Custom D set to expand its specialised AI platform to Australian businesses after AWS agreement

Recognition provides visibility to local innovation and trust to aid customer adoption of unique AI services.

Custom D is set to expand its generative AI platform Caitlyn across Australia and New Zealand after signing a strategic collaboration agreement (SCA) with AWS.

The agreement gives Caitlyn and the New Zealand software business access to AWS resources, co-selling support and stronger alignment with AWS architecture and security best practices.

Custom D co-founder Julie Ryan said one of the main benefits of the agreement is that it helps to “de-risk adoption for its customers and offer more support to embed AI in their operations”.

Caitlyn is built with Amazon Bedrock and combines generative language models with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to unlock insights from multiple data sources such as customer interactions, domain knowledge bases and internal documentation.

“For organisations that have vast knowledge bases, where information is siloed or fragmented, we help them extract value from that,” said Ryan, speaking at this week’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

Ryan said the company’s focus is on helping organisations move beyond pilots into scalable deployments in industries with a need for accuracy and trust.

The aim is to tackle sector-specific problems, starting with agriculture, compliance and culture, where generic AI tools may not meet specific needs.

Caitlyn is currently used across agriculture, finance and media organisations including Kiwa Digital, Beef + Lamb New Zealand and New Zealand Geographic.

“This technology is helping drive meaningful change such as driving efficiencies in our farming practices and that starts right back with farmers that have this huge amount of information and it helps to that to a point where it delivers real value,” Ryan said.

Custom D’s recognition shows partners can deliver unique or differentiated capabilities to meet customer needs, such as preserving institutional knowledge, harnessing a deeper range of data and improving operations.

Custom D was award two AWS partner awards at this year’s AWS event.

It was recognised as innovation partner of the year for demonstrating excellent customer experience with end-to-end customer applications and services.

It also received the social impact award for giving back to communities through its technology, which includes working with Kiwa Digital to help preserve Indigenous languages.

The new agreement comes after Custom D was recognised with AWS Generative AI competency earlier in the year.

The business joined a small group of organisations in the region to be validated for delivering end-to-end GenAI solutions with capabilities, compliance and ongoing support.

Ryan told CRN Australia, “Those credentials are so important as it shows we’ve got the credibility and competency recognised by AWS and that helps differentiate us in the market.”

Rosalyn Page travelled to AWS Re:Invent 2025 as a guest of AWS.