The Ultimate Guide to AI Agents
A curated Kiwi edition of TechDay news, analysis, interviews, reviews, job moves, and related resources for AI Agents (Agentic AI).
What to know about AI Agents
AI agents represent a transformative area within artificial intelligence, focusing on autonomous or semi-autonomous systems capable of performing complex tasks and making decisions to enhance business operations and personal productivity.
Our recent stories highlight how AI agents are rapidly evolving across sectors—from cybersecurity and data management to customer experience and enterprise automation. Companies are integrating AI agents to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and manage security risks in increasingly sophisticated ways.
By exploring these developments, readers can gain insights into the potential benefits, emerging applications, and challenges associated with AI agent deployment. Whether you're interested in how AI agents enhance software development, automate workflows, or secure enterprise environments, this tag offers a comprehensive look at this dynamic and impactful technology.
Kiwi AI Agents News
Regional stories with direct local relevance
Assurity Consulting puts quality at core of AI push
Reliable AI adoption is becoming a competitive issue, with the consultancy warning firms that quality checks must be built in from the start.
New Zealand firms race ahead with AI despite data gaps
Despite weak data foundations, 65 per cent of local organisations are already running AI projects, while many cannot measure success effectively.
AI boosts value of experienced developers, says Lancom CTO
AI has made prototypes cheap, but production failures remain costly, putting a premium on experienced developers who can spot hidden risks.
NZ firms need better systems before scaling AI, Reframr
Only 2% of New Zealand organisations see themselves as AI teamwork leaders, as most spending still favours technology over people.
Halter's Clank AI cuts engineering time in farm tech
Farming customers could see faster fixes as the system now handles alert triage and code changes, saving more than 215 engineering hours.
New Zealand firms split on AI as strategy gap widens
Only 15% of New Zealand businesses have an AI strategy, leaving most unable to measure returns or prepare for the next wave of tools.
Analyst Insights
Research and market analysis connected to AI Agents
Zendesk launches outcome AI platform with new pricing
Annexa: NetSuite Next is a flick of a switch. Rewiring the CFO takes longer
Four Steps CISOs Can Take To Secure AI-driven Software Development
Boomi named Gartner Visionary for AI agent platform
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Denodo named Gartner leader for seventh year in row
Featured News
Zendesk moves beyond ticket closures with outcome-based AI
The new platform charges only when AI resolves an issue, pushing support teams to measure success by customer outcomes rather than ticket counts.
Smartsheet tackles execution drift in the age of AI agents
As AI agents speed up operations, firms are struggling to spot when day-to-day work drifts away from strategy and targets.
Palo Alto Networks: Frontier AI brings more attacks, faster
Frontier AI isn't inventing new attacks, says Palo Alto Networks' Wendi Whitmore, but it is making old ones far faster and more frequent.
Oracle Fusion AI: Autonomy is earned, one outcome at a time
Oracle's Kaushal Kurapati says the pace of AI development is surpising even to those driving it.
Sectigo targets ANZ growth as certificate lifespans shrink
Shorter certificate lifespans are pushing Australian and New Zealand firms to automate renewals, or face higher security and outage risks.
Oracle NetSuite: Trust AI the way you'd trust a new hire
Oracle NetSuite's Brian Chess says trust is earned and built over time and through experience. That doesn't change when agentic AI is involved.
Twilio evolves from APIs to conversational trust
As AI agents proliferate, Twilio is focusing on trusted, governed communications infrastructure rather than the apps that sit on top of it.
Oracle's racers: AI removes the grind, increases focus
Oracle Red Bull Racing and SailGP provide insights into AI's relentless incursion into the world of human performance.
Scaling AI means reinventing how work gets done
The shift could reshape hiring, audits and pay as firms move from AI pilots to automated workflows that rely on new guardrails.
Workday is a Fortune 500 startup reborn for the AI era
Its AI-first overhaul has cut layers, sped product cycles and left the company betting that startup-style speed can still serve Fortune 500 customers.
