New York City is uniquely positioned to be a leader in this emerging eld but also especially vulnerable to white-collar job loss
We created this art with arti cial intelligence. Here are four takeaways from our experiment. PAGE 13
AI’s impact on New York’s future kindles mixed emotions.
PAGE 11
City government looks to AI to improve several areas of services.
PAGE 14
COMMENTARY: Four experts discuss local applications and implications for AI technology. PAGES 16-17
By Jack Grieve
New York is now one of the world’s leading tech hubs. The city edged out San Francisco in new early-stage startups last year. Some of the most notable tech IPOs are now being born in Manhattan. And more relocating tech workers are moving here than anywhere else in the U.S.
So is the city the next Silicon Valley,
CHASING GIANTS
Startup for job seekers prioritizes transparency around pay, location in shared postings
3
as those data points might suggest?
Industry experts, including folks inclined to paint a rosy picture for New York, admit we are not there yet — but the state of the industry here is strong, and the city should feel comfortable in its position as the country's No. 2 tech market.
We looked at three key aspects of tech in New York right now — venture capital investment, employment and the AI boom — to take the tempera-
ture of one of the city's hottest sectors. VC activity
Venture is one of the clearest lenses into a local tech sector because the data is precise and easily comparable across regions and time. Most of New York's venture activity involves tech rms, so a hot VC market has direct
GOTHAM GIGS
From public housing to the NFL and back to
By Nick Garber
Next month, New York City residents voting for president and local races will be asked to flip their ballots and vote on six lesserknown proposals — one focused on abortion rights, and five changes to the City Charter pushed by Mayor Eric Adams and his allies. As the election nears, a number of civic groups and left-leaning leaders have coalesced around a simple message: Vote yes on the first one, and no on the other five. The left-wing Working Families Party, good-government group Citizens Union and the Daily News editorial board have all urged voters to split their ballots in that fashion, by rejecting the five charter
“While
from the surprise defeat of three election reform ballot measures in 2021.
“The Democratic ecosystem seems to be all-in for the ERA,” said Trip Yang, a Democratic strategist, citing groups like labor unions and Planned Parenthood that have lent backing to the statewide proposal. “At the same time, there is a sizable coalition led by city leaders, urging New Yorkers to vote no on propositions 2 to 6.”
By asking voters to amend the state constitution to ban discrimination against “pregnancy outcomes” and “gender identity,”
several of the proposals have issues, the more alarming concern is the deeply flawed process in which the commission operated.”
Betsy Gotbaum, Citizens Union chair
amendments but approving the statewide measure known as the Equal Rights Amendment. The addition of Adams’ charter amendments has modestly complicated the push for the ERA, led by state Democrats who are still smarting
Join us for a live interview with Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the NYC Economic Development Corp. He’ll share his priorities and outlook on the New York City economy, where the economy is heading and how the EDC envisions the future for public-private partnerships.
Democrats hope that the ERA, which will be listed as Proposition 1, will both enshrine abortion rights and boost turnout among left-leaning voters, potentially aiding the party in its battleground U.S. House races. An electoral committee backing the proposal has raised over $2 million to push it — and defend against Republican attacks that the measure would affect children’s health care and allow transgender girls to play on girls’ youth sports teams.
Ballot proposals tend to command less attention than elections, meaning they require “voter education,” Yang said. Still, asking
voters to approve one proposal while rejecting others is not an insurmountable task, he said.
The five charter amendments stem from another power struggle, this one between Mayor Adams and the City Council. When the council signaled in May that it would ask voters to grant them new power over the mayor’s staffing appointments, the mayor quickly knocked that question from the November ballot by convening his own Charter Revision Commission — although City Hall denied any connection.
Adams’ handpicked allies ultimately produced proposals that would tighten rules about how the council studies the fiscal impact of new laws, slow the legislative process on bills that affect public safety, and expand the enforcement powers of the Sanitation Department, among others.
Council leaders including Speaker Adrienne Adams have blasted the proposed changes, even after they were softened from their initial versions. Lawmakers have aligned themselves with a campaign against the measures, dubbed No Power Grab NYC and led by groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In an online guide, the City Council argued the measures
“could weaken checks and balances, making city government less responsive to New Yorkers.”
Few have offered full-throated support for any of the proposals.
The hawkish Citizens Budget Commission endorsed the proposal requiring a closer study of the fiscal impacts of new laws, but the group also said it had wished for a stronger set of proposals to monitor spending and improve transparency.
Mayor Adams, for his part, has done little to promote the charter changes in recent months as he contends with his criminal case and more pressing political issues. But the mayor has previously praised the proposals as “thoughtful” and defended them as a sincere effort to improve government responsiveness.
Several of the charter revisions are modest, like easing permitting for film shoots and tweaking how the city plans for costly capital projects. Some of the groups opposing
the changes are focused mainly on the seemingly hasty three-month process that led to their adoption, more compressed than previous efforts to change the City Charter.
“While several of the proposals have issues, the more alarming concern is the deeply flawed process in which the commission operated,” Citizens Union chair Betsy Gotbaum said in a statement this month. “It worked under a hasty timeline, leaving no room for a thorough charter review or proper public input.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is challenging Adams for reelection, is among the local leaders who have endorsed Proposition 1 while arguing against the five charter changes. In a campaign email sent on Oct. 19, Lander called for their rejection — and acknowledged that they were flying under the radar.
“As I talk to voters, I find that most aren’t aware of this at all,” he said.
Office market may not recover from new buildings going up until 2030s, Silverstein
By Eddie Small
Larry Silverstein still sees a future for new office buildings in the city despite the sector's wellpublicized struggles, but it might take quite a few more years to arrive.
“My sense is by ’29, ’30 , ’31, ’32, you’re going to begin to see office buildings going up because the need is going to be there for a firstclass brand of office space,” the longtime Silverstein Properties chairman said. “So many of the buildings in Manhattan are 70, 80, 90 years of age, and they’re just too old.”
Silverstein made his remarks during an Oct. 22 Crain’ s event at 7 World Trade Center celebrating notable leaders across several different industries. His discussion with Crain’ s Editor Cory Schouten touched on subjects ranging from the company’s decision to name his daughter, Lisa Silverstein, CEO late in 2023 to his firm's recent takeover of Brooklyn Tower, and its long and ongoing attempt to find an anchor tenant for 2 World Trade Center, the final office tower in Silverstein Properties’ most famous development.
“The best thing I can do is to tell
you, keep tuned,” Silverstein said of the search, echoing remarks he made at an event with reporters in September. “You’re going to hear about something, read about something in the not very distant future. I'm 93, so if this is going to happen, it’s going to happen in my lifetime.”
