being AI CEO David McDonald has resigned from the company’s board, effective immediately, with the company’s chief marketing officer and vice president of HR roles both being disestablished from earlier this week, the company told the NZX. McDonald, who remains as CEO, is replaced on the board by Send Global CEO Paul Forno. The company’s shares were suspended by the NZX after two independent directors resigned, leaving it without required number of independent directors to meet governance standards.
07.03 Christchurch East MP Reuben Davidson has taken on the Science, Technology and Creative Economy portfolio for Labour in a reshuffle to unveil a new ‘economic team’, Labour says.
06.03 Spark says it is reviewing ownership of non-core assets in an attempt to reduce debt levels. The comment follows a negative A- credit rating by S&P. The telco says the $311m from the sale of its remaining stake in Connexa will also be used to reduce net debt and that it is ‘committed to improving earnings’.
06.03 A ransomware group is threatening to publish data, including valid passport documents, it claims it has stolen from Wendy Wu Tours. CyberDaily reports that the amount of data stolen isn’t revealed on the darknet leak site, but several documents are shared as evidence of the hack including nine scans of passports belonging to residents of Australia, the UK and Germany, and a passenger pre-travel form which includes names, addresses, emergency contacts and frequent flyer numbers.
06.03 The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has dropped its investigation into the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, concluding that despite Microsoft investing billions into OpenAI and having exclusive users of some of the company’s AI products, the relationship remains the same as previously and is not subject to review under merger rules, the BBC says.
05.03 Gartner says New Zealand organisations will spend almost $792 million in 2025 on information security and risk management products and services. The figure equates to a 15.6 percent year on year increase.
05.03 Microsoft has launched two sales AI agents to its lineup. Sales Agent and Sales Chat will initially connect to Dynamics 365 and Salesforce. Agent will ‘help grow your pipeline’ researching leads, reaching out to customers and setting up meetings, while Chat will provide insights from CRM data, pitch decks, meetings, emails and the web. Both will be released for public preview in May, Microsoft says.
03.03 Microsoft is cancelling data centre leases and increasing subscription prices for 365 software by up to 45 percent, in a push to make users carry AI costs, Queensland University of Technology and UNSW Sydney academics write in The Conversation. Kevin Witzenberger and Michael Richardson say Microsoft’s moves are indicative of a change in strategy to make AI profitable by shifting the cost onto consumers in ‘non-obvious’ ways.
03.03 Kiwi mobile and broadband provider Skinny has gone AI with its advertising, with a clone of a customer as a brand ambassador to cut marketing costs. Liz Wright, from Kerikeri, was selected to be cloned for the campaign, which the company claims is the first of its kind globally.
02.03 Thousands of Microsoft 365 customers have been hit by outages which locked many out of accounts, including Outlook and Azure. Most impact was felt in the US. AP reports Microsoft has identified a potential cause of impact and reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact.
01.03 Spark has sold Digital Island, which it acquired in 2017. The cloud communications and contact centre company will transition to private ownership, led by its CEO Leon Sheehan, who will coinvest alongside entrepreneur James Reeves. Sheehan says the divestment will enable more agility and a ‘doubling down’ on contact centre and cloud comms solutions.
AppWrap February 2025
28.02 After more than 20 years, Microsoft is shutting down Skype, which it acquired in 2011 for US$8.5b. The company, which says Skype will be retired in May, has been focusing on Microsoft Teams for a number of years.
27.02 More than 50,000 Kiwi businesses have registered with the eInvoicing network. Small business and manufacturing minister Chris Penk says more than 160,000 eInvoices have been exchanged with the number growing fast. He says moving away from slow and administratively intensive paper and PDF invoices could bring $400m in annual productivity gains across New Zealand and provide increased stability for small businesses thanks to the improved cash flow, greater accuracy, stronger protection against invoice fraud and scams and reduced admin.
27.02 MPs have been ordered to remove WeChat, RedNote and CapCut apps from all devices connected to the parliamentary network. The order to remove the Chinese app came hard on the heels of a ban of DeepSeek on parliamentary devices, RNZ reports.
27.02 Google Cloud is funding an Auckland Council AI trial to use ‘AI agents’ to provide citizens with information and support from across its digital platforms. The council claims the scale of the project, dubbed Ask Auckland Council, makes it one of the largest applications of the technology in New Zealand, and that in future it could be used by other councils. Deloitte is a partner in the program.
25.02 Tauranga agtech Robotics Plus has been bought by Yamaha Motor for an undisclosed sum which falls below the $200m threshold for the OIC. The Kiwi company will form the foundation of a new business, Yamaha Agriculture, based in the US. Robotics Plus’ offerings include the Prospr autonomous vehicle, Aporo Fruit Packer which automates fruit packing and a robotic log scaler to automate log measurement for trucks and trains. Robotics Plus, which has around 130 staff, says it will continue to operate its core business from Tauranga.
