new-zealand-startup
(5)
Thematic
One trusted view of your customer, built from the bottom up across every channel - from raw feedback to confident action.
AskNicely
The Portland-via-New Zealand software company turning everyday customer feedback into marching orders for frontline teams - and betting AI agents can make service businesses grow by simply being nicer.
Soul Machines
Soul Machines was a New Zealand-founded, San Francisco-headquartered deep-tech company that built lifelike, animated 'Digital People' - AI-driven avatars powered by a patented Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation technology modeled on human neuroscience. Spun out of the University of Auckland by Academy Award-winning technologist Dr. Mark Sagar and serial entrepreneur Greg Cross in 2016, it raised roughly US$135 million to bring emotionally responsive virtual humans to brands like Nestlé, P&G and the World Health Organization. After both founders departed and major customers moved on, the company was placed into receivership in February 2026.
Aaron Patzer
Aaron Patzer is the founder and CEO of Vital, an AI-driven software company that helps hospitals cut emergency-room wait times, flag high-risk patients, and translate medical jargon into plain English. He first made his name building Mint.com, the free personal-finance app he started in 2006 and sold to Intuit for $170 million just two-plus years later. An engineer with degrees from Duke and Princeton, Patzer has spent his career turning intimidating, regulation-heavy industries into experiences ordinary people can actually understand - first money, now medicine.
Crimson Education
Crimson Education is a New Zealand-founded edtech company that helps ambitious students win places at the world's most selective universities - the Ivy League, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford and beyond. Through a mix of data, AI tools and a global network of roughly 3,000 tutors and former admissions officers, it offers admissions consulting, tutoring, extracurricular mentoring and its own accredited online high school, Crimson Global Academy. Founded in 2013, it became Australasia's first edtech unicorn in November 2024 at a NZ$1 billion valuation.