Published on the 01/04/2026 | Written by Heather Wright
The companies and creators accelerating New Zealand’s future…
This year’s Hi-Tech Awards finalists list reads like a glimpse into New Zealand’s future with a raft of companies building clever tech, tackling the problems, industries and opportunities that will define the next decade (or, in this fast-changing world, just the next half-decade).
This year’s awards received a record 300 entries, with a line-up that ranges from deep-tech ventures rewiring entire industries to nimble start-ups punching above their weight, from sustainability trailblazers to software innovators, creative technologists, manufacturers and standout individuals.
Nearly 70 companies are vying for glory across 14 categories. So who are they and what exactly do they do? Read on for the full lineup…
PwC Hi-Tech Company of the Year finalists:
Aroa Biosurgery develops advanced regenerative healing technologies designed to support complex wound and soft-tissue repair. The Auckland-headquartered and ASX-listed company, formerly called Mesynthes, was started in 2008 by a former vet, around a low-value byproduct from the meat industry, and is experiencing strong growth.
Auror provides an intelligence platform to help retailers and police reduce crime through real-time insights and connected data. The company has scaled rapidly, becoming a leading player in crime prevention technology for retail. The company has expanded into Australia, North America, the UK and Europe.
Dawn Aerospace is building a space transportation network using non-toxic refuellable satellite propulsion and rapidly reusable spaceplanes. Dawn’s propulsion systems are already operating on 42 satellites and the company’s next step is Loop, an on-orbit refuelling network. The company has 130 staff across New Zealand, the US, the Netherlands and France.
Gallagher Group is a long-established global security and animal management tech company known for innovative, high-reliability systems. Operating in 140 countries, the 85-year-old business reinvests 15 percent of all revenue in research, design and product innovation.
Halter delivers remote-control, GPS-enabled smart collars for cattle, enabling farmers to virtually fence, guide and monitor livestock – and paddock health. It has just completed a US$200m raise, which sees the company valued at US$2 billion – and you can read about that here.
Tait Communications specialises in critical open standard communications systems for industries such as emergency services, utilities and transportation. In business for more than 50 years, Tait provides rugged, high-reliability mobile radio solutions and is increasingly linking that with a range of broadband and video technologies and services. It’s also the sponsor for the Hi-Tech Award’s Flying Kiwi award, recognising an individual who has played a leading role in the success of the sector, with founder Sir Angus Tait the first recipient back in 2003.
ASX Hi-Tech Emerging Company of the Year finalists:
BioOra develops cell-based and regenerative medicine technologies, automating the manufacture of CAR T cells for personalised immunotherapy, and ‘building the future of cancer treatment’. The company has an internationally recognised GMP license to manufacture CAR T cell therapies and is preparing to bring its products to market.
Calocurb produces a natural appetite-management supplement derived from New Zealand hops, targeting healthy lifestyle and wellness markets. The company has New Zealand and US operations and has reported 300 percent growth last year.
Hectre builds orchard-intelligence software and computer vision tools that help fruit growers improve yield, quality and labour efficiency. The company and recently completed a $12m Series A raise and their Spectre AI platform is gaining strong global traction.
Starboard Maritime Intelligence provides an AI-powered maritime intelligence platform that detects, analyses and monitors vessel activity for environmental protection and security. Their technology, which uses satellite, sensor and contextual data to provide real-time visibility of activity at sea, is used by governments and critical infrastructure operators to combat illegal fishing and safeguard oceans.
Starshipit offers an automated shipping and fulfilment platform for ecommerce businesses, integrating with major couriers and storefronts. Its tools help retailers streamline operations, reduce delivery friction and scale their online logistics.
2040 Ventures Hi-Tech Startup Company of the Year finalists:
Goodair Nosebuds is an Auckland startup which has developed a breath-powered nasal device designed to clear congestion naturally. It has raised more than $1.6 million and its first launch in 2025 sold out in less than a day.
