Griffin on Tech: 2025 - When tech billionaires rule and AI reigns?
As we prepare to bid farewell to 2024, I find myself peering into 2025 with a mix of 30% hope and 70% trepidation.
Many Kiwis face a stressful holiday period as they anticipate more restructuring in their workplace in the new year. Some businesses will struggle to survive the holiday season after battling through challenging times in 2024.
Yes, inflation has been curtailed and interest rates are coming down. But it will take more than that to address the fundamental and increasingly apparent problems with our economy. What we need to see in 2025 is some sense that there’s a vision for the future. A plan for a more prosperous country, a vision that we can all buy into.
As a so-called “small advanced nation”, technology and innovation should underpin that vision. I can’t say I’ve seen any semblance of a coherent plan taking shape yet for how to do that and use weightless tech exports to help the Government in its plan to double exports in ten years.
Science, innovation, and technology minister Judith Collins will argue that she’s laying the foundations for that future in the recent changes to the Marsden Fund, where 50% of funded fundamental research proposals will now need to target economic outcomes.
We can expect more of the same when the long-overdue announcement about the re-organisation of the science sector is delivered early in the new year, and the looming biotech reforms that will encourage more innovation in genetic technologies. Collins has certainly listened to the tech sector’s advice that the country needs to focus more on transformative technologies like AI, quantum computing, space science and gene editing.
Look to the start-ups
But there’s a real risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, eroding a fundamental research base that has served New Zealand well in a bid for short-term wins. The elephant in the room remains the same - we don’t spend enough on research and development overall and will always be at a competitive disadvantage until we do so. We know we are overly reliant on primary sector exports to China but big dairy inertia keeps us locked into the same business model.
In my view, hope lies in our incredibly innovative startup sector, which just gets on with it, maintaining a laser-focus on going global from day one. It paid off this year for education tech company Kami, which was majority acquired by a US private equity company in a deal valuing it at over $300 million.
Tradify, which appifies the admin of being a tradesman had a $100 million+ exit in the UK. Rocket Lab, approaching its 20th anniversary next year, finally saw its share price pick up, surging 309% this year, giving it a Nasdaq market cap of US$11.3 billion. Jamie Beatson’s Crimson Educaton raised $68 million giving the company which helps students secure spots at Ivy League universities a $1 billion valuation. We also saw Wellington’s OpenStar successfully fire plasma in its nuclear fusion reactor in Wellington for the first time, a small but important step on the way to creating clean energy. Dawn Aerospace’s Aurora aircraft last month set a global record The flight also set a global record, becoming the fastest aircraft to climb from ground level to 20km in just 118.6 seconds.
These are the innovations, stories, and commercial successes that give me hope for 2025. We’ve got plenty to offer the world and can offer higher value jobs to Kiwis and lower emissions by focusing on weightless exports in the process.
Global tech forces will wash slosh against our shores in 2025. Donald Trump's return to the White House will be accompanied by a cabinet that reads like a Who's Who of Silicon Valley billionaires. The combined net worth of this new cabinet dwarfs that of its predecessor by a staggering margin, raising valid concerns about whose interests will truly be served.
With Elon Musk this week seeing his net worth increase to US$400 billion on the back of a private share sale at SpaceX, now the most valuable private company in the world, we are really entering the era of the tech oligarchs.
The tech world's obsession with artificial intelligence reached fever pitch in 2024 and spending on the technology is expected to top US$250 billion. Venture capitalists and tech giants alike poured unprecedented sums into AI research and development, creating a gold rush mentality that left other crucial areas of innovation gasping for air.
Make AI work for us
While AI undoubtedly holds immense potential, the single-minded focus on its development has led to a dangerous imbalance in the tech ecosystem. Now there will be pressure to produce the promised productivity and efficiency gains and that will have implications for the global workforce.
We certainly need to harness the power of AI and other emerging technologies not for the benefit of the few, but for the many. Climate change looms as an existential threat, and we must leverage every tool at our disposal to mitigate its impacts. Our health sector, stretched to breaking point, cries out for innovative solutions that can ease the burden on our healthcare workers while improving patient outcomes.
Moreover, as AI continues its inexorable march into every facet of our lives, we face an urgent need to upskill our workforce. Hat tip to Microsoft for committing to train 100,000 Kiwis in the next few years in digital and AI skills as its new Azure data centre region goes live. But we can’t leave this task to vendors. The jobs of tomorrow will require a level of technological literacy that many currently lack. It's incumbent upon us – government, industry, and educational institutions alike – to ensure that no Kiwi is left behind in this digital revolution.
We will have lots of challenges as a nation in 2025, but they shouldn’t define us. Instead, how we rise to meet them, will tell us everything we need to know about our future prospects and place in the world.
I’m convinced that technology can serve as a bridge, not a barrier, to a more prosperous and equitable New Zealand.
To all IT Professionals NZ members and everyone toiling away in the tech profession, Meri Kirihimete and have a great break - I’ll see you back here on ITP Tech Blog and in Pānui from 24 January.
Check out the latest episode of The Business of Tech, where I’m joined by Ben Moore and Rebecca Stevenson from BusinessDesk, Rob O’Neill from Reseller News, Finn Hogan from Caffeine Daily, and The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive, to round up the big developments in tech in 2024, and look at what we can expect next year.