UST: Businesses must rethink how AI returns are measured
Australian firms risk spending increasing resources on AI pilots that ultimately fail to prove gains in revenue, efficiency or customer service.
Celonis banking head: Banks want proof before scaling agents
Celonis argues frontier AI models are too generic for regulated banking, urging firms to weigh cost, risk and process gains before scaling deployments.
Interview: Cloudera says AI agents reshape zero trust
Enterprises must update identity controls as software agents generate more requests and need tightly time-limited access to sensitive systems.
Zscaler takes zero trust beyond the corporate network
Critical infrastructure operators are using cellular links to secure distributed assets as outages and spoofing raise the stakes for resilience.
Workiva: The secret compliance and reporting arms race
Driven by improved tooling, finance teams are meeting higher standards as regulators and analysts scrutinise disclosures faster.
Filigran: Does your CISO know enough?
CISOs are under pressure to answer boardroom questions on exposure in minutes, as Filigran pushes CTEM and open-source validation tools.
Exclusive: ABBYY says AI build costs will drive buying
Enterprises could cut AI spend by up to 80% by shifting document workflows away from custom builds and into standard platforms.
Exclusive: ABBYY brings zero-shot document AI to Vantage
Enterprises can now extract data from unseen document types without templates, as ABBYY rolls out zero-shot capabilities in Vantage.
Interview: Cloudera bets on hybrid AI growth in JAPAC
Banks and large enterprises in Asia-Pacific are rethinking cloud-first AI plans as costs, sovereignty and regulation favour hybrid deployments.
AI transforms CX to go beyond the chatbot
Consumers now expect faster, more automated support as AI agents handle complex customer journeys, though many firms still struggle to prove ROI.
Open source is powering the next generation of frontier AI
Rising inference demand and custom hardware needs are pushing AI infrastructure beyond standard cloud setups, boosting open source tools.
Governance controls are crucial for AI adoption and modernisation
Trusted partners and tighter guardrails are becoming essential as AI agents expand the attack surface and put data sovereignty on the line.
Exclusive: Cloudera builds Hadoop-free future platform
Existing customers get six years of support as Cloudera shifts new AI and analytics workloads to a Hadoop-free platform due in November.
Mimecast CEO: Agentic AI threat novel but not entirely new
Hidden AI risks are already widespread in workplaces, with Mimecast saying users are driving shadow tools and most exposure still starts with people.
Rimini Street offers AI magic without the forced ERP migration
CIOs can keep existing ERP systems and still adopt agentic AI, as Rimini Street pitches a cheaper path away from vendor-led migrations.
Customers at the centre of Adobe's new AI evangelist role
Adobe is using the post to help customers navigate AI adoption while feeding regional priorities back into its global product strategy.
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Apple's Unified Memory powers Kiraa AI's rapid automation
Australian firms can speed month-end processing from days to an hour by running Kiraa AI on Macs instead of costly cloud servers.
Jamf launches AI Governance to enhance visibility, security
IT teams can now track AI models on Apple fleets to curb data leaks and token spend as businesses wrestle with shadow AI.
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AI models expose new attack surfaces through misconfiguration
Misconfigured models are giving attackers a fresh route into cloud systems, raising the risk of data theft and service compromise.
Zendesk's outcome-based pricing balances AI with human touch
Businesses will pay only for closed support cases under Zendesk's new model, as the software group ties AI automation to human fallback.
AI will fade, says Dell Technologies' ephemeral Chief AI Officer
Dell says agentic AI should shift routine tasks below the machine line, freeing staff for expert work while making the role temporary.
Schrodinger's ERP both dead and alive, says Rimini Street
Businesses can avoid costly ERP rip-and-replace projects by layering AI and automation onto existing systems, Rimini Street says.
ClickHouse customer base soars on back of AI demand
AI agents are driving a sharp rise in demand for the real-time data platform, which added 1000 customers early in 2026 to top 4000.