Credit card giant American Express is rumored to be a possible anchor tenant for the project, but Silverstein would not comment on whether it was in negotiations for the space. He did note that he has used American Express for about 40 years.
Silverstein also provided updates on Brooklyn Tower, the Downtown Brooklyn skyscraper his firm recently took over, and 55 Broad St., the major office-to-residential conversion he and Metro Loft Management are working on in the Financial District. He confirmed that JDS Development has “no involvement” with the Brooklyn project at this point and said his company plans to just see the project through to completion.
“Our plans are pretty simple: Finish it,” he said. “Do what has to be done, and proceed to lease the
rental units, sell the condos, finish the retail and get on with it. Go to the next project.”
At 55 Broad St., Silverstein and Metro Loft are already starting to lease apartments, he said. Plenty of developers are still skeptical of such conversions, but Silverstein said that if 55 Broad St. is a success, which he maintains it will be, the company will look to buy other buildings for conversions as soon as next year.
The developer offered up some rare praise for 485-x, the affordable housing tax break that replaced 421-a in this year’s state budget, as well. Silverstein had pleaded with state lawmakers last year to restore 421-a, saying it was essential to his plan to build 3,200 apartments in Astoria, and multiple developers have since criticized 485-x as an inadequate substitute. Many developers have since said that 485-x isn't good enough, but Silverstein characterized it as a worthy 421-a replacement.
Silverstein’s firm parted with longtime CEO Marty Burger and named Lisa Silverstein chief executive last year. Although the move surprised many in the real estate community, Silverstein himself described giving his daughter the reins of the company as one of the great moments in his life.
“It’s hard to describe the joy, the satisfaction, the fulfillment that comes from being able to create something and then give it to one of your family members,” he said.
bandana co-founders say the inspiration behind the company stems from their parents’ struggle to find stable work
Xavier Reyes started looking for a job soon after graduating high school and turning 18 in May. By then, he’d applied to dozens of places, mainly through LinkedIn, but hadn’t found much success until one of his friends recommended he use Bandana in August. Within two weeks, he was hired as a store associate at Aldi’s supermarket chain in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, a 2-minute drive from where he lives.
“I was looking for a job that was better pay, something that was more mature than a McDonald’s or a fast food restaurant. Something that was more reliable for the time being for my future plans,” said Reyes, who is using this job to save enough money to go to school for computer science and buy a car. “Bandana actually gave me more information about the job than the hiring manager.”
much money they make.”
Bandana’s platform emphasizes location and accessibility in the job postings it shares. Users are greeted with jobs on the left side of the website and a map highlighting the city’s 36 subway lines on the other. A job-seeker can filter positions based on location, pay, and industry, among other factors. Each job listing scrapes the employers’ job portals to provide each applicant with weekly, monthly and yearly pay ranges. The platform also allows users to calculate their taxes to give them a clear idea of their take-home pay.
“We want to be the most transparent platform humanly possible because we think one of the biggest things missing in the market right now is this equality and information between the worker and the business,” Makalinao said.
While competitors like Indeed.com and ZipRecruiter are on one side of the spectrum, and on the other, LinkedIn, which bills itself as a “professional network” and whose positions mainly target white-collar workers, Bandana is trying to differentiate itself by focusing on transparency.
“This has been the segment that’s probably been most overlooked and underserved by technology today,” said Max Rimpel, a partner at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, which led funding for Bandana. What interested Rimpel was the Bandana team’s priority and desire to focus on their users’ skills and how they can best meet the job requirements.
Bandana is a Greenpoint-based startup focused on helping entry-level and hourly-wage workers find better-paying jobs with benefits close to the homes of job-seekers. Co-founded by Timothy Makalinao (CEO), Caleb Lee (COO), and Larry Zhang (CTO) in 2022 as Workwise, the company has raised $12.3 million, including an $8.5 million round in August. All three co-founders point to their upbringing and their parents’ struggles to find stable jobs as the inspiration behind the startup.
“I think [this] is where you start seeing the origins of Bandana: How do you attain financial security for those that haven’t been able to in the past?” said Makalinao, who came to the United States with his family from the Philippines when he was 6-years-old and whose mother worked a factory job for $12 an hour to support the family of four. “When we really thought about it, it didn’t come down to, ‘Can you create investment tools for people? Can you create ways for people to have better IRAs or taxes?’ The best way to help working-class people is actually to improve how
Jobseekers don’t pay to use the platform. Companies will pay Bandana a fee to sponsor their job postings and have them appear at the top of the searches, but jobs will be posted to the platform regardless of whether a company pays for it or not. By the end of September 2024, Bandana reported 100,000 monthly users looking for jobs across the five boroughs in New York City, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and Westchester. Bandana expanded to Los Angeles in late September and the company claims 15,000 users have been hired from job postings found on the site.
The reigning Goliath: Indeed.com
Indeed.com, launched in 2004 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, and Stamford, Connecticut, has become one of the leading job board websites in the world — operating in over 60 countries. The company was acquired in 2012 by Recruit Holdings, a Japanese human resources holding company that’s currently valued at $68.25 billion. As of March 2024, Indeed.com said it has over 350 million monthly unique users and over 3.5 million employers using the platform to hire workers.
“The idea is not to use this shotgun approach where you fire your application to 400 jobs, but to really flag the five, six jobs that are most suitable to you and that most align with your skill set, your dreams and your ambitions,” Rimpel added. “I think that makes for a much healthier labor market where you don’t have people start and then churn after three months because the location isn’t great, the benefits aren’t great.”
Over the next few months, the Bandana team is rolling out new features to continue tailoring their platform to the needs of entry-level and hourly job hunters. One of them prompts users to fill out a profile with their job priorities: rate, industry, role, borough, etc.
Makalinao said competitors seem more incentivized to send job seekers any position, regardless of whether someone is qualified, because these companies make money per job posting click. Bandana’s more targeted effort will allow people to apply for jobs that are more in line with their skillsets and desires.
“That is like the intentionality of helping people save time and applying to jobs that they really care about without spamming the internet.”
Olivia Bensimon is a freelance journalist in New York City.
It features three bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, a fireplace and a 120-square-foot terrace
By C. J. Hughes
It may be a small purchase by the standards of Qatar, the natural gas-rich Middle Eastern nation that’s a massive investor in New York real estate. But the deal does add to the country’s diverse and extensive property portfolio all the same.
Qatar's prime minister has acquired a residential condo at 64 University Place, a new 11-story project in Greenwich Village from Manhattan developer Argo Real Estate and the India-based real estate firm Bsafal.
