Kernel 2025 Wrapped: Growth, AI and What’s Coming in 2026

December is the perfect time to pause and reflect on the year behind us. 2025 brought its share of headline-grabbing volatility and economic headwinds, but zoom out, and it's clear these are blips throughout your whole money journey.

Globally, the second half of 2025 saw share markets surge on massive AI investments and easing interest rates. Here in New Zealand, Kiwis navigated higher living costs and softer local conditions, with NZ shares generally trailing international peers.

Yet through it all, many of you stuck to the timeless habits that drive real wealth: consistent, disciplined investing.

1. Our Growth Story: How Kernel's assets more than doubled, driven by your consistent investing.

2. Market Performance: A snapshot of global and local markets, and how our funds have performed.

3. Your Real-World Goals: How Kernel investors are using their investments to achieve their aspirations.

I’ll also share what we’re working on next and what you can expect for 2026.

Data as at 1 year to 30 November 2025

Kernel's assets under management- the money you, our investors, have entrusted to us - more than doubled from $1.45 billion to $3.0 billion in just 12 months. This incredible 100%+ growth spans across Kernel Funds, Kernel Save, Kernel KiwiSaver Plan, and our new Kernel Shares & ETFs.

What fuelled it? Mostly your regular disciplined contributions.

Around $320 million also came from market gains, boosting our investor balances. This demonstrates the power of consistent investing, even through varied market conditions.

Global shares thrived on the back of AI infrastructure booms and rate cuts in key regions, delivering strong results in developed and emerging markets. NZ shares were more subdued amid local economic softness.

Meanwhile, bonds shone with higher yields and RBNZ rate cuts.

to give context on how different parts of a diversified portfolio can behave in the same year.

It’s a powerful reminder that diversification is your best defence against market volatility. It’s usually not wise to pick a fund based purely on last year’s returns. That’s like driving while only looking in the rear‑view mirror: it tells you where you’ve been, not where you’re going.

For a broadly diversified investor, the takeaway was simple: global shares provided majority of growth, NZ shares remained relatively stable, and bonds offered steady income & growth along the way.

(Data as at 1 year to 30 November 2025, after fees, before tax. Past performance isn't a guide to the future returns.)

For many investors, a pre-set, diversified portfolio forms the essential core of their wealth strategy. Kernel’s diversified funds continued to provide that core over the year to 30 November 2025:

• Cash Plus: +4.32%

• Balanced : +11.67%

• High Growth: +15.87%

These three funds offer an easy way to match your investment to your risk level and time horizon – from lower risk, income oriented investing in Cash Plus, through to growth focused exposure in High Growth.

Whether as a starting point for new investors or a foundational holding within a broader portfolio (particularly inside your Kernel KiwiSaver Plan), they deliver instant diversification across asset classes and geographies, with a low fee and transparent approach.

By using these diversified funds as the “core” of your portfolio, you can then build a more tailored “satellite” around them with our wider range of funds and Kernel Shares & ETFs – adding specific themes, markets or strategies, without losing the stability and structure of a strong core.

Tech, clean energy, and mega-caps dominated. Kernel standouts include:

• S&P Global Clean Energy: +56.73%

• Global 100: +32.17%

• Global 100 NZD Hedged: +26.00%

These three funds were exposed to the megatrends, like the energy transition and AI infrastructure investment, that dominated the investing landscape in 2025.

Not uniform, but far from flat:

• NZ 20: +1.41%

• NZ 50 ESG Tilted: +7.92%

• NZ Commercial Property: +12.38%

• NZ Small & Mid Cap Opportunities: +16.46%

Taken together, this shows that New Zealand shares are not one dimensional, it simply highlights that different parts of our local markets can move in different ways.

Knowing what role each NZ fund plays in your portfolio is more important as knowing its recent return.

NZ bond funds have contributed positively as the reserve bank cutting interest rates have created a favourable environment for this asset class:

1. NZ Bond Fund +7.90%

2. March 2029 NZ Bond Fund +6.20%

3. March 2027 NZ Bond Fund +5.76%

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has been cutting rates, however they now indicate that they have likely finished seeing that NZ economic conditions are improving. The yield curve has steepened, meaning longer term rates are quite a lot higher than the OCR.

This means that unless the economy improves dramatically and a number of rate hikes are needed then bond funds could earn a higher return than cash funds or term deposits.

This year wasn’t just about what markets did — it was also about giving you more ways to build a portfolio that matches your goals and timeframe.

