Xero signs deal with Anthropic, oil price lifts on further Gulf tensions

Time to talk business, thanks to our partner's four-sife bar.

Now Kiwi made software firm Zero has announced a deal with one of the big players in AI,

Garth Bray, host to be held in our business, as well as with the details.

Garth, good morning.

Good morning, Ryan.

So what are they?

Well, this was literally hot out of the chair you're sitting in probably less than an hour ago

from Bridget Snellinghead of Zero here in New Zealand, that Zero's cut a deal with Anthropic,

which is one of the big players basically to stick a lot of the features that the AI platform runs

onto the back of the software system that a lot of Kiwi and international businesses,

small businesses use to basically do their books.

I mean, this is a really big story, I suppose, because you've seen a lot of these software

as a service companies under a lot of pressure from investors to say, hey, is AI going to come along

and basically enable people to just go straight to an AI client and do the job that you've previously

been charging people for, so this is kind of if you can't beat them, join them situation,

you get Claude, and apparently, Claude is going to be able to chase up your unpaid invoices.

I'm not sure exactly how that's going to work, but that will be an interesting one to watch.

Data privacy is always a concern here.

If you're just plugging stuff straight into an AI, where does it wind up?

So you'd imagine that, and I think there's some confirmation from

Sikinda Syncacity, the CEO, Zero in some reporting that's just popped up over in Australia,

that'll be part of it.

It's effectively, they're going to have some guarantees around data.

Also going to use some of the tools to develop and further develop Zero itself,

so that's an interesting story for Kiwi Business Rodgeri, basically,

created here and has gone into it.

Had a tough time.

We had Rod on the show the other week actually.

Hey, let's get to the petrol price.

What's happened overnight?

What are we, 108?

I think we're trading at Brent Critt at the moment.

It's gone up pretty steadily from about 100 a barrel across the trading session,

really some concern there out of the states about the statements that were coming out of

cabinets that Trump held, that really it was a lot of talk about why they'd gone in,

not so much where the exit was, there was this revelation that the present that he'd got

from the Iranians was the safe passage of 10 Pakistani flagged vessels that came out with the

oil, not sure where they wound up and where they went to, but and also some talk I suppose from

the Iranians that they are dealing with Pakistan, they're not talking to America directly.

Hey, also, what I'm about is we're going to have some talks apparently.

China, lemma.

So he's put a date to visit Xi in China in May, which is kind of signalling to people that he

sees, they see him wrap up by then, right?

Hey, last one of you this morning, I spoke to the cruise line industry this morning,

they're very excited about this, the $200 million terminal that's coming to the city,

to the downtown.

Yeah, and huge, so this is coming next year.

We've got some pickies of that, which it looks pretty flash, but anything, frankly,

looks better than being carted off working wharf by a bunch of, you know,

temporary steers.

Yeah, kind of in chucked in a ballroom someplace, Roger Gray,

see, it was all a bit, it was all a bit ranked the way it was happening.

Very rank, but he's saying, what, 135 ships is a good season.

Now, 160, could we get to?

Could add another 100,000 people coming in, spending money in downtown Auckland,

they're already putting about 600 million bucks into the economy.

Doesn't it look lovely?

I think you'd probably want to come just for the cruise ship too little,

but you want to get out there and go spending and go get yourself a nice coffee

from downtown as well.

Yeah, you know, hop on, get yourself some choice.

They always look quite good in the artist's impression, so don't they?

And then you get there.

Sometimes they, they didn't mention the wharf, you know, the wharf.

Exactly.

She'd be a rainy day today, but I imagine there's going to be all kinds of experiences.

Are we going to be a bit like Auckland Airport?

You'll have all kinds of themed bits and pieces going on to,

but you know, you've arrived here in Auckland.

Yeah, nice.

Very good.

Gath Good, see you as always.

Gath Bray, host of Heardown Business.

Thanks to our partners for Cypher.

It is nice.