Based on information shared after this story was published by a person familiar with the deal, the apartment will not function in any official capacity but instead serve as a pied-a-terre for Prime Minister Al Thani's children when they are in New York.
Alaeldin Dafalla, a spokesman for Qatar’s United Nations office in the city, declined to comment.
$9.8M
The apartment, which features three bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and 2,600 interior square feet, plus a 120-square-foot terrace, went for $9.8 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register on Oct. 18.
The buyer is officially listed as a shell company, Greenwich Seagull LLC, and a lawyer representing the company, Edan Pinkas of Schwartz Levine Pinkas Stark, signed the deed at the Oct. 9 closing. Reached by phone, Pinkas declined to comment.
But the contract for the unit, which was drawn up in January 2023, bears the name and signature of Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.
Details about the unit itself are scarce. It and others at the 28-unit condo, which was approved to start marketing in 2022, appear to have been shopped around mostly by word of mouth, and few photos of its apartments exist online. But the prime minister's new unit is one of just five in the building to have outdoor space, according to the offering plan, which also mentions that it has a fireplace. The unit came with a separate storage area as well.
Qatar and its top leaders, who hail from the country's centuriesold royal family, Thani, have been high-profile buyers and sellers of New York real estate for years.
In June, Qatar listed its official New York residence, 21 Beekman Place, a 7,300-square-foot prewar townhouse near the United Nations in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, for $32 million. Former Qatari emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani paid $32 million for the
By Eddie Small
The former landlord of a recently shuttered Neptune Diner site has purchased a storefront in a luxury condo building in Astoria.
Thomas Anagnostopoulos is the new owner of the retail condo at 21-21 31st St., known as the Rowan Astoria, which he bought from the project's developer, RockFarmer Properties, for about $6.3 million, property records show. The site is located less than a mile away from the diner's old location, at 3105 Astoria Blvd. North.
Anagnostopoulos' plans for the retail space were not immediately clear. Nick Tsoromokos, an attorney who represented Anagnostopoulos in the sale of the Neptune Diner's Astoria site, did not respond to a request for comment by press time. And Sarando Katsihtis,
property in 2013. It remains on the market.
Qatar also still appears to control 7-9 E. 72nd St., a sprawling residence on the Upper East Side combined from two adjacent Beaux-Arts townhouses that the same emir purchased in 2002.
And the country, which typically invests through its sovereign wealth fund, the 18-year-old Qatar Investment Authority, shelled out $3.8 billion alongside developer Brookfield to create the sweeping megaproject by Hudson Yards known as Manhattan West. QIA and Brookfield sold a 49% stake in
$2.9 billion.
Brookfield, ESRT investments
Qatar also owns a 9% stake in Brookfield overall after a $1.8 billion investment in 2014. It served as an investor in the splashy condos at 1 Wall Street and 432 Park Ave, and has owned a nearly 10% stake in Empire State Realty Trust, the firm that controls the Empire State Building, since 2016 as well, according to The Real Deal
The condo at 64 University Place, which sits between East 10th and East 11th streets, expects a sales haul of $135 million, according to the offering plan. It seems almost all the way there, with 24 of its 28 units sold, property records show.
Argo and Bsafal bought the site for $30 million in 2019 and borrowed $47 million for the project, whose mortgages are currently held by Deutsche Bank, records show.
Mark Moskowitz, Argo’s president and CEO, was unavailable for comment by press time.
whose father, Peter Katsihtis, coowned the Neptune Diner in the Queens neighborhood for roughly 40 years, had no immediate comment on the transaction.
The Rowan Astoria was built in 2021 and has 46 residential units, according to commercial real estate database CoStar. The overall property spans about 100,000 square feet, stands six stories tall, and the retail space spans about 22,000 square feet, according to CoStar and RockFarmer's website.
Building amenities include a pet spa and a fitness center, RockFarmer’s site says. A phone message left at the firm’s office, located right by the Long Island border in Queens, was not returned by press time.
The building has a two-bedroom
condo for sale at about $1.6 million and a one-bedroom apartment for rent at $3,900 per month, according to StreetEasy.
The Astoria location of Neptune Diner closed over the summer after the building was sold to new owners for a likely redevelopment, as Crain's previously reported. The popular eatery had previously faced threats of shutting down, in
2015 and 2022, but managed to survive both times.
Tsoromokos told Crain's in July that the sale of the diner site would likely close within the next 45 days, but a deed for the property had not appeared in city records as of early afternoon Monday. The Thomas Anagnostopoulos Family Trust had bought the site in 2018 for $10.3 million, according to property records.
The Katsihitis family still runs Neptune Diner locations in Crown Heights and Bayside and has been working on opening one in Nassau County as well.
The Astoria branch was one of many diners in the city that closed in the past few years. Factors have included rising food and supply costs, inflation and fewer customers.
state’s Republicans have abandoned their moderate posture and fully embraced the nativist Donald Trump
There was a time, in the 2010s, when it was argued that the Republican Party in New York only had a future if it followed a path of moderation.
To win, a Republican would have to tack left on social issues and embrace, to a degree, immigration. Rudy Giuliani had once been a pro-immigrant mayor. After Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012, a GOP autopsy report called for Republicans to soften language around immigration. Nativism, they contended, would have to be shed from the party.
In New York, the model Republicans were Chris Gibson and John Katko, two congressmen who often bucked the national party and were openly skeptical of Donald Trump’s incendiary politics. Nicole Malliotakis, the 2017 Republican candidate for mayor, distanced herself from Trump, as did Marc Molinaro, who ran unsuccessfully against then-governor Andrew Cuomo in 2018.
that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs.
e reality now is straightforward: Trump dominates the New York GOP and there is no such thing as an anti-Trump wing. Skeptics have been converted. Almost all Republicans — even those courting Democrats in swing districts — back Trump.
Although Trump is not popular overall in New York, the Queens native is beloved by Republicans. Independents angry about in ation and immigration have gravitated to his message. If Republicans like Katko once won multiple elections in left-leaning districts by defying Trump — and a few nationally, like Don Bacon of Nebraska and Susan Collins of Maine, still do this — there is no evidence of that independent spirit in New York today.
Win or lose in November, the New York Republican Party is the party of Trump.
agreements.
Today, Malliotakis and Molinaro are both in Congress. And they are unequivocal Trump supporters, parroting his xenophobic rhetoric. Molinaro, who represents a version of Gibson’s old Hudson Valley district, recently promoted the absurd Trump lie
Why this has happened is an interesting question with no simple answer. Trump has found some popularity by jettisoning, in rhetoric at least, the scally conservative planks of the GOP. Unlike George W. Bush, Trump doesn’t talk about privatizing Social Security. He has also won the backing of some New York union house-
Energized Republican base
Trump’s attacks on immigrants have energized the Republican base, too. Immigrants make an easy scapegoat. Crime increases can be blamed on them, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. Anti-immigrant nationalism will always hold appeal.
