The SME Stream

Businesses are continuing to weather hit after hit, as the economy bounces in and out of recovery.

GDP's now risen for three consecutive quarters - up 0.8 percent in the three months to March.

But it's on track to fall for a third consecutive June quarter due to the impact of the Iran war and the fuel crisis.

Employers and Manufacturers' Association Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald says their members are getting very used to adapting to disruptions.

Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing Cameron Brewer shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens. 

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China is racing ahead in artificial intelligence and robotics – and New Zealand risks being left on the sidelines if it doesn’t pay close attention.

In this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, I talk to two Kiwis who’ve just had a rare front‑row seat on China’s AI boom – Auckland-based ElementX co‑founder and chief technology officer Ming Cheuk, and Christchurch AI engineer and consultant Blake Harkness.

They’ve returned from an AI discovery tour organised by the AI Forum and the New Zealand China Council that took them inside some of China’s most advanced AI labs, hyperscale cloud providers, hospitals, banks, councils and robotics manufacturers. What they describe is a country where AI has moved well beyond pilots and proofs of concept and is now deeply embedded in everyday life and industrial processes.

The AI hospital

In healthcare, they visited a single hospital serving around five million patients a year, where AI chatbots handle initial triage in multiple languages, imaging tools cut the time to analyse scans by 80%, and robots in the pharmacy automatically pick and dispense prescriptions. Everything is done with the scan of a QR code. For a country like New Zealand, grappling with an ageing population and over‑stretched health services, it’s a glimpse of what fully scaled AI-enabled care could look like.

They also met with frontier large language model labs and firms building China’s own AI tech stack, often with a strong open-source ethos. Models that can be deployed on customers’ own infrastructure – even as part of sovereign AI arrangements – are central to China’s strategy, allowing overseas organisations to adopt Chinese AI without sending data back to Beijing. It’s a clever way to sidestep geopolitical mistrust while still extending technological influence.

On the robotics front, Ming and Blake toured factories producing humanoid robots and agile robotic “dogs” that are already off‑the‑shelf tools for search and rescue, asset inspection and industrial maintenance. The sheer number of robotics companies, and the pace at which they’re iterating on hardware and control systems, underscore how serious China is about becoming a global robotics powerhouse.

The tech divide

Yet geopolitics is never far from the surface. Export controls, national security concerns and shifting alliances mean much of this technology may never be directly available to Western buyers. Even so, Ming and Blake see real opportunities for New Zealand in partnering around open-source models, sovereign AI builds and targeted robotics deployments in sectors like infrastructure, manufacturing and agriculture.

If you want to understand where AI and robotics are really heading – and what that means for New Zealand’s economy, workforce and policy choices – this is an episode you won’t want to miss. 

Listen to The Business of Tech on your favourite podcast platform, or via iHeartRadio.

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Pathfinder's John Berry and Motion Capital's Ralph Chang discuss with Herald NOW Business the case for KiwiSaver venture capital.

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The PM ponders Fieldays, "friendly fire" from Winston and whether wilding pines should attract carbon credits.

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Jarden's Mike McIntyre breaks down the latest GDT result and what it means for the dairy sector. 

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More than 5000 New Zealand bank accounts have been used by scammers to transfer stolen funds over the past nine months.

These 'mule' accounts have been flagged by a new information sharing platform banks are using to detect scams: the Fraud Intelligence Exchange.

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explained further.

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US lifting Iran oil ban once interim deal is official;  SpaceX buys Cursor; Pathfinder puts KiwiSaver cash into  $27.2m Motion Capital climate-tech fund.  

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The chief economist of our largest bank says there's no reason our economy can't bounce right back if the Iran peace deal lasts. 

GDP data due to today is expected to show the economy grew between 0.7% and 1% in the March quarter. 

A contraction is possible in the June quarter. 

But ANZ's Sharon Zollner told Mike Hosking things should hopefully pick up again, straight away. 

She says interest rates are high, and the world may remain weary for a while, but commodity prices are high and the Kiwi dollar is quite soft. 

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Labour's suggested the Government's out of touch with the challenges beneficiaries face trying to lock down a job. 

Social Development Minister Louise Upston wants to slash the number of people on Jobseeker to 140 thousand by 2030.

But Labour says we're on track to miss this target by more than 60 thousand people. 

Social Development spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime is criticising the measures the Government's put in place - telling Andrew Dickens they're punitive. 

She says there are so many people looking for work, but the Government hasn't created the conditions for more work.

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Elon Musk's SpaceX company has overtaken Amazon as the fifth most valuable in the world.

It comes after a surge in its share price, driven by it joining New York's Nasdaq stock exchange, and the announcement it's buying an AI startup firm for $100 billion dollars.

Milford Asset Management expert Remy Wisenberg explained further.

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