Local businesses working together could give our national productivity a much-needed boost, says a leading AI expert.
New Zealand is lagging in effective AI adoption – but if local businesses work together to catch up, it could give national productivity a much-needed boost, says a leading AI expert.
Justin Gray, AI transformation lead at PwC, believes Aotearoa has all the right ingredients to drive economic growth with AI, but says we first need to do a better job of integrating it into our businesses.
The 2026 PwC CEO Survey* found that over 75% of Kiwi respondents weren’t using AI widely across core functions, and 78% said AI had little to no impact on their organisation.
“Here in New Zealand, we definitely have an execution gap,” says Gray.
“We’re using AI at the personal level, but we’re not getting enough impact from it. We now have broad adoption of AI, which is good because we were behind a couple of years ago.
“But while lots of leaders are now using it themselves, they’re not redesigning how work gets done. AI delivers value when organisations rethink workflows, decision-making and operating models – not simply add another tool.”
Working together can give NZ an edge
On the global stage, New Zealand isn’t in a position to be shaping the future of AI. But if we lean into our national strengths, can we close the execution gap and use AI to grow our economy?
Gray believes business leaders here should collaborate, pooling knowledge and resources to improve AI adoption.
“New Zealand is good at fast following when people are doing things well,” he says.
“Our environment of leadership and governance, and how engaged they are with each other generally, means we can share the ways we tackle adoption, and how we put in the governance and guardrails.”
The upsides of AI are global, but could be particularly helpful for an island nation with a limited population and not much investment capital to go around.
Long-standing low productivity continues to hamper New Zealand’s economic growth; if we can do more with smaller teams and less funding, we might be able to make genuine headway.
“Obviously New Zealand isn’t the only country trying to tackle the productivity angle with AI, but I think we can go faster than other countries. AI means the capital required to develop tech products is far lower than it’s ever been,” says Gray.
“Historically, Kiwi start-ups have been battling over the same small pile of capital. Now we have the opportunity to fund more ideas, and if they work well to scale them faster – and if they fail, to fail sooner, and move onto the next one.”
Building a reputation as a high-trust market
Another area where Aotearoa can distinguish itself is trust.
Our low corruption rates and high stability are internationally recognised; if we can extend our high-trust reputation to include AI governance, we can grow a reputation as a great place to invest.
“New Zealand has the ability to be agile and lead on governance, which can help us get AI pushed further into areas where it’s most useful,” says Gray.
“New Zealand is great at removing barriers to complexity. With a high-trust reputation we can see productivity increase across our economy faster than otherwise might happen.”
Effective governance and trust does drive revenue, according to PwC research.
Companies that are AI leaders are 1.7 times more likely to have a responsible AI framework than the average company, and 1.5 times as likely to have an AI governance board. These ‘AI fit’ companies have AI-driven revenues and efficiencies that are 7.2 times higher than other companies.
Customer service and software today, robotics tomorrow
The immediate opportunities for deeper AI implementation are in customer service and software, says Gray. Agentic conversational AI can provide excellent customer service in any language, while AI’s coding ability means it can also create, deploy and manage software.
“One of the biggest opportunities for ROI [return on investment] is in the software lifecycle,” Gray says.
“We’ve seen big organisations in New Zealand are already using it to maintain, renovate, and build new platforms. The next big thing on the horizon is physical AI – useful, physical robots.”
Keeping up with the technology will be one ongoing challenge – budgeting for it could present some additional tests for business leaders.
While human labour costs are fairly predictable, rising by around 3% a year, digital labour is paid for in AI tokens.
“If you are presenting a business case that is based on AI digital labour and tokens, you’re going to need to reprice it every three months,” explains Gray.
“Managing volatility will be an increasing cost; how will you manage the token supply chain and delegate use of tokens? And what about hedging against future price changes? Business leaders need to start thinking about this.”
Despite the challenges ahead, and some anti-AI sentiment, Gray says New Zealand should use AI to its advantage rather than ignoring it.
“We can’t sit here and stop the wave from coming – it’s inevitable. But we can focus on how we navigate it, look after our own interests, and use it to lift up everyone in New Zealand.”