Kara Technologies builds digital signing avatars to improve accessibility for deaf communities, using motion capture and AI to deliver sign language content at scale. Their Kat AI engine, currently in public preview, rapidly converts English text into high-quality sign language animations, aiming to make critical information more inclusive across media, education and public sectors.
Sea-flux provides mobile-friendly cloud-based integrated fleet management software for commercial vessels. The maritime compliance software provides real-time vessel monitoring, crew management, preventative maintenance and data driven decision making. The company secured nearly $3 million in seed funding and has more than 1,300 vessels and nearly 9,000 users.
Datacom Hi-Tech Inspiring Individual finalists:
Ankita Dhakar is the founder and CEO of Hamilton’s Capture the Bug a cybersecurity focused company helping organisations strengthen their digital resilience with penetration testing-as a-service.
Dan Walker is senior partner development manager, global partner solutions at Microsoft.
Irina Miller is co-founder and CEO of Daisy Lab a biotech startup developing dairy-identical proteins through precision fermentation.
Tim Young is founder and CEO of Smart Access, a company which has collected data based on 40 accessibility features in the built environment. The information is then provided to councils to see what changes they need to make, providing a form of asset management for decision making and spend.
Trent Fulcher is CEO of Starboard Maritime Intelligence – finalist in the Company of the Year category.
Poutama Trust/GreenMount Capital Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau – Māori Company of the Year finalists:
Alps2Ocean Food is creating sustainable, high-protein beef snacks, notably the Mīti beef bar, made from young dairy beef. The company won a 2025 Early-Stage Innovation Award at Fieldays for Mīti.
Bio Innovations
Hectre – a second outing in these awards, with the company also a finalist in the Emerging Company of the Year finalists above.
PAM is an AI-driven personal assistant app to help families stay on top of tasks, calendars and everyday life.
Duncan Cotterill Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution
CloudHound is an advanced infrastructure discovery platform providing deep insights and best-in-class recommendations to accurately plan and maximise AWS cloud success.
PAM – another showing for the AI-driven family personal assistant, which is also a finalist in the Māori Company of the Year category.
Partly is building ‘the first foundational AI model for the auto parts industry’ with AI native applications ranging from Parts Procurement which analyses business rules, availability, pricing and more to automatically build the most efficient parts basket, to order management and estimation.
RossOps helps manufacturers unlock the knowledge living in the heads of their most experienced people and make it available to others on the team so each shift can perform their best. It’s solutions include AI-powered shift handovers and engineering trouble shooting and knowledge management and CI project tracking.
UneeQ Digital Humans develops AI-driven ‘digital humans’ for sectors including tourism, financial services, healthcare, education, and aviation. It’s newly launched Immersive Training Platform provides ‘next generation learning’ enabling organisations to create lifelike, emotionally intelligent training simulations at scale across learning domains including sales, customer service and leadership. The company has strong momentum in the Middle East with customers include Qatar Airways, the Saudi Tourism Authority and Ajman Bank and is now looking at North American expansion.
VXT connects law firms calls to their legal software, logging time, transcribing conversations and filing notes, removing admin work.
Kiwibank Most Innovative Hi-Tech Solution for a More Sustainable Future
AoFrio provides intelligent hardware and a SaaS platform for beverage and food customers. It’s cloud-based platform connects millions of refrigeration assets, providing realtime data and actionable insights on cooler location, operation, sales and sustainability. The company, which counts Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Heineken among its customers, logged revenue of $83.2 million for the financial year ending 31 December 2025.
Captivate Technology is a Massey Ventures spin-out, and has developed a recyclable sponge-like adsorbent material to selectively capture carbon dioxide from industrial emissions. The patented material can be deployed across sectors including cement, steel, natural gas, biomass combustion and biogas. It recently completed a $3 million seed round.
Helical is a SaaS based genetics operating system for genomic data management, registry operations and genetic evaluation. The company, founded in 2021, now operates in more than 40 countries powering breeding systems across beef, dairy, sheep and others.
