How a Former Tax Lawyer Is Taking On Accounting’s Global Giants

“I was effectively my own first customer,” said Wierda. “I knew exactly what a busy adviser needed from a research tool, because I was one, and nothing on the market was giving it to me.”

Four years on, the Auckland-based company (formerly known as Law Cyborg) has more than 2,000 accounting and law firms across New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom using its technology, including two of the Big Four.

Nylon answers technical tax and legal questions by drawing on a defined set of trusted sources, including legislation, case law and commentary. Every answer comes back with in-text citations and a confidence score.

Wierda says that is the feature that matters most to accountants.

“When you sign your name to advice, you can’t just take an AI’s word for it. You need to see exactly where the answer came from and check it yourself. A tool that can’t show its working is of no use to a professional.”

To test how it stacks up against general-purpose AI, Nylon recently ran the first benchmark for Australian tax research. It put 91 questions from the CPA Program’s Australia Taxation module to its own system and to five leading AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

An independent AI model then graded every answer against expert reference answers, scoring correctness, completeness and how well each answer was backed by its cited sources.

Nylon tested highest on every measure, scoring almost 4.7 out of 5 overall, ahead of Claude (Fable 5.1) at 4.32 and ChatGPT (GPT-6 Astra) at 4.28. 

“General AI tools are impressive, but they’re trained to sound confident, rather than to ensure the accuracy that’s required by finance teams.

“That’s where Nylon is different. We pride ourselves on the accuracy of the information we give, and on showing exactly where every answer comes from.”

Alongside its AI answers, Nylon runs a traditional search with a citator, so practitioners can see how the courts have treated a given judgment, and it will review documents against the underlying law.

The company has also launched a meeting bot that sits in on client and advisory meetings. Rather than simply transcribing, it is built to spot issues, flagging a potential tax exposure or compliance risk and surfacing it in a summary at the end.

“Most note-takers just write down what was said. Ours actually understands the substance,” Wierda says. “It’s like having a sharp junior in every meeting who never misses a detail.”

Nylon can also be used from inside Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, letting users search its library without leaving the AI tool they already use. Every result links back to its source in Nylon so it can be checked before reaching a client.

The firm originated in New Zealand and expanded into Australia and the UK as demand grew. It covers all areas of New Zealand and Australian tax and legal research with the brand name reflecting their ambition.

“Nylon is the material in the gear the world’s best mountaineers rely on, and we want to be the software the world’s best tax and law advisers rely on,” Wierda says.

He says for many firms, Nylon is replacing the traditional research subscriptions they have paid for over decades.

“AI is fundamentally changing the way lawyers and accountants work, the world over. We want to be the ones building the technology they rely on and trust every day.”

For more visit usenylon.com