Ambit AI, an Auckland company that built customer service chatbots, was placed in liquidation on 8 June 2026. It had defaulted on a $467,429 pandemic-era loan from Callaghan Innovation.
Grant Thornton’s Adele Hicks and Stephanie Jeffreys were appointed joint liquidators. Creditors have until 6 July to lodge claims. Two days after the liquidation began, the company changed its name to Bambi Tech.
A loan programme with a poor record
Ambit’s loan came from a Budget 2020 Covid-19 R&D programme. Callaghan Innovation lent $150 million to 456 firms at 3% interest over 10 years, with the aim of keeping research programmes going when private capital dried up during lockdowns.
Six years on, 67 of the 456 companies have failed and only 50 have repaid in full. Nearly one-third of the $149 million loan book is in arrears, and $21.5 million of that is tied to 63 failed or insolvent businesses. About 339 firms still owe Callaghan money; most of them have neither repaid nor formally defaulted. The full cost to taxpayers is not yet known.
Two readings of the numbers
David Farrar, writing on Breaking Views, put it in lender’s terms: “A third of the loan book in arrears would cause any other lender to go bankrupt.” His view is that “The Government is not good at this stuff, and should leave it alone.”
Ben Wylie-van Eerd of the Save Science Coalition read the same figure differently. He told Kiwiblog that a one-third arrears rate “honestly sounds more positive than I was expecting,” and likened it to angel investing: “If an angel investor had only a third of their companies that they invested in fail, they’d be jumping for joy.”
Labour’s science spokesperson, Reuben Davidson, defended the scheme as emergency support that “helped companies keep their researchers employed and their programmes running when private funding dried up.”
MBIE takes over
Callaghan Innovation was disestablished after Budget 2025, and its loan book moved to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in November 2025. The ministry’s 2024/25 annual report shows $38 million set aside over three years for the wind-down and transfer of Callaghan’s functions.
Diana Loughnan, MBIE’s head of innovation and business capability, said the ministry has been “putting in place a more robust debt management framework, clearer accountability for monitoring and escalation, and a more systematic approach to identifying risks, setting impairment provisions, and recovering funds.”
MBIE is now taking delinquent borrowers to court. Wine Grenade, another Callaghan-funded firm, was liquidated in December 2025 on the Attorney-General’s application over unpaid loan obligations.