NZAutoTraps provides automatic, self-resetting possum and rat traps, manufactured in Whakatane. More than 20,000 traps are in use and the company is looking into further automation and data collection – as well as a project to exclude the tenacious kea.
Partly – another showing for the auto parts industry player, which is a finalist in the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution category, above.
TCS is a Waikato-based micro-processor engineering company whose Milkcollect system was created in 2014 and is now installed in more than 550 milk tankers collecting 84 million litres of milk a day. Its tanker fluid management includes pumping algorithms to maximise collection speed, RFID vial tags to electronically track the load, composite and quality samples to ensure full traceability and cellular data collection to factory scheduling systems.
Braemac Most Innovative Hi-Tech Manufacture finalists:
Alimetry has developed a non-invasive gastric diagnostic tool for diagnosing and managing gastrointestinal disorders. Their products combine wearable sensors with cloud-based analytics to deliver non-invasive insights into gut function. The company recently secured FDA clearance for an AI-powered update to the wearable device.
Architectural Glass Products is a Cambridge double-glazing manufacturing business. The insulated glass units are p;roduced with minimal human contact using precise automated equipment.
Aroa Biosecurity – the company is also a finalist in the Hi-Tech Company of the Year category, above.
Astute Access provides smartphone-centric keyless locking technology for utilities and critical infrastructure complete with a cloud-based audit trail and over the air access enabling remote administrators to instantly grant and revoke user access.
Cleanery develops eco-friendly, low-waste cleaning, dish wash and hand soap products using patented formulations that enable naturally occurring plant and mineral materials to easily mix with water. The concentrated mixes are sold in sachets with customers adding the water, reducing plastic waste and transport emissions.
Fisher & Paykel Technologies designs and manufactures advanced direct drive motors, motor control systems and electronics. Their technology powers home appliances from global brands and are used in a variety of industries to help businesses customise solutions for their customers. They’ve also stepped into health and fitness with drive systems, sensors, digital twin technology, flow builder software and a user interface to help companies design customised solutions for end users.
Consult Recruitment Best Contribution to the NZ Tech Sector finalists:
GridAKL is an Auckland innovation precinct, designed to support tech startups and scale-ups through shared workspaces, community programmes and ecosystem-building initiatives. It’s role focuses on accelerating collaboration, capability and growth within the wider NZ tech sector.
Ministry of Awesome is a Christchurch-headquartered, nationwide entrepreneurship hub providing founders with programmes, mentoring and pathways to investment. They play a central role in nurturing early-stage ventures and strengthening Aotearoa’s startup pipeline.
Mission Ready delivers training and upskilling programmes that help people transition into tech careers more quickly. Their industry aligned courses support workforce development and contribute to filling critical skills gaps in the NZ tech ecosystem.
Oxygen Advisors provides specialist guidance to startups, acting as an ‘outsourced CFO and hands-on finance team’. It has raised $650m in capital and secured $240m in grant funding, backing more than 330 founders over 10 years.
NZTE Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution finalists:
BDX is a Whangarei-based company, originally providing engineering services specialising in industrial, mechanical and structural projects. It has since expanded into fabrication and maintenance services and civil contracting and mechanical services.
Bovonic develops agritech designed to support animal health monitoring and disease detection. Its QuadSense automatic mastitis detector has been installed on more than 160 farms across New Zealand and Ireland, saving farmers on average 3.7 hours a week, increasing milk quality and leading to reduced antibiotic use.
Hectre makes its third showing in these awards with the orchard intelligence provider also a finalist for Emerging Company of the Year and Māori Company of the Year.
TCS adds to another category to its lineup, alongside Most Innovative Hi-Tech Solution for a More Sustainable Future, above.
Trackit provides fleet tracking and management, including agricultural fleet management that handles seasonal scaling, off-road operations, mixed vehicle types and the unique complexity of farm logistics. It’s used in more than 150 kiwi farming operations, including with LIC’s 390 vehicle agricultural fleet and claims an average 40 percent increase in off-road RUC refund recovery.
