New Zealand
New Zealand is on track for a record year: about 192 AI-named companies in 2026 (72 already formed by 2026-05-29, up -2% on 2025). By 2025, roughly 1 in 313 brand-new companies was AI-named (0.32% of all formations).
🇳🇿 New Zealand: monthly AI-named company formations
New AI-named companies per month of incorporation in New Zealand, with major AI model releases marked. The post-ChatGPT acceleration from 2023 is the shared fingerprint. (Data through May 2026.)
🇳🇿 New Zealand: AI-named company formations by year (2026 projected)
New AI-named companies per year of incorporation. The 2026 bar is solid for companies already formed and lighter for the projected remainder at the Jan-to-May 2026-vs-2025 pace. Dashed lines mark major AI model releases.
🇳🇿 New Zealand: AI as a share of all new companies
Because we hold New Zealand's full register, we can show AI-named companies as a share of all new formations, which controls for the general pace of company formation. It rose from 0.038% in 2022 to 0.32% in 2025, a 8.4x increase.
AI-named formations in New Zealand jumped 3.2x in a single year from 2022 to 2023, the clearest local fingerprint of the post-ChatGPT shift (ChatGPT launched November 2022).
Recent AI-named companies in New Zealand
- Source: the New Zealand national company register, current to 2026-05-29.
- An "AI-named company" is one whose registered name signals AI. Every candidate is classified by a language-aware model to remove false positives (for example estate agents, or words that merely contain the letters "AI").
- Where we hold the full register, AI is also shown as a share of all formations, which controls for the country's overall formation trend.
- 2026 is projected from the Jan-to-May 2026-vs-2025 pace applied to 2025; it is an estimate, not a forecast.
- Absolute counts are not comparable across countries (registers differ in what they count); the growth multiple and, where available, the share are the portable measures.