The Business of Tech

This week on The Business of Tech, I talk to Neara co‑founder Jack Curtis about how a “physics-based digital twin” of electricity grids is changing the way we plan, build and protect electricity infrastructure – from Taranaki to Texas.
Neara has just raised A$90 million in a Series D round led by US investment firm Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), which also invested in Netflix, Spotify, Facebook and Xero. That takes total funding in Neara to about A$180 million, as some of the world’s most exposed utilities rush to digitise their networks in the face of extreme weather and the clean‑energy transition.
Neara’s origin story isn’t very corporate. Software engineer and Neara co-founder, Daniel Danilatos, hacked together a better power line design tool over a weekend for his wife, a line designer frustrated with clunky legacy software. The prototype spread “organically” in an industry notorious for moving slowly.
Within a few years, it had become the basis for a company now modelling around 90% of Australia’s electricity networks and working with most major utilities in Texas and California, and with a roster of New Zealand clients.
Predicting when things break
Most “digital twins” in utilities have been glorified 3D maps – pretty visualisations that don’t give asset owners enough confidence to make high‑stakes decisions. Neara instead builds behavioural models where every pole, line and substation is infused with real‑world physics: how it bends in a storm, heats up as load rises, or fails when gusts hit a certain speed.
As Jack puts it, if you look at the pole outside your house in a gale, it should behave exactly the same way in Neara’s model – right up to the moment it snaps.
We also look at how physics‑based models help solve “good problems” like renewables congestion. Neara simulates how much extra power can safely be pushed through existing lines, where new wind or solar should connect, and how different mixes of generation and load will behave over 10–30 years.
That’s crucial for countries like New Zealand, which sprinted to 80–90% renewable electricity without fully modelling system‑wide side‑effects such as dry‑year risk and fossil‑fuel fallback.
I found this chat fascinating and I’m sure you will too if you are interested in how evidence-based digital twins can transform industries.
Streaming on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees.​
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A half-tonne metal “donut” silently floating in a vacuum chamber in Wellington might sound like science fiction. But as you’ll hear in the latest episode of The Business of Tech, it’s very real – and it could reshape New Zealand’s role in the global race for nuclear fusion.
This week, I sit down with BusinessDesk journalist Greg Hurrell to unpack OpenStar’s dramatic new milestone: levitating a superconducting dipole in a near-perfect vacuum and firing superheated plasma around it.
It’s a key proof point for the Wellington startup’s radically different approach to fusion, one that flips the dominant tokamak design inside out. Instead of surrounding the plasma with giant magnets, OpenStar suspends a powerful magnet in the centre of the chamber and uses Earth-like magnetic fields to confine the plasma.
​Big ambitions, big interest
Greg and I were in the room at Open Star last week as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones, Infrastructure minister Chris Bishop, investors, scientists and even a representative from the United Arab Emirates watched the demonstration.
For a company that has only raised a modest $10 million Series A round, hitting this milestone matters. it shows OpenStar can deliver on ambitious engineering promises, exactly what global venture capital wants to see. The government has granted OpenStar a $35 million loan via the Rural Infrastructure Fund to build a bigger prototype – Tahi.
Shane Jones, Chris Bishop, and Christopher Luxon listen to OpenStar CEO and co-founder Ratu Mataira explain the plasma firing experiment.
Inside-out design
We dig into why this “inside-out” design could be simpler to build and maintain than giant international projects, how New Zealand-grown intellectual property in high‑temperature superconductors and flux pumps gives OpenStar a potential edge, and what comes next with its larger Tahi and Maui machines aimed at real fusion and, eventually, commercial-scale power.
We also tackle the hard questions: tritium supply, neutron damage to reactor components, and whether a relatively small team in Wellington can compete with well-funded overseas rivals and decades of tokamak momentum.
If you are interested in energy, climate, deeptech or New Zealand’s science system, this episode goes deep on a genuine moonshot as it crosses from lab experiment into serious industrial ambition.
Streaming on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees.
