Nick Westbrook: The Rise of Agentic AI and What It Means for New Zealand Business
In this episode of Digital Changemakers, Umbrellar CEO Ian Hassell sits down with Microsoft NZ’s Senior Technology Strategist Nick Westbrook to unpack the next evolution of artificial intelligence: autonomous AI agents.
Going far beyond chatbots and copilots, agent AI represents a seismic shift in how work gets done. These agents don’t just assist — they perform tasks, collaborate with other agents, evaluate their own outputs, and deliver business outcomes with little human intervention.
This episode explores:
What agent AI actually is — and how it differs from today’s generative AI
The spectrum of agents: from simple retrieval agents to fully autonomous systems
How agent “teams” are already being used inside major global firms
What Microsoft is doing internally (30% of their code now written by agents!)
Where Kiwi businesses should start — from Microsoft 365 Copilot to custom-built agents
The ethics, security, and governance that must guide this transformation
Why AI-powered companies — “frontier firms” — are already outperforming their competitors
Nick also explains the new agent-led org structures being predicted by Microsoft: where every employee will soon become an “agent boss,” managing a digital workforce of specialised agents.
This is a powerful, practical conversation for New Zealand business leaders, IT teams, and innovators looking to stay ahead of the curve in one of the most transformative technological shifts in decades.
