Then there are start-ups whose progress is slowed because they can’t test new models as fast as they’d like, due to cash constraints.
“We can do it all virtually,” Mellsop says. Antioch has created AI-powered software models that simulate real-world training, dramatically speeding the product development process.
Things have been moving at warp speed.
Antioch was founded in July last year in New York. Five months later, it raised US$4.3 million ($7.3m) in a “pre-seed” round.
This week, it’s followed up with a US$8.5m seed round at a US$60m valuation, led by venture firm A* and Category Ventures (both based in San Francisco), with additional participation from MaC Venture Capital, Abstract, Box Group and New Zealand’s Icehouse Ventures.
Two angel investors also chipped in: Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar and New Zealander Adrian Macneil – a former software engineer for Treasury in Wellington who is now in San Francisco and recently raised US$40m for his own AI software start-up, Foxglove, which operates in similar territory to Antioch.
$90m Series A in the works
The pace will only pick up, all going to plan.
“We’re planning to raise the [Series] A before the end of the year, likely over the summer US time. We’ll target US$30-85m ($50-$90m) raised,” Mellsop says.
“This opportunity is becoming increasingly obvious and we need to move fast and decisively.”
And even though it’s barely a year old, with just nine staff, Antioch has already bagged some household-name customers.
“I can’t name names, our existing customer base includes Faang/Fortune 500 companies with established robotics, autonomy, and perception system divisions,” Mellsop says.
“We’re also in use within universities and research labs, including at MIT CSAIL.”
“Faang” is a term coined last decade for a group of hot tech stocks – Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google, with Nvidia sometimes swapped in for the “N” these days.
CSAIL is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Tesla powers on a fraction of the budget
Mellsop says companies like Tesla and Waymo have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on simulation infrastructure to minimise time-consuming and expensive real-world testing.
The idea is also that, with physical testing, it’s impossible to stage every scenario that an autonomous system might face, whereas virtual testing allows for the simulation of a near-infinite number of edge-case scenarios.
Mellsop says his firm can deliver the benefits of Tesla-style, huge-scale virtual testing, but at a fraction of the price.
And it’s territory he’s familiar with.
After spending his high school years at Saint Kentigern College in Auckland, Mellsop did bachelor and master’s degrees in computer science at Stanford in California, specialising in AI – and with his studies part-funded by a US$35,000 Siebel Scholarship.
After graduating in 2022, Mellsop got a job as a vision engineer on Tesla’s autopilot team in Silicon Valley.
He then moved to New York, where he co-founded a blockchain company, Transpose, with fellow Stanford grad Alex Langshur.
In May 2023, the pair sold Transpose – still only months old – to the market leader in its field, national security contractor Chainalysis, in a deal the Herald understands ran to eight figures – and co-founded Antioch.
The founding team also included Colton Swingle, previously at Google’s DeepMind AI unit, and Collin Schlager, previously at Meta’s Reality Labs.
Bigger than ChatGPT
Mellsop says the disruption caused by AI robots, drones and other autonomous hardware will be much larger than what the LLMs (large language models or “chatbots” like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot) will wreak on white-collar roles.
“The industries LLMs are disrupting – software, professional services, knowledge work – represent maybe US$8 trillion of the global economy,” he says, while “manufacturing, logistics, construction, energy and agriculture” represent US$50t.
Making manufacturing great again
“AI penetration in those physical industries is basically zero today. The industrial revolution that’s coming in physical AI isn’t going to be a sequel to the LLM revolution – it’s going to dwarf it.”
His co-founder also sees an onshoring angle, at a time when the blue-collar workforce is shrinking.
“Over the last 40 years, America’s manufacturing advantage has been systematically eroded by offshoring,” Langshur says.
“The only economically viable path to reindustrialisation runs through robotics and automation, and scalable testing is the rate-limiting step.”
Tait’s digs for sale
The 5.42ha technology campus in Christchurch where global exporter Tait Communications manufactures radio telecommunications equipment is up for sale.
Colliers estimates its value at “circa” $70m.
The campus was sold to its current owner, Auckland property syndicate GEK Property, for $57.75m in September 2017.
Tait is on a long-term lease.
“This property is one of the most significant investment opportunities in the South Island market in a number of years,” Colliers Christchurch general manager and investment broker Mark Macauley says.
In 2018, Japan’s JVC Kenwood won Overseas Investment Office approval to acquire 40% of Tait, with the option to acquire the remaining 60% at a later date. JVC remains at 40%.
Tait made a $44.1m profit last year, down from the $51.2m it earned in 2024 as its revenue increased to $516m from 2024’s $426.6m.
Squeezed? Check your phone and broadband bill
With the fuel crisis and rising cost of living putting pressure on nearly every New Zealand household, Telecommunications Dispute Resolution (TDR) is urging Kiwis to check their phone and internet plans now to head off financial strain down the track.
More than half the complaints TDR received in the first quarter of 2026 stemmed from disputed charges and credit management, which are being compounded by family budgets having less room to absorb unexpected bills, acting chief executive Judi Jones says.
Billing mistakes and plan confusion, rather than headline price rises, are frequently the biggest source of financial strain for consumers.
The TDR is funded by the telecommunications industry but operates on an independent remit and offers a free dispute resolution service.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