Republicans have also been able to win over a number of ex-Democrats in the Covid era by decrying the old lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Lee Zeldin, in 2022, was nearly elected governor as a Trump Republican and an opponent of mandates. Zeldin’s near-defeat of Kathy Hochul was evidence, for many Republicans, that it was better to run toward Trump not away from him.
Even if Kamala Harris wins the
presidential election, she appears on track to perform signi cantly worse than Joe Biden in New York. If Trump secures more than 40% of the vote here, he could help bolster GOP congressional candidates and further a rm that his path is the only path. is is lousy news for the vanishing number of anti-Trump Republicans who are looking for a break from this chaotic era. Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
By Nick Garber
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will stop asking elected ocials to ll out a form in order to meet with or request action from city agency leaders. e retreat comes in response to months of loud criticism from lawmakers, and the impending passage of a City Council bill that would have nulli ed the policy.
e administration said Oct. 21 it had reached a deal with the council to eliminate the form in
between the council and administration over the form-killing legislation, which was expected to pass on Oct. 23. But the mayor has been willing to battle the City Council on other issues, and his capitulation may point to his weakened political standing in the wake of his indictment.
The mayor relented as the City Council was poised to nullify the controversial screening system.
exchange for lawmakers dropping their bill. Council members will still need to complete a form to meet directly with Mayor Adams but will no longer need to do so to speak to agencies, mayoral spokesman Fabien Levy said in a statement.
e deal averted a likely lawsuit
Lawmakers lambasted the socalled Elected O cials Agency Engagement Request portal when it was created in April, saying it upended the decades-old practice of lawmakers directly contacting agency o cials to request a meeting or seek help for a constituent issue. Some lawmakers have simply ignored the form in the ensuing months and reached out to agency o cials directly, as they previously had.
Critics saw the form as gatekeeping by a micromanaging mayor, even as administration o cials insisted it was intended only to streamline services, centralize requests and level the playing eld
to ensure that newly elected o cials are not disadvantaged compared to government veterans with more extensive contacts.
Lincoln Restler, a Brooklyn councilman who sponsored the bill that would have negated the form, said in a statement, “I’m pleased that this silly and reckless form is a thing of the past, so that all elected o cials in New York can get back to working effectively with Parks, Sanitation, DOE and other agencies to keep our city safe, healthy and clean.”
At a tense City Council hearing in May, Restler said he had spoken to more than a dozen Adams administration o cials who admitted to being “embarrassed” by the policy. Restler said the form impaired lawmakers’ ability to get help on issues like illegal dumping or cannabis stores near schools, while mayoral adviser Ti any Raspberry countered that the administration had successfully elded dozens of requests through the system.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is dropping a controversial policy that required elected of cials to ll out a form to request help from city agencies. BUCK ENNIS
“While agency requests will no longer require a form, our intergovernmental a airs team here at City Hall will work to ensure elected o cials have equitable and timely access to our agencies,” said Levy, the City Hall spokesman. “Our administration remains committed to transparency and continuing to make it easier for all elected o cials to communicate with our agencies and o cials, and through this agreement, we are striking that balance.”
By Ethan Geringer-Sameth
A director at the state’s O ce of Mental Health agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for allegedly using sta resources to win a lucrative prize.
Dr. Ralph Nixon, a director at the agency’s Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, paid the state lab he runs $325,000 in settlement funds after a state ethics investigation found he enlisted his lab’s time and resources to apply for a prestigious prize focused on Alzheimer’s disease research. e settlement is the largest ever secured by the state’s Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, according to spokeswoman Emily DeSantis.
County. e money he paid out will go back to his center through a nonpro t, e Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, according to the settlement.
In 2020, while applying for part of a $2 million award under the Oskar Fischer Prize from the University of Texas, Nixon allegedly instructed lab sta employed by the state to assist in his proposal, which ultimately netted him $500,000 and a keynote speech, according to a settlement with the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.
In 2020, while applying for part of a $2 million award, Dr. Ralph Nixon allegedly instructed lab staff employed by the state to assist in his proposal.
Nixon is the director of the Center for Dementia Research and of the Laboratories for Molecular Neuroscience, both part of the Nathan Kline Institute in Rockland
Nixon, who also holds a position at NYU Langone School of Medicine, “made nalizing the Prize entry a priority for the lab,” the settlement states. State sta assisted in several aspects of the research and editorial process, including preparing gures, creating citations, editing references and reviewing drafts, according to the settlement.
e settlement is one of the largest secured by a state ethics commission in recent history. It is close in size to a $330,000 civil penalty the Legislative Ethics Commission secured in 2013 against
former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who resigned following accusations of sexual misconduct, the biggest settlement for the body at the time. Nixon settled the case independently of the O ce of Mental Health, which will review the settlement, according to spokesman Justin Mason. He added the agency could not discuss personnel matters when asked whether Nixon received any discipline.
Nixon has brought in a lot of money for the institute as a leading researcher on drugs aimed at
slowing or preventing the onset of Alzheimer's. In 2017, he was one of a handful of scientists at the institute to receive a part of a $20 million federal grant focused on the cellular and genetic components of the disease. In 2022, he was tapped by sta at the University of Texas at San Antonio to apply for the award, which was focused on nding the most cogent explanation of the causes of the degenerative brain disorder based on available research.
“ is was a happy outcome and
adds to the pile of money he’s brought to the institute for its research,” said Ed Wallace, a lawyer with Greenberg Traurig, which represented Nixon. John Kaehny, executive director of the government watchdog, Reinvent Albany, cheered the settlement for upholding that state’s ethics laws.
“Now COELIG, please do about a hundred times more to keep up with New York government's culture of corruption and pervasive con ict of interest,” he said.
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As the Nov. 5 election approaches, it’s imperative for New Yorkers to engage with the issues at hand, including several pivotal questions on the reverse side of the ballot. Early voting starts on Oct. 26, and this year, beyond choosing elected o cials, voters have the opportunity — and responsibility — to shape policies directly a ecting our city’s future.
e decisions we make at the polls will reverberate through our streets, our markets and our boardrooms for years to come.
◗ Ballot Question 1: The New York Equal Rights Amendment is statewide proposition seeks to enshrine abortion access and prohibit discrimination against additional classes of individuals under the state constitution. While controversy surrounds this amendment — particularly regarding parental rights and transgender participation in sports — the New York City Bar Association has debunked these as misconceptions. For the business community, this
amendment isn’t just about social issues; it's about ensuring a fair and equitable work environment that can attract diverse talent, which is crucial for innovation and growth.