Reviews
Expert Columns
Six questions to ask your MDR provider
Enterprises Do Not Have a Problem with Access to Technology, but with Choice
We ran an all-employee AI Month and now everyone in our company is ready to build
Securing the AI Systems of Tomorrow
2027 Predictions: The race to AI readiness exposes true cost of effective enterprise data management
Predictions 2027: Why the future of work is 'AI and human' adjacent
AI agents will multiply your inference bill. Is your enterprise ready?
Security Learnings from the Open Source Front Line
How Local Agentic AI Is Coming to Business PCs
Nexxen's 2027 APAC Predictions: Four Shifts Set to Reshape TV and Digital Advertising
Interviews
Interviews and video coverage from the networkRecent AI Agents News
Daylight raises USD $80 million to scale AI security
Rising demand from large enterprises has helped the New York-based cyber security group attract fresh capital to expand across the US, EMEA and APAC.
Industrial AI shifts from demos to tightly controlled use
Industrial users are adopting AI only in tightly bounded roles, as safety, power and integration constraints keep deployments under close human control.
AMD launches 6th Gen EPYC chips for AI data centres
The new chips are already shipping from major hardware vendors as AMD targets heavier AI and cloud workloads in the data centre.
New Relic launches Kubernetes agent in public preview
Operations teams facing Kubernetes outages may now get AI-generated fix code, as New Relic opens its incident-response agent to public preview.
Adobe widens AI agents across creative & marketing tools
Adobe is trying to keep its software central as generative AI spreads, by letting customers use its tools alongside outside models and agents.
Linux Foundation launches Agent Name Service for AI
The open standard aims to let organisations verify AI agents before they are trusted to act across networks, systems and services.
Illumio joins WWT's AI resilience framework for containment
The move places Illumio in a vendor-neutral model that helps organisations judge how to contain breaches in increasingly connected AI systems.
Nvidia donates OpenShell to CNCF as it backs agent scale
The move puts autonomous AI agents and GPU clusters under open source scrutiny as NVIDIA seeks to shape the Kubernetes stack around them.
Capture The Bug wins CREST AI security testing accolade
The recognition gives New Zealand a foothold in a new AI assurance market as businesses face rising risks from prompt injection and data exposure.
Google Cloud makes LookML indexing generally available
Enterprises using AI agents should get more reliable revenue and churn calculations as governed LookML definitions are now indexed in Knowledge Catalog by default.
Google Cloud launches IAM Helper for agent access tasks
That could cut deployment delays for firms using autonomous agents, while keeping higher-risk access changes behind human approval and audit trails.
Google Cloud donates three AI projects to CNCF Sandbox
The move puts Agent Substrate, gVisor and OpenRL under neutral governance as companies race to secure and scale automated workloads.
Adobe unveils AI agents across Firefly & Creative Cloud at Max
Creative teams will get agent-based tools and new workflows as Adobe rolls out updates across Firefly, Creative Cloud and GenStudio.
Adobe expands AI agents across Firefly & Creative Cloud
The updates broaden Adobe's AI tools for creators and marketers, with new assistants, partner models and Microsoft integrations now rolling out across its software.
Adobe expands Firefly with AI tools & creative agent
Users can now keep image, video and design work in one place as Adobe rolls out more AI tools and broader agent access in Firefly.
Ancep raises USD $8.5 million to boost broker revenue
The London start-up says its software can help brokers profitably handle lower-value risks that are often turned away, after raising USD $8.5 million.
LG wins CES innovation awards for OLED T6 & appliances
The honours reinforce LG's hold on CES, with its latest transparent OLED TV taking the top prize for the fifth year running.
ClickHouse expands with Xata deal into Postgres & AI
The deal aims to cut the operational sprawl facing companies as AI agents push analytics, transactions, monitoring and security onto one platform.
Red Hat launches OpenShift 5 with AI troubleshooting
Customers can now use natural language prompts to diagnose issues and assess upgrade risks on the updated hybrid cloud platform.
C.H. Robinson expands AI into ocean, air & customs
Customers are getting quotes in minutes as the freight broker's new AI agents cut ocean, air and customs processing times and reduce manual work.
