Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Angel Investors in New Zealand (October 2023)

Managing Partner, Chief Technology Officer, Venture Advisor, Global Investor

Investment focus

Industry: Software, E-Commerce, Mobile
Stage:Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
Geography: United States, Australia, India

Investor stats

Total investments: 83
Round size: Seed $200k–$4.5M; Pre-Seed $540k–$800k; Series A $2.5M–$22M
Lead/follow: 1% lead, 99% follow

Portfolio highlights

REZA — Footwear & Apparel Brand
Segna — Extract trends across your users. Build products that they love.
Anility — Embed financial health insights within your application using our world leading API service

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Harald McPike is a successful quantitative trader and global private investor.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Analytics, Information Technology
Stage:Seed, Series A, Series D
Geography: United States, New Zealand, United Kingdom

Investor stats

Total investments: 10
Lead/follow: no public data

Portfolio highlights

Imagr — We have built the first vision-only, white-label autonomous checkout solution that retailers can own, operate and scale themselves. Imagr is designed to layer into any supermarket, with no store fit-outs required.The Imagr system is an end-to-end autonomous checkout solution that enables retailers to automate the checkout in their supermarket.The system consists of a mobile Imaging Station - this utilizes our machine learning platform to image products and load them into our system so they are ready to be recognised when put into the trolley. Shopping trolleys fitted with the Halo (home to the lights and cameras that drive our AI platform) recognise items as they go in and out of the trolley without the need for barcodes. A retailers app, retailers can track shopping sessions and manage trolleys. And a shoppers app, for customers to pair with the trolleys, track shopping sessions and checkout. All parts of the Imagr system are designed and built in house by Imagr.
Starling Bank — Transform the way you manage your money with Starling Bank. Enjoy personal and business banking online and at your fingertips, always. Apply in minutes.
Health Data Analytics Institute — Health Data Analytics Institute is created a predictive platform that transcends the understanding of healthcare data and connects it to quantifiable, actionable information that benefits patients, providers, and society. But we don’t just translate data, we transform it into a continuum of insights — applicable across all touch points in anindividual’s dynamic health journey. It’s deep knowledge that quantifies longevity, health status, health risks, and health costs. But that’s just the start.

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In January, I started another company, Vital Software, with Dr. Justin Schrager of Emory University. Vital makes software for hospital emergency rooms. This includes a mobile patient check-in for patients, and the fastest, most usable electronic medical records you've seen for doctors and nurses. We use extensive machine learning and naturallanguage processing to determine patient severity and anticipated actions. Our longer term goal is to cut ER wait times in half, as they are often 4-5 hours long. You might not know it, but there are 140M ER visits in the US alone each year.Medical / sales are in the US, while development is all in Auckland New Zealand. My long-time partner Rebecca, an architect, is a Kiwi and I am now a resident of New Zealand as well.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Health Care, SaaS
Stage:Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
Geography: United States, Estonia, New Zealand

Investor stats

Total investments: 11
Round size: Seed $435k–$4.2M; Pre-Seed $500k–$1M
Lead/follow: 9% lead, 91% follow

Portfolio highlights

MX Labs — Allow your user to comprehensively monitor their vital signs. Check wellbeing, prevent misdiagnosis, and motivate lifestyle changes thanks to Shen.AI.
Vital — Intuitive, user friendly, smart hospital software that leverages AI for an optimized patient and clinician experience.
Carbon Health — Carbon Health Provides Smart, hassle-free Primary & Urgent Care. Book same day Adult & Pediatric appointments instantly.

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Emlyn is a successful founder and investor with personal investments in fast growing tech companies like Kami, A.Kin, MealMe, Segna, and EnsuredIt. Managing Partner at CP Ventures and the founder of OpenMarkets Group, Australia's second-largest retail broker. He was former CEO of the National Stock Exchange of Australia, Australia’s secondlargest listing stock exchange, for four and a half years. Prior to that he was Head of Business Development at LCH.Clearnet for equities and CFDs in London for nine years, the world’s largest independent clearing house. He has four finance related degrees: Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Masters Business Administration (MBA), Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment (GDAFI), and Bachelor of Economics (BEc).

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning
Stage:Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
Geography: Australia, United States, India

Investor stats

Total investments: 61
Round size: Seed $398k–$3M; Series A $5.1M–$12M
Lead/follow: 30% lead, 70% follow

Portfolio highlights

REZA — Footwear & Apparel Brand
Tpaga — Tpaga is a mobile wallet for unbanked consumers in Latin America. Currently in Colombia and Mexico.In Latin America, more than 50% do not have credit cards or bank accounts, but what they do have is a cellphone. Tpaga allows consumers to store money via cash kiosk ( 4,000 in our network) and then use it to pay utility bills, cell phone top-up,supermarket and even gas station merchants. We have become the first mobile wallet in Latin America to allow consumers to pay groceries without having a bank account, and allowing unbanked commerces to start receiving payment without have POS systems.
Anility — Embed financial health insights within your application using our world leading API service