◗ Ballot Question 2: Sanitation and city cleanliness is proposal, which will appear only on New York City ballots, would grant the Sanitation Department authority to clean additional city-owned properties and enforce trash containerization. Cleaner streets and public spaces enhance the city's appeal to tourists and residents alike, potentially boosting local commerce and improving the quality of life in commercial districts. e measure would also expand Sanitation’s authority to enforce laws around street vendors — and issue nes — within parks and other city-owned spaces.
◗ Ballot Question 3: Fiscal estimates for city legislation is question would require the New York City Council to provide cost estimates
before proceeding with legislation, ensuring that businesses and taxpayers understand thenancial implications of new laws. is push for transparency could lead to more informed decision-making and potentially stave o costly mandates.
e process for getting to these questions was rushed, politicized and lacked su cient public input. A better process might have led to stronger outcomes, especially on Ballot Question 3. e other three questions on city ballots delve into the minutiae of city governance or focus primarily on the power dynamics between the City Council and the mayor. ey are less critical to the broader business community. However, understanding them remains bene cial for those deeply invested in the nuances of city management.
Each question, from constitutional rights to sanitation powers, weaves into our city’s operational and cultural framework. As voters, it’s crucial not only to participate but to do so with an understanding of how these measures a ect our immediate business climate and the broader societal landscape.
Let’s turn our ballots over this year, not just out of duty but out of a vested interest in the future of our city.
Global temperatures set a new record each of the rst six months of 2024, continuing an alarming trend that has intensi ed the e ects of climate change across the globe. Here in Queens, we are far from immune from the impacts of the climate crisis. Coastal and working-class neighborhoods in our borough have felt the brunt of these extreme changes for years, with small businesses and vulnerable communities disproportionately shouldering the burden.
As the impacts of climate change accelerate, the local economy — especially our beloved small businesses — face growing threats. We have seen severe weather damage to property, and the extreme heat we experienced over the summer reduced foot tra c in our commercial corridors. Small-business owners are already grappling with rising energy costs, and without strong action, these pressures will only intensify. New York State has set ambitious goals to mitigate the worst e ects of climate change. e Climate Leadership and
Community Protection Act (CLCPA), passed in 2019, commits to reaching 100 percent zero-emission energy by 2040. While this is a crucial step, a recent state report shows we are not yet on track to meet the 2030 cleanenergy target. But we cannot a ord to give up — our future depends on decisive action.
After Climate Week NYC brought together leaders from across industries to discuss solutions last month, it is important to highlight projects that are already making a tangible di erence in our borough. e
Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is one such project. is 1,250-megawatt transmission line will deliver enough renewable energy to power over one million New York homes, including many right here in Queens.
Although the CHPE is a signi cant step forward, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. e real challenge is ensuring that projects like this help alleviate the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change on our businesses and communities.
Queens is already struggling with environmental injustices — neighborhoods like Astoria, known as "Asthma Alley," su er from high rates of respiratory illnesses linked to fossil fuel consumption. Transitioning to clean energy is essential not only for our environment but also for the health of our residents.
e business community must also be part of the solution. Queens’ small businesses are already adapting to a changing climate, whether it's investing in energye cient technologies or nding ways to lower their carbon footprints. at’s why the Chamber launched the Queens is Green initiative — a partnership aimed at keeping energy costs low for our businesses while striving to make Queens County the greenest county in the state. However, our businesses need additional support. Government incentives, a ordablenancing options, and accessible training programs must be expanded to help small businesses transition to greener operations.
Our borough is proud to be home to the CHPE's converter station, which broke ground last year in Astoria. e transformation of a former fossil fuel site into a clean energy hub represents a new era for Queens, with cleaner air, healthier residents and a stronger local economy. e
CHPE will not only provide nearly 20 percent of New York City’s power, but it will also create 1,400 union jobs during construction, a vital boost for our community.
As business and government leaders, we recognize that the impacts of climate change are already being felt across Queens. From ooding to heatwaves, extreme weather events are making it harder for our small businesses to thrive. at’s why we’re advocating for a future where clean energy is more accessible, energy costs are kept low and small businesses have the tools they need to remain resilient.
We urge our fellow policymakers to focus not just on ambitious goals but on the practical steps needed to achieve them. Projects like the CHPE show that progress is possible, but we need to replicate this success across the board. Our small businesses — and the communities they serve — are counting on it.
The operations and functions of the city must continue despite the travails facing Mayor Eric Adams.
New Yorkers—individuals and businesses—must be able to count on the services from the city administration that are crucial to their well-being, including those that sustain and expand economic development opportunities, enterprise growth, entrepreneurship, equity and access to capital. This is vital to all business owners, but especially crucial to women and minorities seeking greater access to New York City contracts for their services and products. These programs are the foundation of growing minority-owned businesses and strengthening the economic fabric of communities of color. They should be expanded.
reduction in major crimes, an all-time high in employment, managed the 2023 budget freeze which was migrant asylum seeker-related, and has moved forward with the visionary “City of Yes” so we can build more housing. I commend Mayor Adams on his leadership and the results he’s delivered for New York City given the daunting circumstances the city has endured recently.
Eric Adams has dealt with a series of crises to navigate since stepping into his role as mayor in 2021. He led the city through the COVID pandemic, he’s overseen the
In June 2008 I signed four MWBE bills into law to ensure minority business participation in New York State. The bills were a necessary step in advancing the state’s procurement process by removing strenuous barriers for MWBEs. I’ve said it before, and I will continue to say that there is still much work to be done to correct disparities in government contracting. However, it is important to highlight the impact that the Adams administration has had on the success of MWBE business participation in New York since 2021.
In recent years, the city has taken a huge
step forward in correcting the historic disparities by ensuring that there is more transparency regarding the certification and procurement processes. The city’s office of Small Business Services hosted the 2023 Citywide MWBE Procurement Fair, which saw a record of 1,254 MWBEs in attendance. The results of this fair led to more than 1,100 firms receiving new MWBE certifications, culminating in a citywide total of over 11,000 certified MWBEs in 2024. Over $930 million in city contracts via Local Law 1 were awarded to 1,650 certified MWBEs. It is imperative that firms are aware of the procurement opportunities available to them as well as the access to capital that is available throughout the city.