24.02 The Australian government is banning products and web services from Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky on all government devices and systems, saying it poses an ‘unacceptable security risk’. Canada, the UK and the US have already announced restrictions on Kaspersky software, leaving just New Zealand remaining of the Five Eyes countries. TechCrunch reports Kaspersky’s spokesperson as saying the company is disappointed with the decision with the directive which was issued without warning.
23.02 Hackers have stolen $1.5 billion from Dubai-based crypto platform Bybit’s Ethereum digital wallet in what is believed to be the biggest crypto theft in history. The company, which holds $20b in assets, has told users their funds were ‘safe’ and it will refund those affected, the BBC reports. Hackers ‘exploited’ security features and transferred the money to an unidentified address.
21.02 Health New Zealand is urgently overhauling contracts which left the gate open for Covid and Census information to be misused after it implemented contracts which gave it no power to check if people have been misusing sensitive health data, RNZ reports. HNZ and the Health Ministry did not do audits and had no power to do so under the contracts and was unaware of the weaknesses until a recent enquiry exposed it.
21.02 The future of the GovGPT chatbot, launched just months ago amid much fanfare appears uncertain following the end of its PoC this month. A note on the site Callaghan Innovation is being disestablished and decisions around GovGPT and the AI Activator are yet to be made.
21.02 $1 billion in market value was wiped off Spark following its announcement that half-year profits were down more than three-quarters to $35 million, down from $157 a year ago. RNZ reports underlying profit was 15 percent below analyst estimates while operating expenses were higher than expected. The telco recorded revenue of $1.94 billion, down from $1.98b a year ago, blaming the recession for the result. Accelerated depreciation of the copper network also contributed.
20.02 Kiwi healthtech Medtech Global has been sold to US-based software investor Banyan Software for an undisclosed sum. The company provides locally developed practice management systems and healthcare tech which are also sold in Australia. CEO and managing director Geoffrey Sayer will remain as CEO, Medtech says.
20.02 Spark and Microsoft have announced what they claim is New Zealand’s largest Microsoft public cloud partnership, with Spark moving an undisclosed proportion of workloads to Azure and rolling out Microsoft 365 Copilot to a further 1,800 users. The deal also includes an enablement program to support adoption of Microsoft’s services and an NZ-first commitment in advanced data residency for Spark’s M365 tenant, providing access to onshore capacity, Microsoft says.
19.02 Microsoft has unveiled a quantum computing chip, which it says could bring quantum computing within years. Microsoft says the Majorana 1 chip, developed after 17 years research, features a ‘breakthrough’ material, the topoconductor, a category of material that can create an entirely new state of matter which isn’t solid, liquid or gas, The Guardian reports. Microsoft says Majorana 1 could potentially fit a million qubits onto a single chip not much bigger than a desktop CPU.The claims have, however, been questioned by some physicists, according to the WSJ.
17.02 Google’s AI has been breaching New Zealand court name suppression orders revealing the names of individuals, including former Act Party president Tim Jago before his suppression lapsed. Requests from RNZ to Google to explain how its AI is able to name those with name suppression, and whether it could also access victim names, have had no response, RNZ says.
17.02 Netsafe and NZ Tech have been accused of ‘lawyering up’ after the Human Rights Commission criticised them for failing to protect Jacinda Ardern from online abuse. RNZ reports the HRC was also critical of New Zealand’s online safety code, launched by Netsafe and NZTech and administered by NZTech, saying it wasn’t fit for purpose. NZTech and Netsafe say the commission’s findings have been arrived at unlawfully, and are tainted by bias and predetermination.
15.02 OpenAI’s board has unanimously rejected a US$97 billion takeover bid by Elon Musk, saying the company is not for sale and dubbing Musk’s bid his ‘latest attempt to disrupt his competition’. AP notes Musk, an early OpenAI investor, sued for breach of contract a year ago over what he called a betrayal of OpenAi’s founding aims as a non-profit. The company is increasingly seeking to capitalise on the commercial success of generative AI, but first needs to buy out the non-profits assets. Musk was attempting to buy the non-profit.
15.02 The University of Waikato has admitted it is using facial recognition on students at a Hangzhou, China campus. RNZ reports the university says the technology is being used for ‘facility access’, with no plans for the tech to be introduced in New Zealand.
11.02 The US and UK have both refused to sign a declaration on ‘inclusive and sustainable’ AI at a Paris summit. Sixty other signatories, including Australia and New Zealand, France, China and Canada, signed the document which calls for priorities to ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy and sustainable. The Guardian says the UK says the statement has not gone far enough in addressing global governance of AI and its impact on national security, while the US has criticised ‘excessive regulation’ of technology and warned against cooperating with China.