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Nas, byname of Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, also called Nasty Nas, (born September 14, 1973, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.), American rapper and songwriter who became a dominant voice in 1990s East Coast hip-hop. Nas built a reputation as an expressive chronicler of inner-city street life.Nasir Jones, the son of a jazz musician, grew up in public housingin Queens, New York. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and searched for a creative outlet, finally settling on hip-hop. His breakthrough came in 1992, when his song “Half Time” (credited to Nasty Nas) appeared on the sound track to the film Zebrahead. Columbia Records soon signed him to a contract. His debut recording as Nas, Illmatic (1994), drew widespread acclaim for its poetic narration of hard-edged inner-city life.The more pop-oriented approach of It Was Written (1996) helped that album reach an even wider audience than its predecessor but ignited a recurring tension in Nas’s career between the appetite of the pop audience and the demands of hip-hop purists. He maintained his commercial appeal with I Am... (1999), although by that time he had also become embroiled in a public feud with fellow rapper Jay-Z over which of the two was the preeminent voice in East Coast hip-hop. The schism inspired Stillmatic (2001), which many fans considered a return to form. The two rappers publicly settled their differences in 2005, and shortly thereafter Nas signed with Def Jam, of which Jay-Z was president at the time.Nas’s penchant for provocation marked Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and an untitled follow-up (2008), while Life Is Good (2012) struck an introspective tone. He also notably collaborated with reggae musician Damian Marley (the youngest son of Bob Marley) on the album Distant Relatives (2010).Nas also made occasional film appearances, notably in Belly (1998), a crime drama in which he starred opposite rapper DMX, and Black Nativity (2013), an adaptation of Langston Hughes’s gospel play.

Investment focus

Industry: E-Commerce, Internet, Software
Stage:Seed, Series A, Series B
Geography: United States, Canada, Brazil

Investor stats

Total investments: 64
Round size: Seed $250k–$4.7M; Series A $3M–$60M; Series B $8M–$106M
Lead/follow: 2% lead, 98% follow

Portfolio highlights

Magic Spoon — Magic Spoon cereal is high-protein, low-sugar, keto-friendly, and gluten-free. Available in Cocoa, Frosted, Fruity, Blueberry, Peanut Butter, and Cinnamon.
Everyrealm — Leaders in metaverse innovation and development.
Altered State Machine — Altered State Machine, aims to be a platform and protocol which any developer can build on it; can create, own, and compete with AI-based agents (bots) and upgrade and train their AI, buy, and sell them as NFTs. This will bring an evolution for NFTS.

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Rob joined First Round as a Partner in 2006, opening up the firm's San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber, and Planet Labs.Rob invests across categories, with his interests spanning financial tech, the sharingeconomy, meal delivery, and consumer hardware. He is constantly exploring new areas, and enjoys working with founders who push the boundaries of existing markets.Prior to joining First Round, Rob became the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. While there, he led most of the initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group.Before that, Rob worked at Palm, where he product managed Palm OS during the heyday of Palm products (Palm III, Palm V, Handspring Treo). He also started the company's corporate venture fund and managed the strategic spinoff of PalmSource.Rob lives with his wife and two daughters in San Francisco. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking at home and traveling up and down the California coast with his family and two dogs. He has an MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Enterprise Software, Information Technology
Stage:Seed, Series A, Series B
Geography: United States, New Zealand

Investor stats

Total investments: 48
Round size: Seed $325k–$6M; Series A $1.1M–$20M; Series B $3.5M–$50M
Lead/follow: 19% lead, 81% follow

Portfolio highlights

Ark Biotech — Ark Biotech builds fit-for-purpose, affordable bioreactors for the industrial production of cultivated meat
Mad Realities — Reality is Mad. Join ours instead. New age entertainment platform, powered by you.
ShareWell — Struggling with mental health issues? ShareWell provides online peer support, a proven mental health alternative for therapy. Get group support when you need it.

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Dylan Field is the CEO and Co-founder of Figma, a design and prototyping platform for teams who build products together. With the support of the Thiel Fellowship, Dylan dropped out of Brown University to start Figma with his TA Evan Wallace (who became Figma’s CTO). They built Figma on the web in the hopes of tearing down the walls around thesiloed design process. Dylan champions open, accessible design and believes such tooling must evolve for a cloud-based, collaborative world. He tweets @zoink

Investment focus

Industry: Software, Internet, Artificial Intelligence
Stage:Seed, Series A, Series B
Geography: United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand

Investor stats

Total investments: 92
Round size: Seed $2.1M–$6.3M; Series A $7M–$29M; Series B $29M–$55M
Lead/follow: 1% lead, 99% follow

Portfolio highlights

Resend — Build, test, and send transactional emails at scale.
Socket — Socket fights vulnerabilities and provides visibility, defense-in-depth, and proactive supply chain protection for JavaScript, Python, and Go dependencies.
Rain Industries — Every wildfire starts small. Rain contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition with autonomous drones.

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Hykeem Jamaal Carter

Investment focus

Industry: Computer, Software, Artificial Intelligence
Stage:Seed
Geography: New Zealand

Investor stats

Total investments: 1
Lead/follow: no public data

Portfolio highlights

Altered State Machine — Altered State Machine, aims to be a platform and protocol which any developer can build on it; can create, own, and compete with AI-based agents (bots) and upgrade and train their AI, buy, and sell them as NFTs. This will bring an evolution for NFTS.

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Vivek Garipalli was the Co-Founder, CEO, and Board Member of Clover Health. He attended Emory University.

Investment focus

Industry: Health Care, Medical, Machine Learning
Stage:Seed, Series A, Series B
Geography: United States, India, Brazil

Investor stats

Total investments: 23
Round size: Seed $1.4M–$16M; Series A $3.6M–$12M; Series B $35M–$100M
Lead/follow: 17% lead, 83% follow

Portfolio highlights

Thyme Care — Thyme Care is a dedicated team of nurses and care experts offering value-based cancer care to help you through all phases of the cancer experience.
Uplift — Rebuilding mental healthcare to work for everyone
NeuraLight — Transforming clinical development, diagnostics, and precision medicine in neurology with AI. We are building an AI-driven platform to accelerate and improve drug development and patient monitoring, as well as introduce precision care for patients with neurological disorders using oculometric data captured with a standard webcam or smartphone.

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