Techstars Adelaide grad Dotterel Technologies, a startup developing noise reduction and audio recording technology for drones, has raised $500,000 in funding from investors including Korea’s ESV, the University of Auckland’s Inventors Fund, and Techstars.

The startup was founded in New Zealand by Matt Rowe, Shaun Edlin, Seamus Rowe, and Shaun Pentecost out of the Callaghan C-Prize competition in 2015.

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StretchSense Limited, New Zealand manufacturer of wearable sensing systems, today announced that it has completed negotiation for a call option agreement that allows its investor StartToday Co., Ltd. to selectively conduct full acquisition of StretchSense in the future.

StretchSense’s New Zealand operations, encompassing two sites in Auckland with over 130 employees, will continue operation across all departments, with further growth to be supported by the resources afforded by the acquirer.

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First NZ Capital has agreed to buy ANZ Bank New Zealand’s online trading platform for an undisclosed sum as the broking firm expands into the direct wealth market.

Wellington-based FNZC has signed up to a strategic alliance with the country’s biggest lender, buying the online platform currently known as ANZ Securities, which will return to its old name Direct Broking, while ANZ will use the relationship to keep strong retail distribution. The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018, subject to unnamed closing steps and conditions.

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Major financial institutions are using artificial intelligence to predict big events in their customers’ lives.

Boxley Llewellyn, a US executive at IBM specialising in predictive analysis for banking, wealth management and insurance firms, said artificial intelligence was getting better at crystal ball gazing.

“Artificial intelligence is starting now to become a good predictor of the future,” Llewellyn said at the INFINZ – Institute of Finance Professionals New Zealand – conference this month.

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Venture capitalist Mark Carnegie was alerted years ago by a science adviser to a Californian developer of a wireless heart pacemaker that could save the lives of some patients, but he baulked at the terms.

Every month the adviser would call Mr Carnegie and say, “I have got another CRT patient who is going to die because he is not responding to treatment. When are you going to do something about this?” Mr Carnegie told The Australian Financial Review.

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