Show notes
OpenStar Plasma Showcase Event - Youtube
OpenStar completes critical step on nuclear fusion path - BusinessDesk
Openstar says $35m Government loan will help it stay in NZ - BusinessDesk
New Zealand fusion startup claims major advance in New Zealand trial - Bloomberg
Nuclear fusion seems hot right now — but how close is fusion power? - CBC
Chinese nuclear fusion reactor pushes plasma past crucial limit: what happens next - Nature
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OpenClaw is the moment AI stops feeling like a clever chatbot and starts behaving like something closer to a digital co-worker. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, you’ll hear exactly why.
Veteran software developer and AI entrepreneurMike Hall joins me to break down what OpenClaw actually is in plain language. It’s not another prompt-and-response assistant, but a particularly smart type of AI agent that can wake itself up on a schedule, scan your data and tools, and decide for itself whether there’s work to be done. If it needs to write code to perform a task for you, it will do that too.
Mike explains how that simple “heartbeat” loop, asking “Should I do something?” every minute, is the key shift that turns AI from reactive to proactive, and why that’s such a big deal compared with the chatbots most people have used so far.
Skills and the hive mind
We dig into how OpenClaw goes far beyond the current crop of AI agents baked into office suites and CRM platforms. OpenClaw is designed to live on your own infrastructure, plug into email, files and SaaS tools, and then act autonomously rather than waiting to be told what to do.
OpenClaw has sparked a surge of interest from developers, an explosion of “skills” that any OpenClaw instance can download. The hive mind model central to OpenClaw is unlike anything we’ve seen in commercial agent products. That’s probably why OpenAI has snapped up OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger and will put him to work developing the next generation of AI agents for the creator of ChatGPT.
Sandboxes essential
We also cover the risks OpenClaw raises. Running OpenClaw on your personal machine can expose your entire digital life, which is why sandboxes and strict permissioning are essential. What happens when you let agents install community-built skills that might contain malware?
Then there’s Moltbook, the social platform where OpenClaw-powered agents post and argue with each other, and what that experiment tells us about a near future flooded with AI personas.
If you’ve heard the noise about OpenClaw and “agentic AI” but still aren’t clear on what’s genuinely new here – and why it matters for your business, your data and your job – this conversation will get you there.
Streaming on iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast platform. Thanks to our sponsor, 2degrees.
Show notes
Mike Hall, CEO Ab0t.com
OpenClaw: The AI Assistant That Actually Does Things - Turing College
OpenClaw, OpenAI and the future - Peter Steinberger
Meta and Other Tech Companies Ban OpenClaw Over Cybersecurity Concerns - Wired
OpenAI hires OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger - FT
What OpenAI’s OpenClaw hire says about the future of AI agents - Fortune
Is OpenClaw Closed? - Hackster
OpenClaw threats: assessing the risks, and how to handle shadow AI - Kapersky
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New Zealand loves to boast about its clean, green energy story. With around 80 to 90% of grid electricity coming from renewable sources like hydro, wind and geothermal, we look like one of the world’s quiet success cases on decarbonisation.
But beneath that headline number lies a much more precarious reality. When lake levels fall and gas supplies tighten, our energy system starts to look very exposed.​
In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, I sit down with Melissa Reynolds‑Clarke and Daniel Gnoth from Ara Ake, the national centre for energy innovation, to explore how we can lean on innovation to navigate this emerging energy crunch.