Xero Hi-Tech Young Achiever finalists:
Jean-Luc Ellis is co-founder and CEO at WasteX which is developing AI-powered software to revolutionise waste, material, logistics and embodied carbon tracking to reduce waste, optimise costs and drive decarbonisation.
Lucy Turner is the CTO and co-founder of communication automation company VXT, a finalist in the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution category.
Nathan Konigkramer is an AIX engineer at Spectrum Consulting.
Sam Broadhead is co-founder of Sence which tries to make sense of unseen conversations to improve engagement strategy.
Fujitsu Most Innovative Deep Tech Solution finalists:
Masco Technologies provides sensory AI integration for hardware companies, offering solutions from data collection and engineering to model development and deployment. Alongside using AI to enable solutions to detect air quality issues and identify contaminants, the company has a focus on animal health and smarter, data-driven livestock care.
Starboard Maritime Intelligence – another appearance for the AI-powered maritime intelligence platform which is also an Emerging Company of the Year finalist, above.
ZealaFoam is creating plant-based technologies to enable businesses and consumers to make smarter, greener choices. Its ZealaFoam is 100 percent bio-based and designed to meet the need for sustainable alternatives to traditional materials.
NZX Most Innovative Hi-Tech Creative Technology Solution finalists:
Access Quest by Smart Access is mapping the world in an effort to make it more accessible. Users book a free access ‘cart’ then walk their usual routes and the cart tracks accessibility features and obstacles using the mobile phone. Data is then uploaded and information is provided to councils to encourage more inclusive access for all. Smart Access founder and CEO Tim Young is also a finalist in the Hi-Tech Inspiring Individual category.
Kara Technologies – the digital signing avatar company is a finalist in the Startup Company of the Year, as above.
Kitten Space Agency by Rocket Werkz is a mission to create a spaceflight game that inspires the next generation of space explorers – and yes, there are kittens. Currently in ‘pre-alpha’, players can sign up and test and share ideas on it. And did we mention that there are kittens?
Staples VR creates AR/VR training through SaaS solutions and bespoke software development across aviation, defence, health and safety, medical, first responders and entertainment. The immersive tech company closed a $5.25m funding round last year.
UneeQ Digital Humans – the AI-driven ‘digital humans’ company is also a Most Innovative Hi-Tech Software Solution finalist.
Christchurch Airport Hi-Tech Solution for the Public Good finalists:
Access Quest by Smart Access – a second outing for the project aiming to make the world more accessible using people power. It’s also a finalist in the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Creative Technology Solution category, above.
Canterbury Seismic provides advanced earthquake monitoring solutions including Sentinel Seismic Monitoring, using on-site sensors and cloud-based analytics to provide reliable insight into how a building is performing during and after an earthquake.
Evolocity is an EV programme aiming to inspire school age students into sustainable engineering. The year 7 to 13 students design, build and compete with their electric vehicles, with workshops provided to guide them in welding, CAD design and Arduino programming.
0800 Trust (Hark) is dubbed the world’s first acoustic wildlife monitor with true edge AI. Hark runs google’s Perch v2 bioacoustic model, directly on device, on solar power, to detect and classify more than 100 species in real time painting a picture of New Zealand’s forest – and the impact of predators.
oVRcome is a platform combining VR exposure therapy, using home technology, and generative AI to improve mental wellbeing. Its goal is to make treatment for anxiety disorders easy and accessible to everyone.
Wildlife.ai is a charitable organisation dedicated to accelerating wildlife conservation through AI, developing user-friendly, non-invasive and open-source technologies. Its projects so far include an AI-powered open-source smart camera trap with embedded machine learning for real time species identification and modular sensors capable of monitoring diverse taxa, and Spyfish Aotearoa, a citizen science and machine learning approach to identify fish in baited underwater videos.
Winners of the awards will be announced at a gala dinner in Auckland in May.
