Amazon Web Services (AWS) asked Jacinda Ardern to appoint an "empowered" minister or senior officials to collaborate on getting an Overseas Investment Office consent without delays and to discuss bringing in skilled IT workers from abroad, among other things, an Official Information Act (OIA) response shows.
AWS also said: "We would very much like to discuss opportunities we see for fine-tuning New Zealand's policy settings that can support public sector cloud technology enablement", including how Amazon could meet the requirements to host highly classified data.
She could have just been upfront about it when initially asked, rather then not commenting "for confidential and commercial reasons". In the end it was visas and sponsorship like most international entities would ask for.