Shaping New Zealands’s AI era.
New Zealand has a productivity challenge. Labour productivity growth has slowed significantly over recent decades, while firms face the familiar constraints of a relatively small domestic market, limited capital and distance from major global customers. AI offers an opportunity to change that by helping businesses do more with the resources they already have, scale more easily and reach customers further afield.
And this is no longer a theoretical opportunity. Weekly workplace use of AI has almost doubled, from 30% of workers in early 2025 to 57% in 2026. We estimate that AI could add NZ$36 billion in economic value to New Zealand, equivalent to a 10% increase in GVA, while growth in AI-related sectors could support 46,000 new jobs by 2035.
Here are five opportunities and priorities from AI we looked at in New Zealand:
If SMBs adopted AI at the same rate as large enterprises, they could unlock NZ$11 billion (US$6.5 billion) in additional value by 2035, equivalent to 2.5% of GDP
Among the online adults sampled in New Zealand, 40% are “light users” of AI, 31% are “intermediate users”, and 15% qualify as “AI Super Users”
AI systems could help scientists and researchers in New Zealand explore twice as many plausible hypotheses each year, increasing the chances of breakthrough discoveries.
Among workers surveyed, 25% want to better understand how AI models work, 32% want to learn more practical use cases for AI, and 30% want to improve how they prompt AI models.
More than 82% of New Zealanders surveyed say it is important for AI developers to incorporate safeguards such as pre-release testing, independent verification and greater protection for children and other vulnerable users.
The opportunity also extends well beyond the private sector. Across New Zealand’s public services, AI could free up 26 million hours of staff time each year, delivering a NZ$1.4 billion productivity gain. In healthcare, AI-supported triage and earlier detection could potentially save 600 lives a year.
AI could also address pressures felt directly by households. In agriculture, AI could lift productivity by 8% by 2035, while smarter consumer tools could save the average household around NZ$2,000 a year by helping people find cheaper deals, reduce energy waste and manage everyday spending.
New Zealand’s opportunity is therefore not simply to adopt AI, but to translate already-rapid adoption into sustained productivity growth across businesses, public services and households.