11.02 US vice president JD Vance has criticised Europe’s ‘excessive regulation’ saying it could cripple the AI industry, Time reports.
11.02 Microsoft is adjusting its Office-Teams pricing in an effort to avoid an EU trust fine, Reuters reports. The company has offered to widen the price differential between Office with Teams and without Teams in a move which could help rivals offer their own products at competitive prices and entice users to switch to them.
10.02 MBIE’s Gill Jolly and the AI Forum have contributed towards a new 300-page International AI Safety Report. The report looks at risks and safety of general-purpose AI risks including large-scale labour market impacts, scams, non-consensual imagery, bias, hacking and loss of control over AI. The report notes a need for policymakers and governments to have access to the current scientific understanding on risks and calls for global collaboration to take advantage of opportunities.
10.02 The PSA has slammed Te Whatu Ora’s plans to cut almost half its data and digital positions, calling the plan ‘astonishing, shocking and unacceptable’. RNZ reports the ‘reset’ will cut or pause more than 100 projects, and cut more than 1000 jobs. The agency needs to save $99m.
08.02 Commerce and consumer affairs minister, Andrew Bayly, says we should ‘embrace’ cryptocurrency and the ‘real opportunities’ it presents. He told the Financial Service Council Outlook 2025 there was real commercial opportunity in New Zealand being a trading platform. Bayly also referred to blockchain as a ‘fantastic’ technology for anti-money laundering and noted US president Donald Trump was pushing crypto, something he said was ‘fascinating’.
08.02 Meta is cutting five percent of its workforce – or potentially around 4,000 jobs – on Monday as part of its performance-based job cuts. Workers in more than a dozen countries outside the US will be notified via work and personal emails and will lose access to systems within an hour of being informed, Business Insider says.
06.02 Workday is laying off 1,750 employees, or around 8.5 percent of its global workforce, saying it is realigning resources in light of increasing demand for AI and its potential to drive growth for Workday, FastCompany reports.
05.02 The National Cyber Security Centre has issued guidance for edge device security after observing an increase in targeted attacks on the devices. It has released four documents, covering mitigation strategies for edge devices for both executives and practitioners, security consideration for edge devices and guidance on digital forensics and protective monitoring specifications for producers of network devices and appliances. “Failing to secure these network perimeters is equivalent to leaving doors open,” NCSC says.
05.02 Health minister Simeon Brown has said he expects to see ‘substantial progress’ in the use of telehealth. He told eHealthNews digital services and telehealth are key enablers for achieving better health outcomes for Kiwis and he expects to see improvements in the use of technology such as telehealth in the sector, and expanded use of video calls by Healthline.
05.02 Kiwi fintech Hnry is launching in the UK, five years after it hit the Australian market. the company was founded in 2017 and says its combined Australasian market has grown by 58 percent over the last two years, thanks in part to a $35m series B raise in 2023. It’s now targeting the UK’s four million sole traders.
05.02 The government is considering a new tertiary institution model, combining universities and apprenticeship-style training, RNZ reports. The ‘combined university vocational entity’ model is outlined in a cabinet paper which also shows funding for bodies overseeing industry qualifications and standards will be halted for the last six months of the year so funding targets can be met.
04.02 Salesforce is cutting 1,000 jobs – while continuing a hiring push for AI-focused sales roles. Bloomberg says it is unclear which divisions will be impacted, and staff will be able to apply for other jobs within Salesforce. The company had nearly 73,000 staff a year ago.
04.02 Mastercard plans to phase out credit card numbers by 2030, replacing them with tokenisation and biometric authentication.
04.02 Twenty-eight percent of SMBs are planning on putting most of their budget for growing their business towards tech and digital transformation this year, according to an MYOB survey of 500+ SMBs. The survey shows 30 percent Kiwi SMBs are entering 2025 with more work lined up than usual, while 41 percent say they have the same level of work or sales in the pipeline as usual, with 24 percent planning to increase spending to improve business operations this year. Spend on marketing and sales tops the list at 33 percent.
04.02 New Zealand faces an increasing struggle to keep the increasingly powerful ‘digital oligarchy’ in check, according to an Auckland University academic. Professor Alexandra Andhov, chair in law and technology, says the digital age has fundamentally changed national sovereignty with big tech takin gon functions traditionally reserved for government institutions, including becoming arbiters of speech. She warns of an ‘urgent need’ to reconcile the global influence of tech companies with local democratic processes and to create mechanisms which safeguard individual and national sovereignty.
03.02 Being AI’s shares have been suspended until further notice by the NZX regulatory agency NZ RegCo following the resignation of two of its independent directors, Brett O’Riley and Andy Higgs, took effect last week. NZX rules require a minimum of at least two independent directors, RegCo says.