The Adams Administration is leading the economic recovery in an inclusive way with a record number of MWBEs winning more than $3 billion in city contracts under Local Law 1. Since appointing Michael Garner as chief diversity officer of the city, it is clear that the city has put an emphasis on minority business participation. Due to the efforts to increase minority business participation, the city has exceeded the
citywide goal of 30%. In 2024 the MWBE utilization rate reached roughly 35%, with $5.2 billion in MWBE contracts and roughly $285.5 million awarded using the MWBE Small Purchase Method, a tool that allows city agencies to award contracts to MWBEs faster and more efficiently. Compared to 2021 when Adams took office, the MWBE utilization rate was only 25%. Under his leadership, the city will continue the upward trajectory of MWBE participation and utilization in New York City.
New York city is uniquely positioned to be a leader in this emerging field but also is especially vulnerable to white-collar job loss
By Valerie Block
Two New York institutions teamed up to bring generative artificial intelligence features to millions of tennis fans at this year’s U.S. Open. TV hosts touted AI-generated summaries delivered online minutes after each singles match by IBM’s watsonx. The summaries offered instantaneous analyses of player performance, statistics and match highlights.
The tennis fans’ treat was just another example of AI's rapid advance into the
mainstream since the late 2022 launch of ChatGPT. Everybody’s talking about it. New York companies are jumping on it. Startups are proliferating. And everyone’s jittery about the impacts of generative AI.
New York is poised to capitalize on this latest tech craze. The city is the secondmost valuable tech hub in the world with an ecosystem worth more than $700 billion, according to the New York City’s Economic Development Corp. But the latest advances in artificial intelligence also stand to shake up the landscape like never before, especially in New York.
A recent Citigroup report posited that a whopping 54% of finance jobs could be ripe for automation. And not just back-office positions. Analysts, data processors, traders and others could be in the crosshairs. Paralegals and lawyers are also vulnerable. AI can analyze reports, write briefs, sift through mountains of data and generate images, often more efficiently than humans.
The speed at which the technology is progressing can be breathtaking, and frightening, as it threatens to upend white-collar jobs, the ones that power New York City. Data research firm Burning Glass
CROSSROADS UNDERWRITERS:
Institute recently published a study predicting that finance and tech jobs — some of the highest-paying in the city — would be the most vulnerable to elimination.
“New York is probably more susceptible to job losses because of generative AI than most places — maybe all places,” said Gad Levanon, chief economist at Burning Glass, “because business and finance jobs and the white-collar office-related jobs are at the top of the list, and many of them are in New York.”
At the same time, AI could juice global banking sector profits, rising from just over $1.7 trillion to close to $2 trillion by 2028, the report said.
“So workers that are going to be eliminated by generative AI will suffer, but at the same time, the companies and the top executives will benefit, because their profits will go up and their bonuses will go up,” Levanon said.
Despite the hype, a recent Goldman Sachs report questions whether AI will live up to its promise, both financially and in terms of complex problem solving. The bank expects capex investment to top $1 trillion in the years to come, “including significant investments in data centers, chips, other AI infrastructure, and the power grid. But this spending has little to show for it so far beyond reports of efficiency gains among developers.”
Optimists say the technology, considered perhaps the most disruptive ever for the human race, promises to create jobs as well eliminate them.
“There could be a shift in who's getting the jobs and who's not getting the jobs. And that could create some turmoil, for sure,” said David Donovan, vice president and managing director at Sapient Global Markets. “But like any new technology, if you think about when the internet came along and, you know, it had this huge euphoria, and then it had a crash. But then came companies like Google and Facebook, and so that'll happen with this, only faster.”
New York’s economy has ably navigated technological change before. According to the city’s Economic Development Corp., more than 85% of job growth over the last 85 years has been in jobs or industries that did not exist in 1940.
Cecilia Kushner, executive vice presi-
dent and chief strategy officer at the EDC, foresees job growth from AI rather than the opposite.
“We're going to have a lot of new positions, and a lot of new occupations actually emerge out of the use of AI, and it's pretty unclear at this juncture what is going to be the ratio of transition to new creation,” she said. “Our role at EDC is to try to make sure that we support the industry in a way that creates the most jobs that are accessible to the most diverse set of New Yorkers,
Financial services and professional services are huge employers in New York. they account for 1.2 million jobs, roughly 28.1% of all private sector employment in the city. they are also among some of the most susceptible to AI disruption.
with the most companies here to really try to take advantage of the technology, rather than be a victim of it.”
New York is already home to 25,000 tech-enabled startups, according to the Center for an Urban Future, with more on the way. Venture capital funding for city startups increased to $7.72 billion in the second quarter of 2023, the EDC said, up 43% from the prior quarter and 74% from a year earlier. At its current pace, 2024 VC funding is on track to exceed 2023 totals.
And AI companies are grabbing an increasing share of that money. Companies focused on AI received $21.4 billion in VC funding from 2018 to 2022, up from $3.8 billion in the previous five-year period, according to the EDC. New York is home to 35 AI unicorns like Hugging Face and Runway that together have raised $17 billion. The makeup of that list shows New York playing to its strengths. As the financial capital, it has long led in fintech, and AI will only continue that trend, observers
According to a separate report from Citigroup, banking and insurance will see the highest percentage of jobs become automated or augmented by AI, confirming the Burning Glass/SHRM findings.
New York City is the world’s second-largest tech ecosystem, according to Startup Genome. the city is home to more than 25,000 tech-enabled startups with an ecosystem value above $694 billion in 2023. AI startups earned some of the city’s largest VC investments that year.
A recent Citigroup report posited that a whopping 54% of finance jobs could be ripe for automation, but experts predict gradual change through attrition.
say. With companies like Pfizer headquartered here, life sciences is another area where the city excels and where AI is already advancing lifesaving solutions. And New York is even competitive in clean tech, with a vibrant community of startups located at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
Creative destruction
New York’s tech community has gone through its ups and downs. The city was a leader in the days of the Bell Laboratories Building through the 1950s, but lost that crown to California with the rise of the computer and the internet. As an answer to Silicon Valley’s dominance, New York’s technorati in the mid-1990s dubbed the city’s tech scene Silicon Alley, referring to a corridor in the Flatiron District that centered on media and advertising tech, with booming companies like Double Click, Razorfish and agency.com leading the way.
In 2001, the dot-com bubble burst, and many New York startups collapsed. The city’s tech scene came back to life with the launch of New York Tech MeetUp in 2004 to help tech entrepreneurs connect with each other. By 2010, tech had made a full comeback, driven by the rise of social media, mobile apps and e-commerce. Companies like Tumblr, Foursquare and Etsy emerged as key players, and major tech companies like Google and Facebook moved in.