1. Launching Kernel Shares & ETFs (growing from ~800 to 3,000+ US shares and ETFs).

2. Adding four new funds: World ex US, World ex US (NZD Hedged), Australia 100, and the Conservative Fund.

More choice matters because different goals need different tools. We're committed to building a comprehensive wealth system that adapts to your evolving needs.

Your goals tell the real story. The top ones set on Kernel this year?

1. General investing

2. Retirement

3. Buying a house

Clear signs many of you are building for the long term. Outside those, many focused on emergency funds, travel, and family milestones.

We’ve also seen more people using our smart tools to invest with intent, with an impressive 29.14% ofactive customers using Auto-invest to put investing on autopilot.

This discipline shines through in the numbers: 92.09% of orders were buys (that's 11.6 buys for every sell), even amid economic jitters.

And when Kiwis withdraw? It's often because they've hit real-life targets like home repairs, holidays, education, or family moments.

Investing isn't just numbers - it's having the option to use your money when it matters.

KiwiSaver continues to be a core part of how many Kiwis build long-term wealth with Kernel.

From 1 December 2024 to 31 November 2025:

• 7,155 people joined the Kernel KiwiSaver plan, including 686 first-time members and 6,469 who transferred from another scheme.

• A total of $353 million was transferred to the Kernel KiwiSaver plan.

• The Kernel KiwiSaver Plan helped fund 196 first homes and 27 retirees.

Globally, KiwiSaver sits within a broader trend: retirement systems relying more on individual investing decisions at a time when people are living longer and markets are more complex.

Our job is to make that as straightforward as possible, with transparent fees and intelligent tools that help you stay on track through different market cycles, rather than trying to time them.

If there’s one thing we’ve noticed in 2025, it’s that Kernel customers are an inquisitive bunch — and that’s a great sign. More questions usually means more people learning how the platform works, getting clearer on what they’re invested in, and building confidence over time.

Between 1 December 2024 and 30 November 2025, our team supported you, our customers, with:

• 34,708 conversations across email, chat, and phone, including 3,939 calls.

That’s 244% growth in conversations year-on-year - a big lift, and a reflection of how many of you are actively engaging with Kernel to understand your options and make informed decisions.

We’ve used these conversations to shape new help centre articles, podcast episodes and topics in The Seed. The aim is simple: to make it easier to understand what you’re invested in and why it behaves the way it does.

Equally we’re collating the feedback you’ve been submitting on the platform so please don’t be afraid to send more suggestions. This truly is an important part of how we shape the platform.

One of the clearest signs of what you care about is what you read. This year, the three most-viewed Kernel blogs were all about making smarter, more confident decisions - especially when it comes to costs, cash, and staying the course:

A deep dive into the hidden frictions NZ investors can run into (like tax and trading costs), and why structure matters, particularly with NZ ETFs..

Read more

A practical guide for choosing where to park your cash for short-term goals: where flexibility, after-tax returns, and access all matter.

Read more

A reminder that the biggest setbacks often come from avoidable behaviour - not bad markets.

Read more

Looking ahead, our ambition is to continue evolving Kernel into a dynamic wealth system rather than only being a fund manager. We're leveraging AI and advanced technology to build a platform that is not just intuitive, but truly intelligent.

• Growing our team to continue to continue to support your growth and our ambitious roadmap. Keep an eye out on our careers page.

• A more intuitive and intelligent dashboard that makes it easier to see contributions vs returns, and how your goals are tracking. PLUS – yes, a native app is in the works.

• Deeper goalsetting and tracking, so you can better connect each investment to a real-world outcome, powered by smarter insights.

• Incremental improvements to the Kernel KiwiSaver Plan and our investing tools, based on the feedback you’ve given us.

We’ll share more detail as these improvements are finalised and ready to roll out.

We’re deliberately cautious about timelines: it’s more important to build things that are robust, compliant and genuinely useful than to rush.

Expect to hear from us regularly on the above, plus a number of exciting new product developments that are coming your way. If you would like a recap, feel free to watch our recent webinar for some early insights on 2026.

Finally, a huge thank you.

Whether you’re just getting started with a small regular contribution, or you’ve entrusted a meaningful portion of your wealth to Kernel, we don’t take that responsibility lightly. Your questions, suggestions and even your critiques are a big part of how we keep improving.

We can’t control markets, and we can’t promise specific returns. What we can do is keep building an intelligent, transparent, and comprehensive platform that helps more New Zealanders invest with clarity, discipline and confidence over the long run.