AppWrap January 2025
31.01 The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block HPE’s proposed US$14b acquisition of Juniper Networks, citing antitrust concerns. HPE and Juniper both say they will ‘vigorously defend’ the deal in court.
30.01 Icehouse Ventures has closed out its second growth fund with a record $122m to invest in 20 late-stage start-up tech companies. Growth Fund I backed 32 companies including Hnry, Halter and Crimson Education, StartupDaily reports.
28.01 US President Trump has claimed Microsoft is in discussions to buy TikTok’s US operations. Trump made the claim to reporters aboard Air Force One. He signed an executive order extending the deadline for ByteDance to divest from TikTok a day after a law banning it came into effect. The outcome of the proposed deal is expected to be revealed in the coming days, Newsweek says.
27.01 New Zealand has eased its visa requirements in an effort to attract ‘digital nomads’. The new rules enable tourists to work remotely for their home countries for up to 90 days after which they need to declare themselves as a New Zealand tax resident. 1News reports the government is targeting the initiative particularly at highly skilled IT workers from the US and East Asia aiming to boost numbers of high-value tourists.
24.01 Road Ninja, a Kiwi developed subscription online marketplace for commercial drivers, is expanding into Australia, focusing on the fly-in, fly-out driving jobs in the mining sector. The company claims to have onboarded more than 500 drivers and 100 companies in its first year in New Zealand, facilitating more than $1 million in transactions, NZ Trucking reports.
23.01 Orion Health is being sold to Canada’s Healwell for $200m. The deal includes Virtuoso Digital Front Door and Amadeus Digital Care Record, used for clinical portals across New Zealand, however it does not include the Orchestral health intelligence platform and hospital patient management system which will move to a new entity, McCrae Tech, eHealthNews reports.
23.01 Consumer NZ has slammed Payments NZ, saying New Zealand has been left behind the rest of the world when it comes to modern payments infrastructure because of ‘abject failure’ on the part of the bank-owned payments governance organisation and the banking sector. New Zealand only country in the OECD not to have committed to, or implemented, a real-time payments network. Consumer says while there is widespread agreement that businesses, consumers and the economy will benefit, banks only benefit a little, ‘so they’ve chosen not to do it’.
23.01 Callaghan Innovation is being scrapped and four public research organisations are being established in a major shake up of New Zealand’s science and research sector. The four public research organisations include one focused on advanced technology. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who announced the changes, says he’s particularly excited about the advance tech institute which will be focused on commercialisation of technology like AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology. The remaining three organisations will bring together seven existing CRIs. Callaghan Innovation’s key functions will be moved to other entities.
23.01 A new agency, Invest New Zealand, is being set up to attract foreign direct investment across a range of critical sectors, including fintech, and manufacturing and innovation. Todd McClay will lead the agency as Minister of Trade and Investment, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in his State of the Nation 2025.
23.01 LinkedIn is being sued for disclosing customer information to train AI models. The class action filed on behalf of millions of premium users alleges the Microsoft-owned platform disclosed private messages to third parties without permission to train models, and then attempted to ‘cover their tracks’ by quietly introducing a privacy setting to enable or disable sharing, and updating its privacy policy, Reuters reports.
23.01 US President Donald Trump has announced a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to build a network of data centres and the infrastructure to power AI development in the US. The Guardian reports the move comes just a day after Trump reversed predecessor Joe Biden’s executive order on AI safety standards.
19.01 Shane Reti has been appointed Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, succeeding Judith Collins in the role. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says Reti, stripped of the health portfolio, will assume responsibility for New Zealand’s universities and science sector in part of a wider shift to drive economic growth in 2025.
16.01 Kiwi pricing engine specialist Flintfox has been acquired by US venture-backed rebate management company Enable for an undisclosed sum. Enable says the acquisition enables it to address the growing demand for end-to-end digitalisation of pricing and rebate processes.
14.01 Scott Technology has won $18m in new contracts with three companies. The deals include an advanced lamb primal system for JBS in Australia, a loin deboner for Silver Fern Farms in New Zealand and multiple bladestop units for Cargill’s North American meat processing operations, Scott Technology says.
06.01 Consumer NZ has laid a complaint with the Commerce Commission over Microsoft’s attempts to push consumers to more expensive Microsoft 365 services containing AI features. Consumers are facing 30-40 percent price hikes for M365 – but it’s not a price increase but rather an upsell – and one many customers can bypass, by pretending to cancel their plan, at which point they’re presented with the Microsoft 365 Classic option, at the old price (and without Copilot), Consumer NZ says. It says it believes the move is a flagrant breach of goodwill and trust and that it is unethical to automatically upgrade customers. Its complaint to ComCom alleges breach of the Fair Trading Act by tricking users to upgrade.
For 2024 news from around the web head over to the 2024 AppWrap archive.
