Hey everybody,

The sound of a cryopump tirelessly working under a multi-tonne steel assembly is a perfectly apt definition of romance ⚒️💕 So thanks to OpenStar Technologies for hosting WellyForge #9 last night, and MacDiarmid for sponsoring! From the amazed faces in the audience to the school trip buzz of everybody’s conversation on the bus, this one was really special for a whole host of reasons.

Thank you all for coming along and sharing your enthusiasm for Wellington’s unbeatable innovation scene! If you were there please get in touch (reply here or comment on the post) and let us know what was your favourite part.

Catalyst Cloud provides a crucial operational breakdown clarifying the legal and structural boundaries between data residency and data sovereignty, as a precursor to their election manifesto.

The debate draws a line between locally owned infrastructure versus “the hyperscalers”, who are largely seen as looking to make a quick buck in Aotearoa without feeding back considerably to the local economy. See Lance Wiggs’ take, strongly backing Guy Haddleton’s position: that we must prioritize local procurement, tech infrastructure, and regional capability to reclaim our position on the OECD wealth table.

There is also a promising lead that may back this all up: NZ-based Tacit Intelligence claims to have trained a “tiny” model that performs at the level of the big ‘uns for a fraction of the cost. I can’t wait to see some benchmarks validated, that would bring the sovereign AI message home and take care of the environmental aspect.

Bonus round: Tech NZ aims to dispel fears around building new data centres.

Rod McNaughton supports that scholarly publishing must shift toward layered “liquid content” to preserve integrity as AI systems change how research is retrieved and utilised.

A survey of tech professionals show that a manager's attitude toward working with AI is now the single strongest predictor of employee job satisfaction and burnout. This particular insight is interesting, but not far from the classic adage that people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad managers. Be good managers, everybody! And tell your managers what you need from them. Too few people do that.

There are too many “AI scientists” available to actual scientists. Nature attempts a summary and guide for which might suit you lab best. This is geared toward tooling to safely accelerate wet-lab discovery.

Love Cursor but don’t love the Elon twist? It looks like Swedish alternative Lovable is in talks to raise a cool $300M (at a $13.2B valuation) to go large. This one is more strictly a “vibe-coding” platform, but that’s also the direction that Cursor has taken in recent versions.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp is nothing if not a brilliant performance artist on stage, so grain of salt here. His recent talk summarises growing anxieties in corporate America regarding the leverage that the bigger AI labs have over both incumbents and innovators who want to use foundation models downstream to build apps. It isn’t a hypothetical concern: on the heels of the the bio-heavy Claude Science release, “Anthropic is building out a biology research team”.

There is a big vested interest here but it is an interesting proposition for innovation, a sort of generator-retailer split: one set of companies make the infrastructure (and remain the best at it), and another set make the applications and become (or remain) niche leaders.

Yes, I am biased as a film nerd, but hear this: Sir Sam Neill’s Jurassic Park character strongly influenced my decision to pursue a career in science, and so I celebrate his life and career as an influencer of the finest kind. In the recent past he also raised the profile of CAR-T immunotherapy, which is something Wellington does very well. It is only so sad that it didn’t end up giving him those extra couple of decades to see the olive grove grow 🫡

“Despite the growing hysteria over AI’s threat to white-collar jobs, there’s still scant evidence that the technology has had a large-scale impact on the labor market” writes the MIT Tech Review.

There are a couple of new funding opportunities out there:

Highlighted entries are new from last week.

Fri, Jul 17th, 4–5:30pm, AI and Society Seminars return to Vic, with Adam Jarvis presenting AI Usage in the NZ Public Sector.

Mon, Jul 20th, kick off of AI for Charities course (8 weeks) by Fundsorter.

Tue, Jul 21st, 9am, BizFest 2026 in Porirua.

Wed, Jul 22nd, 7:15–8:30am, Beehive to Business with Qiulae Wong at Wellington Chamber of Commerce.

Wed, Jul 22nd, APHANZ Annual Conference, shaping smarter rules for plants, animals, and biosecurity.

Fri, Jul 24th, 1:30–2:30pm, Growth NZ All Hands, online.

Fri, Jul 24th, 4–5:30pm, AI in Court: How will we handle AI-Derived Evidence?

Mon, Jul 27th, 12-1pm, 2026 emissions reduction monitoring report, online.

Mon, Jul 27th, 11am–12pm A brief history of the models in Animal Breeding and Genetics.

Wed, Jul 29th, 5:45–7pm, Café Scientifique: Life at the (plate) boundary, at Southern Cross.

Wed, Jul 29th, 6–7:30pm, John Lekner Royal Society Lecture: Electroporation in Cancer Therapy, and Beauty in Physics.

Wed, Jul 29th, 6–8pm, NZ Tech Rally Meetup: AI assisted coding: Productivity, fatigue or tech debt.

Thu, Jul 30th, Aurora Climate Tech Summit.

Thu, Jul 30th, 12–2pm, Supercharge your Business Productivity with AI at Rutherford House.

Thu, Jul 30th, 5–6.30pm, Showcasing insurance-related data projects and insurtechs in Wellington.

Fri, Jul 31st, 4–5:30pm, John Daniel Trask at AI and Society.

Tue, Aug 4th, 7:30–8:30pm, Subterranean Critters: Understanding Biodiversity Aotearoa.

Wed, Aug 5th, 7-7:45pm, The changing landscape of allergic disease research and treatment by immunology legends Franca Ronchese and Maia Brewerton, online. ICS link here, Teams link is dodgy.

6–7 Aug, the AI Hackathon is back at AWS 🛠

Fri, Aug 7th, 4–5:30pm, Putting Human Rights at the Centre panel at AI and Society—ticketed, look for info later.

Tue, Aug 11th, Digital Trust Hui Taumata at Te Papa.

Tue, Aug 11th, The CEO Table gathers eight leaders under Chatham House to discuss the topic of ‘Governing for the Future: Rethinking the purpose of boards inside growing New Zealand businesses’.

Wed, Aug 12th, Shadow Tech offers girls in years 9-11 an opportunity to discover the world of tech, spark their curiosity and explore career pathways.

Fri, Aug 14th, 2—4pm, GTM Engineering: automate, scale, win by KiwiSaaS.

Aug 24–25, GEN NZ Unconference and Workshops at Rutherford House. I’ll post more about this soon 🙂

Fri, Sep 4th, 4–5:30pm, The AI-driven future of biotechnology in New Zealand at AI and Society.

Fri, Sep 11th, 4–5:30pm, All the time in the world: AI-driven computation hones lab work and frees human hands and brains for creative work at AI and Society.

8–9 Sep, Aotearoa AI Summit at Tākina.

Thu, Sep 24th, SaaSpocalypse Now at Hnry Stadium, early bird to Aotearoa’s premier SaaS gathering by hosted by KiwiSaaS.

Fri, May 7th 2027, NZ Tech Rally on a Super Early Bird launch.

The Atom at Victoria is open for any unfunded Founders (Students, Early Stage, Idea Stage) and is run by Tania Jones, with entrepreneurs in Residence, Parisa Shademan, Jack Shennan, and Alistair St Pierre and investors in residence Dave Moskovitz, Aaron Scott + Ralph Highnam. Email or join the Facebook community.