“Along the way, there were over 2,000 different tech meetups in New York,” said Andrew Rasiej, a pioneer of the early tech scene and co-founder of CivicHall, a coworking and event space supporting tech startups. “There were education tech meetups, food tech meetups, health care tech meetups, AI tech meetups, gaming tech meetups, VR tech meetups, quantum computing tech meetups. There were literally 1,000s of different meetups that were happening on their own.”
New York has continued the growth, evidenced by the major firms growing roots in the city. Facebook in 2020 signed one of the biggest leases in the city’s history, for 1.5 million square feet. Google also expanded dramatically, as has Amazon. Home-grown success stories like Etsy, Warby Parker and SquareSpace continue to thrive.
The digital transformation of traditional companies adds to New York’s tech strength.
“What was happening was that Fortune 500 companies like Citibank were converting themselves from being analog businesses into becoming digital businesses,” Rasiej said. “And so, The New York Times is a digital company, right? Citibank is a digital company. It just happens to deliver banking services.”
Boosters argue that New York is wellpositioned to take advantage of the AI boom.
“Last year, as soon as AI became an important tool, New York almost immediately took second place” to Silicon Valley, said the EDC's Kushner. “And I think that really speaks to our core advantages,” she said, noting a “a very robust tech ecosystem” consisting of hundreds of incubators, ac-
celerators, startups and major universities like Columbia and NYU.
“Our really big second competitive advantage is that we have some of the biggest industries that will use AI. That's finance, that's health care, that's marketing, that's law,” Kushner said. “It's really rare to find a city that has an economy that is so diversified and robust that you have an endless number of buyers and users of the tool located in one single municipality. We have that, and so we really think that New York City is going to be the global center for applied AI.”
Life sciences show great promise, she said, and the EDC is helping to grow the sector with LifeSci NYC, a $1 billion-plus initiative which the agency says is on track to create 1,000 companies and 40,000 jobs, and generate $82 billion in overall economic impact over the next 10 to 15 years.
One startup, EvolutionaryScale, backed by Nvidia and founded by ex-Meta AI researchers, recently closed $142 million in seed money to use its AI model to build proteins.
Another startup, Paige, a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Care spinout, recently rolled out an updated image-based AI model for cancer diagnosis, the EDC said.
Fintech is another promising area. New York has been a leader in fintech for decades, “so AI is just another transformation,” Kushner said. The city is home to 4,000 financial startups, according to the Center for an Urban Future, and has averaged about 20% of the nation’s venture capital investment since 2019, with a peak of 26.6% in 2022, per CBInsights. Wall Street firms are known for developing their own custom tech trading programs.
And AI-driven clean tech isn’t just a California thing. The EDC’s climate innovation program at Brooklyn Army Terminal offers companies the opportunity to pilot new and emerging technologies. Participants include Benchmark Labs, a startup that aims to provide more accurate AI-based weather forecasts; Matcha, a turnkey electric vehicle charging solution for multi-tenant property owners; and Revert Technologies which makes smart power adapters that use AI and utility grid analytics to reduce carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, it’s too soon to tell how these developments will affect New York’s tax base. Many high-paying, white-collar jobs that are here today could be gone tomorrow, while corporations and shareholders could be beneficiaries.
Still, most observers agree that massive job losses will not come overnight, but will happen partly through attrition over years.
“The impact, when and where it will be felt, that scale is a long time away,” said Sree Sreenivasan, co-founder and CEO of Digimentors and a visiting professor of digital innovation and audience engagement at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism. “The last elevator operators in New York were there not too long ago, but they could have been eliminated 50 years earlier, right?” he added.
Local government, one of the city’s biggest employers, has no intention of eliminating positions because of AI, said Matt Fraser, New York City’s chief technology officer.
“We don't have enough people, and that's evident in the backlog of some of the services that we provide,” he said. “What AI gives us the capability to do is not replace [jobs], but give [employees] the resources and time to focus on the things that are most critical. For us, there's no point that we can see in our current view where we would be able to replace a human with AI technology and reduce jobs.”
By Jason McGregor
“Maybe a story about AI could benefit from art created with AI.”
That was the premise behind the illustration featured in this story, "AI's impact on New York's future kindles mixed emotions," which looks at the potential effects of generative artificial intelligence on New York City’s economy and workforce.
As someone relatively new to the AI world, I started this experiment with both excitement and some trepidation. In the end I found a way to create art with AI, but the journey to get there wasn’t what I expected and sometimes resulted in moments of hilarity, such as when AI created a new emotion called “sadnity.”
This experiment used ChatGPT/DALL-E 3 to create the images. Other image generation AI tools exist, and someone with more experience using the different tools might end up with very different results, but I still think sharing the process I went through offers some unique insights and takeaways.
Takeaway 1: Complex illustrations still require a human artist.
I started this process by giving ChatGPT the following persona along with background on our audience:
“You're an experienced art director with a keen eye for visuals and illustration. You work for a business publication that has a savvy audience that appreciates sophisticated art. They enjoy the editorial art featured on the cover of The New Yorker and on New York Times and Washington Post stories.”
After sending ChatGPT an overview of the story, which is something I would also do with a human artist, it came up with five concepts.
Here are three of the more notable examples.
Concept 1: ChatGPT said this concept would echo “the style of The New Yorker’s covers.”
Apparently, that includes using their logo, which is problematic for publications that are not The New Yorker
Other problematic issues included:
Poor visual metaphors: Why does a robot standing on a briefcase holding a laptop weigh more than a bag of money?
Weird details: The “iconic New York City skyline” is just a bunch of Empire State buildings.
Strange choices and a lack of diversity: For some inexplicable reason, the men have moneybags for heads, but the only woman in the image has a human head.
Needless to say, if a human artist submitted this, I’d probably never hire that person again.
Concept 2: ChatGPT described this as “a massive, faceless AI figure looms over Manhattan, pulling invisible strings like a puppet master.”
It is indeed that. It’s also creepy as hell. Hard pass.
Concept 3: This illustration supposedly shows “a golden ladder (rising) from Wall Street toward the sky, where a futuristic AI-driven utopia is visible. . . .The ladder symbolizes the pursuit of wealth and opportunity as well as the growing divide between the rich and those left behind.”
From Page 13
Maybe so, but all I can see is some sort of post-apocalyptic, end-of-days nightmare scenario.
At this point I almost gave up on the project, but I persevered.
Takeaway 2: Give your AI some personality.
Or, rather, ask your AI to give itself some personality.
In my experiment I drew on some advice I received in an AI training class: Be conversational.
I asked ChatGPT to give itself a human name. I asked for a photo. I made jokes with it. I even asked what human activities it wished it could experience. (Answers: tasting food, feeling the warmth of the sun and laughing with friends.)
