Fixed-fee discovery
Agreed up front, yours to keep — no open-ended scoping meters.
Part engineering studio, part research lab. The Studio builds the technology your growth runs on — intelligent ERPs, CRMs, apps, AI automation and IoT — priced on the result, not the hours. The Lab takes drones, machine learning and edge tech into the field to crack problems that don't have products yet.
Studio work: fixed-fee discovery, then delivery with an at-risk fee tied to outcomes verified in your data. Lab work: research we fund ourselves — and research you commission.
Five capabilities, one team, one commercial promise. Everything we build is designed to act — not to sit in a browser tab waiting for data entry.
Business platforms with AI in the workflow, not bolted on. Quoting, inventory, finance and customer ops that reconcile, chase and forecast themselves.
e.g. an ERP that chases its own debtors and flags margin leaks weekly
Agents and automations embedded in the tools you already use — quoting, scheduling, documents, support — doing the repetitive work your team shouldn't.
e.g. supplier invoices processed, coded and queued for approval untouched
Web and mobile applications built senior-first and AI-accelerated — shipped in weeks, owned by you, engineered to be operated, not just launched.
e.g. a customer portal that cuts "where's my order?" calls to near zero
Sensors, machines and vehicles connected to the systems that run your business — so the physical operation and the software finally agree.
e.g. plant equipment that books its own maintenance before it fails
Cloud foundations and system-to-system integration — the decade-deep craft of our delivery arm, ApiConnects. We've connected your kind of systems for years. Now we make them think.
e.g. ERP ↔ ecommerce ↔ logistics, one source of truth, no re-keying
The "Labs" in our name is literal. Behind our client work runs a standing R&D practice, working two ways: research we fund ourselves, chasing problems we think matter — and research you fund, where you bring a hard problem and commission us to crack it. Either way, the field rules are the same: fly it, break it, prove it against reality. Nothing reaches a client engagement until it has earned its way out of the Lab — which is how we can price outcomes on technology that still feels like the future.
Autonomous inspection, aerial sensing and imaging pipelines — for farms, infrastructure, sites and stock that are too big, too remote or too risky to walk.
Applied models trained on real operational data — forecasting, computer vision, anomaly detection — built to run quietly inside working systems, not in slide decks.
Low-power sensors, on-device intelligence and rugged connectivity for the places cloud can't reach — paddocks, plants, cool-chains and coastlines.
Have a problem no off-the-shelf product touches? Fund the research and it becomes our problem too — your domain expertise, our engineering, and a clear agreement up front on scope and who owns what comes out.
Fund a research project: businesses, industry bodies and research groups can commission the Lab — from a feasibility study to a working field prototype. NZ businesses may also be eligible for Government R&D support (such as the R&D Tax Incentive) on qualifying projects; we'll point you in the right direction.
Most businesses we meet don't arrive with a project — they arrive with a feeling that things could run better. That's enough. We audit how your business works today, show you where technology adds value, and only then talk about building. Most technology firms bill hours and hope; we work the other way around — here is the whole commercial model, out in the open.
You don't need a spec, a shortlist, or even a clear problem. We come to you, walk your operation, and watch how the work actually flows — then map your systems, find where time and money leak, and show you exactly where technology would add value, what it's worth, and what we'd do first. You get a prioritised plan with honest numbers, yours to keep — even if you never speak to us again.
For complex ERP, IoT or platform builds: process mapping, data audit, outcome definition and a fixed-price proposal. You own every output, with a written walk-away clause.
A fixed base fee, plus an at-risk portion tied to outcomes we agree before we start — each one with a KPI, a baseline, a time window, a data source and a verification method. No vague promises on either side.
We operate, monitor and keep improving what we built — a monthly subscription that scales with value delivered, not with headcount.
Co-funding available: eligible NZ SMEs can have half their advisory costs co-funded through the Regional Business Partner Network's AI Advisory support. Ask us — we'll tell you straight if you qualify.
When a firm bills by the hour, slow is profitable. When our fee rides on your result, fast and right is profitable. Same team, opposite gravity.
Industry analysts expect over 40% of agentic-AI projects to be scrapped for cost or unclear value. That risk is real — so we absorb it. Paid discovery defines the outcome before a dollar of build is spent.
Outcome-priced engagements typically land 20–40% below equivalent hourly work — we're fast because we're senior and AI-native, and you never pay for meetings about meetings.
Every outcome is measured against your data, not our slide deck. If it doesn't verify, the at-risk fee doesn't get paid. That sentence is in the contract.
"Every outcome we commit to has five parts: a KPI, a baseline, a time window, a data source, and a verification method. If any of the five is missing, it's not an outcome — it's marketing."
— the Aahi Labs delivery standard
Starting in Aotearoa, expanding across the Tasman. We go deep in sectors where systems, machines and margins meet:
Aahi Labs is the outcome-priced technology company of Aahi Smart Systems Limited, built on the engineering team behind ApiConnects — our integration practice that has spent years connecting the systems New Zealand businesses run on.
That heritage matters: you can't automate what isn't connected, and you can't price outcomes without trusting the data. Integration is where we earned that trust. Intelligence is what we build on top of it now.
We're NZ-owned and senior-led — the people who scope your work are the people who build it. While much of our industry has been acquired offshore, we're accountable here, at the end of a short flight or a shorter phone call.
Why "Aahi"? Aahi is our founder's daughter's name. And ahi is te reo Māori for fire — the spark, the hearth, the home fire that's kept burning.
It's a reminder of why this company exists: technology should be the fire under a business — light, heat and momentum — not another thing to tend.
A Spark Assessment is a small fixed fee, takes under two weeks, and ends with a plan you own — whoever you build it with.
Book a Spark Assessment →or email hello@aahi.co.nz — got a research problem instead? Tell us about it.