Harkness AI Limited

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Harkness AI3Christchurch, New Zealand

Christchurch AI consultancy of three, registered June 2025, doing Claude setups, team training workshops and workflow automation for New Zealand small and medium businesses.

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About

Blake Harkness runs Harkness AI from Christchurch with two other engineers, Alexander Russell and Zavier Taylor. The work splits four ways: training workshops, AI strategy, custom builds, and an ongoing fractional AI engineer arrangement. Claude is the centre of it, connected to business tools including Xero, HubSpot and Slack, with n8n for workflow automation. Harkness AI Limited was incorporated on 19 June 2025. Blake is a named contributor to the AI Forum NZ construction working group and was a 2025 Aotearoa AI Awards finalist for Rising AI Star. The firm reports 25 businesses helped and 50 automations built. Around 19 clients are named on the homepage, but there are no dedicated case study pages and no third-party reviews.

What they sell

Train
Structured AI training programmes.
Consult
AI strategy & roadmap.
Build
AI development & automation.
Support
Fractional AI engineer.

Focus

Approach

AI-native

Industries

Professional Services Finance construction Real Estate retail

Services

Training & EnablementWorkflow AutomationFractional AI Leadership

Stack

claude openai n8nxerohubspot custom

Evidence on file

Independently verified, never paid placement

Case studies

Site Safety

4 core workflows running day to day (Xero invoicing, calendar, email, lead research)

Trap and Trigger Ltd

full-day AI 101 workshop for the whole team at their Upper Hutt office

Paagaa

3-week MVP, referral platform for financial advisers with full lifecycle tracking

Certifications & partner status

AI Forum New Zealand, AEC Working Group contributor (Blake Harkness, listed under MainPower NZ)Aotearoa AI Awards 2025 finalist, Rising AI Star (Blake Harkness)

Directory cross-listings

https://aiforum.org.nz/our-work/working-groups/architecture-engineering-and-construction-aec-working-group/https://theaiassembly.com/team/blake-harkness/https://nz.linkedin.com/company/harknessai

Public footprint

youtube168 videos, 647 subscribers
communityYoung Kiwis in AI, founded by Harkness AI, 273 members, next meetup Palmerston North 3 August 2026
blogactive article series, homepage last updated 17 June 2026
speakingconference and event talks, podcast appearances

In their words

Provider-supplied, shown as given

Blake has a unique ability to identify core challenges and transform them into effective solutions.

Will Fleming

Campfire Studios

Source

Blake has become our go-to for everything AI in our business - from setting up Claude and training our team, to building integrations like our PayHero setup that we had struggled with ourselves.

Nick

Director, Trap and Trigger Ltd

Source

Who you’d work with

Blake Harkness
Founder and fractional AI engineer
Alexander Russell
AI engineer, full-stack development and automated workflows
Zavier Taylor
Junior AI engineer, n8n and workflow automation