First Focus has announced the New Zealand winners of its AI Investment Fund, with each customer receiving $20,000 to bring their AI idea to life.
The $100,000 fund is designed to help customers turn practical, high-impact AI ideas into working solutions. Each selected project will receive consulting, development and implementation support from First Focus, helping move the idea from concept to prototype with a clear focus on innovation, feasibility and measurable business impact.
The model is simple: our customers bring the vision, and First Focus brings the AI expertise, delivery capability and investment to help turn those ideas into real outcomes.
For New Zealand businesses, that matters.
AI isn’t about chasing another tool. It’s about making your business work better. The strongest returns come when AI is applied to the workflows that already slow your team down, with the right data, security and governance around it. That’s where practical AI, automation and CORE managed AI and IT come together: less manual work, better decisions, lower risk and measurable business value.
That’s the common thread across the selected ideas: practical AI tied to real workflows, clear business value and measurable return.
Most organisations already know where time, productivity, spend or risk is being lost.
It might be inside a tender pack that takes too long to assess, a planning session that creates hours of follow-up work, a service history full of useful data, or a professional review process where experienced people spend too much time checking information that could be surfaced earlier.
Those are not abstract AI opportunities. They are practical business problems.
The AI Investment Fund is designed to help customers move from idea to implementation, with a clear focus on return. First Focus works with customers to review the opportunity, deliver the first usable solution and track the return in plain business language.
Want to know what more than 100 Kiwi businesses want to build with AI? Check out this blog post here.
After reviewing the New Zealand submissions, the following customer ideas have been selected for support through the First Focus NZ AI Investment Fund:
Business snapshot
Thermal Solutions proposed an AI layer over its existing service data to give customers live intelligence on their HVAC and refrigeration assets.
The idea is to help predict asset end-of-life, catch refrigerant leaks earlier, reduce energy waste and support faster quoting and follow-up. Instead of relying only on reactive service conversations, Thermal Solutions can give customers better visibility of asset condition, future capital planning, service priorities and energy performance.
The first phase is expected to focus on a controlled asset-health and quote workflow using existing service data, with human review built in before outputs are turned into action.
Business snapshot
Fitzgerald Construction submitted an idea for a secure AI assistant that reviews construction tender and contract documents, then turns them into structured scope, risk and action summaries.
Tender packs can be complex, time-consuming and difficult to review consistently. The assistant would help project teams identify key information faster, including document registers, scope summaries, contract risks, missing information and draft RFIs.
The aim is not to replace commercial judgement. It is to give experienced people a faster, more consistent first pass, with findings linked back to source documents so everything can be checked and trusted.
Business snapshot
Trinder Engineers proposed using AI to assist with quoting, estimation, proposal development and project scoping.
Engineering teams often spend significant time reviewing tender documents, drawings, requirements, emails and supporting material before estimating can begin. This idea uses AI to perform an initial sweep of that information, extract key scope items, flag unusual requirements and help estimators focus where it matters most.
The first phase will stay focused on document review, scope extraction and estimator support before deeper costing automation is considered.
Business snapshot
Drumm Nevatt and Associates proposed an AI-powered pre-review assistant for annual accounts, tax returns, minutes and supporting workpapers.
The assistant would check documents for consistency, completeness and common issues before manager review, then generate an exception report highlighting items that need attention.
For accounting and professional services firms, this is a strong practical AI use case: repeatable document checking, structured review and human validation.
The pattern across the winning ideas is not just interest in AI. It is where the return is hiding.
Each project points to the same problem CORE is built to solve: useful technology is already sitting inside the business, but the value is trapped in manual reviews, repeated admin, disconnected systems, underused data and processes that rely too heavily on a few experienced people.
That is not a tool-selection problem. It is an operating model problem.
AI creates value when it is connected to the right data, secured properly, adopted by the people doing the work and measured against a real business outcome. That is why the winning ideas fit so naturally with CORE managed AI and IT.
They show how practical AI can move beyond experimentation and become part of how a business creates capacity: less manual work, better visibility, stronger consistency, lower risk and more time for higher-value decisions.
The AI Investment Fund helps bring a strong idea to life, with a clear focus on measurable return to the business.
CORE is how First Focus helps customers make that kind of improvement part of everyday work.
With CORE, every user can access AI in a secure way, connected to the right data for their role. That means people are not just experimenting with tools on the side. They are using AI inside a managed environment that supports better decisions, safer automation and continuous improvement.
That is where the bigger value sits.
The winning AI Investment Fund ideas are exactly the kinds of opportunities that should keep surfacing inside a business: a manual process that can be improved, a data set that can be turned into insight, a review step that can be made faster, or a customer experience that can be strengthened.
CORE gives customers a way to find those opportunities month in, month out, then work with First Focus to prioritise, build, secure and measure them.
For your business, the question is not just which AI idea to fund once. It is how you create a secure, practical path for AI to keep improving the way your people work.
The next step for each winning idea is focused discovery and Phase 1 planning.
First Focus will work with each winner to define the right starting point, confirm the data and systems involved, validate the workflow, agree success measures and design a first version that can be tested with real users.
From mid-September, we will begin sharing the story behind each winning idea, with a new customer case study released each week. These stories will feature the winners talking about the problem they want to solve, why it matters to their business and how First Focus will help bring the idea to life.
Across the projects, the approach is deliberately practical: start with one focused process, keep people in control where judgement or risk matters, ground outputs in trusted data, build secure foundations and measure value against a clear business outcome.
The First Focus NZ AI Investment Fund winners show where AI services in New Zealand are heading.
The biggest opportunities are inside everyday workflows: manual reviews, repeated document checks, disconnected systems, slow handovers, duplicated effort and processes that depend too heavily on a few key people.
Through CORE Intelligent Managed Services, First Focus helps New Zealand businesses connect managed IT, cyber security, cloud, automation and practical AI services into one operating model focused on productivity, lower risk, greater capacity and measurable business value.
A $100,000 programme supporting customer-led AI ideas, with each selected customer receiving $20,000 in consulting, development and implementation support.
Thermal Solutions, Fitzgerald Construction, Trinder Engineers, and Drumm Nevatt and Associates.
The fund helps customers move from idea to implementation. CORE provides the managed AI, IT and security model to support, secure, adopt and improve those solutions over time.
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