The conversation ranges from process heat in dairy factories and meat plants that still run on coal and gas, to the growing risk that international customers will turn away from products that are not backed by genuinely low‑emissions energy.​
Ara Ake sits in the “valley of death” for new technology – that tough space between promising lab results and commercial deployment. Daniel explains how the organisation supports everything from fusion “moonshots” and hydrogen‑electric aircraft trials, to more grounded projects like battery storage at Wellington’s CentrePort, rural microgrids, and ultra‑cheap hot water control that effectively turns our cylinders into a giant, flexible battery. Melissa, drawing on decades in the rural sector and on energy company boards, highlights the brutal realities facing farmers and manufacturers who need affordable, reliable energy today, even as they’re pushed to decarbonise for tomorrow’s markets.​
We dig into some of the most promising levers for fast impact – smarter use of flexibility on the grid, re‑using old oil and gas wells in Taranaki for deep geothermal heat, and new business models that make technologies like biodigesters and community batteries actually stack up in a country of small, dispersed farms and towns. We also talk frankly about the capital gap that still exists between startup and scale‑up, and why system‑wide thinking across regulation, networks, and markets, matters just as much as shiny new tech.​
If you want to understand what New Zealand’s energy transition really looks like on the ground, and where innovation can genuinely move the dial, this episode is for you. Streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Show notes
Who builds NZ’s LNG terminal? The two names being floated - BusinessDesk
New liquefied natural gas terminal: 'Vital' or 'bonkers'? - RNZ
Why the new LNG terminal could raise, not lower, your power bill - Newsroom
Ryan Bridge: The Taranaki LNG terminal is a good idea, depending on who you ask - NewstalkZB
Second interim boss appointed at Ara Ake as work continues to find next CEO - The Post
Energy research centre Ara Ake secures $70 million in funding to support innovation - Stuff
Ara Ake Impact Report 2025 - Ara Ake

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In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, we look at the rise and fall of MethaneSAT, the $30 million national space project that was supposed to cement New Zealand as a serious spacefaring nation.
Instead, it became a case study in governance failure, misaligned incentives and lost opportunity.
Launched in March 2024 and lost in June 2025 after persistent spacecraft glitches, MethaneSAT’s methane-sniffing science payload worked but the rest of the system carrying it in space failed.
Working in space is risky, and satellites do fail. But as this week’s guest on The Business of Tech, University of Auckland physics professor Richard Easther points out, New Zealand’s involvement in the international MethaneSAT project raised questions from the start.
“What happened… is that we found this opportunity and then we found reasons to do the opportunity,” he told me.
“If someone had come to us in 2018 and said, here’s $30 million, I want you to develop things that will lead to startups, things that will provide the workforce… we could have come up with a plan and it would have been much, much better than MethaneSAT.”
Picking winners: "A terrible job"
Easther is careful not to scapegoat individual scientists or engineers. His critique is aimed squarely at how New Zealand chooses its science priorities and partners.
“We do a terrible job of choosing science priorities in New Zealand,” Easther said.
“And the people who pushed MethaneSAT were not scientists and do not have visible track records of testing proposals for excellence and competence.”
From governance issues to the gap between what officials were told privately and what the public heard, Easther argues MethaneSAT exposed deep problems in how we govern high‑risk, high‑cost science.
But this isn’t just a post‑mortem of a failed satellite. Easther draws a direct line from MethaneSAT to today’s multi‑million‑dollar bets on AI and quantum, warning that without transparent, contestable processes – of the kind used in US “decadal reviews” – New Zealand risks repeating the same mistakes at even larger scale.
The Government yesterday announced another significant science investment, committing $35 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund to help start-up OpenStar Technologies develop a new, specialised facility for its new fusion machine.
Easther says major science investments shouldn’t come at the cost of long‑term, curiosity‑driven funding, pointing to world‑leading local strengths in high‑temperature superconductors and quantum devices that were quietly underwritten by the Marsden Fund decades ago.
Tune in to The Business of Tech to hear Professor Richard Easther on what MethaneSAT got wrong, and what we should learn from it. Streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to our sponsor 2degrees.
Show notes
An eye in the sky to detect methane emissions - RNZ
Taxpayer-funded climate satellite MethaneSAT finally reveals what's behind delays - RNZ
Taxpayer-funded satellite had 'deep-seated problems' from launch - RNZ
MethaneSAT Report: Advancing space capability and climate science - MBIE
Government pulls back from full membership of Square Kilometre Array - RNZNew Zealand pulls out of the Square Kilometre Array after benefits questioned - Physics Today

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