SiteHost launches local AI platform for New Zealand

SiteHost has launched an AI Platform for businesses in New Zealand. The service runs on the company's own data centre infrastructure in New Zealand.

The Auckland-based hosting and infrastructure provider is targeting companies that want access to generative AI tools without relying on offshore providers or buying dedicated hardware.

SiteHost is offering the platform on usage-based token pricing with no upfront fee or minimum spend. Input pricing starts at NZ$0.09 per million tokens and rises to NZ$0.28 per million tokens for the Qwen 3.6 27B inference model, while output pricing reaches NZ$2.76 per million tokens.

It contrasted those rates with lower-cost models from Anthropic, which it said charge US$1 for the same input and US$5 for output, with more advanced models costing about five times more.

Data residency is central to the launch. Every request is processed on infrastructure located in New Zealand, and request data is not stored or used to train models.

That may appeal to organisations with compliance requirements around where data is held and processed. It also targets businesses that have been cautious about sending sensitive information across borders when using AI services.

Model line-up

The platform launches with three open-weight models: Qwen 3.6 27B for general-purpose inference, alongside Qwen 3 VL embedding and reranking models for semantic search tasks.

Each model will remain available for at least a year and will have a three-month deprecation window. SiteHost said this is intended to give customers continuity as the market for open-weight models changes quickly.

The models run with full context windows. SiteHost also said the service avoids the heavier quantisation methods some providers use to reduce operating costs.

Another feature is an OpenAI-compatible API. Businesses and developers already using software built around OpenAI's API can move to SiteHost's service with limited code changes or integration work.

Target users

SiteHost expects the platform to be useful for small and medium-sized businesses with uneven AI demand. It highlighted tasks such as transcribing audio and video, summarising large document sets, restructuring content, and running semantic search over internal databases and knowledge bases.

Usage-based billing may suit those customers because spending can rise and fall with demand rather than being tied to fixed subscriptions. That could make the service more attractive for businesses that need AI processing in bursts rather than as a constant workload.

The launch also extends SiteHost's existing infrastructure business. Founded in 2004, the company operates New Zealand-based cloud hosting services, including GPU hosting, and runs a mostly solar-powered data centre in Auckland.

Quintin Russ, Technical Director at SiteHost, said the company is trying to address a gap in the market.

"A lot of businesses in New Zealand have felt like they have to choose between two bad options: expensive offshore subscriptions that raise real questions about where their data ends up, or the capital cost of buying and running their own AI hardware," Russ said.

"We wanted to offer something in between-AI that's hosted locally, priced fairly, and doesn't quietly harvest your data. That's what the AI Platform is."

Russ said the service is likely to expand as more open-weight models become available.

"We will keep evaluating open weight models as they are released, and we will add more over time. We want the Platform to offer broad capabilities to New Zealand businesses, so if there are use cases that are not well served, we welcome those conversations."

SiteHost framed the launch as an extension of its broader hosting approach, with an emphasis on local infrastructure and predictable pricing.

"We've spent over twenty years building and running infrastructure New Zealand businesses can trust," Russ said.

"AI shouldn't be any different. You should be able to use it without wondering where your data has gone, or getting locked into a subscription you don't need."