Open-weight models such as Llama, Mistral and Qwen are the model layer; osFoundry is a model-agnostic platform that runs them via BYOK or locally. How the two work together for New Zealand teams, with Te Hiku’s te reo Māori work as context.
dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and dgm has not yet completed any client integrations. This article describes services dgm offers, not past results.
Models and the platform are different layers
New Zealand has no single national flagship large language model, and ‘sovereignty’ here is better understood as a matter of deployment and governance than of a national-model race. The practical pattern is to run open-weight models (such as Llama, Mistral, Qwen or Gemma derivatives) under osFoundry via BYOK or locally, while keeping data in an in-country region (Auckland AWS/Azure or an NZ-owned provider) and applying Māori data-governance principles where Māori data is involved. The most notable indigenous-led language-AI effort is Te Hiku Media’s Papa Reo, which has built high-accuracy te reo Māori speech recognition — but it is offered via Te Hiku’s own API under the guardianship-based Kaitiakitanga License, so treat it as access-controlled context, not a drop-in open model to redistribute. Always check each model’s licence before commercial use.
osFoundry does not compete with Llama, Mistral or Qwen — it is an orchestration layer that runs those models via BYOK or locally. You can choose an open-weight model for a job that needs it, and switch to another model when that suits the task better.
How the roles compare
| Component | Role |
|---|---|
| Llama / Mistral / Qwen / Gemma derivatives | The language model — open-weight, run via BYOK or locally |
| osFoundry | The model-agnostic orchestration layer — runs those models, controls data, connects systems |
| dgm | An independent partner that helps choose models, design the architecture and implement |
A note on licences
Open-weight does not mean unconditional. Many models inherit usage restrictions from their base licences, so check each model’s licence before commercial use. Te Hiku Media’s te reo Māori Papa Reo work is offered under a guardianship-based Kaitiakitanga License — treat it as access-controlled context, not a redistributable open model.
Data and where it lives
osFoundry’s managed cloud can pin data to its US, EU or Japan regions — there is no managed New Zealand region (the nearest managed options are Australia or Japan). If you need data to stay in New Zealand, the practical options are real today: AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand), region ap-southeast-6 in Auckland, has been generally available since 1 September 2025, and Microsoft Azure New Zealand North (newzealandnorth, Auckland) is generally available — so you can self-host osFoundry in your own in-country cloud account (BYO cloud), or run it local-first on your own infrastructure. Google Cloud has no New Zealand region (the nearest is Sydney, australia-southeast1). There are also NZ-owned sovereign providers — Catalyst Cloud, Datacom and CCL/Revera — that keep data under New Zealand ownership and law. One caveat worth stating plainly: the US CLOUD Act (2018) lets US authorities compel data held by US-headquartered providers regardless of where it is physically stored, so an Auckland AWS or Azure region improves physical location and helps with the Privacy Act 2020 but does not by itself remove the jurisdictional exposure of a US-parent provider. Physical residency is not the same as jurisdictional sovereignty — verify the right region and provider for your own risk profile.
How dgm can help
dgm is an independent integration partner that helps New Zealand organisations put osFoundry to work — from choosing a worthwhile first use case through to the hands-on build and connecting it to the systems you already run. dgm can help New Zealand organisations choose and deploy open-weight models on osFoundry via BYOK or local-first. dgm is not affiliated with the company that makes osFoundry, and it has not yet completed any client integrations, so what is described here is the service dgm offers, not past results. If you want help scoping a realistic first project, dgm can work through it with you.