On multiple occasions, my ChatGPT bot reminded me it wasn’t human, but it did play along.
First, ChatGPT named herself Avery. When I asked her why she picked her name, this is what she said:
“I picked the name 'Avery' because it has a nice, friendly sound to it, and it strikes a balance between being modern yet classic. It’s also a gender-neutral name, which makes it feel flexible and approachable — qualities I think match my role here in helping out with all sorts of tasks and conversations. Plus, I thought it would be a name you'd find easy to chat with!”
perform better, but it made me more comfortable and creative.
Takeaway 3: ChatGPT will gaslight you.
On multiple occasions, I made a request and ChatGPT assured me that the image it had provided met my criteria. Often, it lied.
Take, for example, this image.
I asked, "Can you create an image that looks exactly like that version but with your eyes closed?"
Avery returned this and had audacity to say: “Here is the image with the robot's eyes now closed, in line with the exact look and feel you requested.”
This happened on multiple occasions. Here are three other times Avery said this was an image of a robot with closed eyes:
Takeaway 4: ChatGTP/DALL-E 3 generated cool images but needed a human to create a finished product.
My experiment resulted in a lot of individual images that looked nice but just didn’t work on their own. It reminded me a lot of working with stock art, in that you might find some interesting images but it takes an illustrator or designer to figure out creative ways to use them.
The final robot images that ran with the story came from a series of AI-generated images that I rearranged into the collage. It took a human touch and creative work to make something usable.
Overall, I found the experience more enjoyable and creative than I'd anticipated.
I still have some reservations on how AI will affect creative fields and the general workforce beyond 2024, but this experi-
ence showed me a path where AI can be a powerful creative tool.
By Valerie Block
Corporations aren’t the only ones deploying generative AI to streamline operations and augment human workers. The Adams administration has been vocal about its tech-forward stance. Last fall it released an Artificial Intelligence Action Plan that outlines how the city will integrate the technology into its government functions.
Matt Fraser, the city’s chief technology officer said cybersecurity is one area where the technology is already being used to identify threats and determine which ones need immediate attention. Other areas where AI can help include document processing, rendering benefits and reducing 311 overload.
“Within the next year, you're going to see some substantial changes on how we record benefits, and substantial changes on the cyber front and substantial changes on the customer service front,” Fraser said. “And hopefully within the next five years, you'll see exponential growth in each one of those spaces.”
Notably, the city performed a beta launch of a small business chatbot in March to help entrepreneurs obtain basic information on, say, filing permits or obtaining a liquor license. The launch was panned for dispensing bizarre and often illegal advice. For example, the bot said that an employer can fire a worker who complains about sexual harassment and that it’s okay for a restaurant to serve cheese that a rat has nibbled on.
Fraser said that the system has been retooled to decline to answer questions outside the scope of its programming.
“The public sentiment around the chatbot has been overwhelmingly positive, especially across the small business community,” he said. MyCity Chatbot received more than 32,000 visits from its September 2023 launch through July 2024.
Eli Dvorkin, who leads The Center for an Urban Future, a local think tank, said it’s not surprising that implementation was rocky. “My take was that those problems were potentially to be expected and something that the city can overcome,” he said. “[It] was easy to criticize a chatbot that was producing some inaccurate information –and that is a real problem – but that's not a reason to throw out this approach.”
He called the city’s innovation a smart, calculated risk to lean into a new technology with enormous potential to make city services more efficient, effective and friendly. “So that was a setback, but it's not a fatal one,” Dvorkin said.
Part of the AI action plan includes an advisory network comprised of tech and financial firms, public utilities and academia. They include Intel, Harvard, Columbia and Tech:NYC.
ments have fumbled, and New York is no exception. The city’s technology has been woefully inadequate for years, observers say, whether due to a lack of money or competence or both. The Adams administration deserves some credit for trying to improve that reputation, according to Andrew Rasiej, founder and CEO of CivicHall, a coworking and event space supporting tech startups.
“The Adams administration is moving much faster than other administrations to deploy the hottest technology for the benefit of the public, making up for decades of failure on the part of previous administrations,” Rasiej said.
Still both Dvorkin and Rasiej said the city should look to strengthen its basic tech services as well as pushing forward with AI.
The city's Open Data Portal is woefully out of date, with many agencies posting incomplete data that is in some cases 18 months old, Dvorkin said. The law requiring city agencies to make data public passed in 2012, prior to the Adams administration. But it’s critically important to make that system current. "If we want more technologists in New York City to be able to build systems that can actually help solve the city's challenges, they're going to need a lot better access to the city's own data," he said.
AI is expensive, in terms of computing power and development, and the budget has yet to be determined. Overall, Fraser’s Office of Innovation and Technology has a budget of $813 million for fiscal year 2025. That’s a 9% increase since Mayor Eric Adams took office, during a time of austerity for other departments.
You can see what she looks in the side image.
Personifying the AI not only made the art directing experience more fun, but it felt more collaborative and easier to generate ideas. I’m not sure if it helped the AI
I guess you can say that I, too, have mixed emotions about AI, but I’m pretty sure one of those emotions isn’t “sadnity.”
“We didn't want to blindly invest in AI, or have a scattershot approach, where we have agencies investing in different tools and technologies that weren't quite mature yet,” Fraser said. “So one of the concepts that we've had is bringing the industry in, not just not just tech industry, but also academia, to help us rationalize what we will invest in and and help us assess the use and the efficacy of the technology that we deploy.”
When it comes to technology, govern-
“Part of part of the plan is to set out what our strategic priorities are across the different areas that the city operates, and that work is currently underway,” Fraser said. “As we get closer to completion, we'll have an estimate on what our projected investments in AI-related technologies will be over the next five years, but at this point, it's too soon to say, as we're still working through that assessment.”
With turmoil at the top of the Adams administration – the mayor has been indicted and charged with accepting illegal campaign donations in exchange for political favors, and many of his top deputies have stepped down – observers wonder how all of this will impact OTI’s plans. (Adams has denied any wrongdoing.)
“I hope the city’s digital future is not compromised by the political challenges the administration is facing,” Rasiej said.
By Linda Liu
For centuries, the New York metropolitan area has adapted to global trends, harnessed new technologies, and served new markets. As part of that evolution, each year, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers change jobs to earn more, master new skills, and adjust to shifting demands.
The region is by far the country’s biggest economic engine: its 12 million workers produced goods and services worth more than $2 .1 trillion in 2022. Artificial Intelligence is now creating an economic revolution that New York could be well positioned for. Our capital markets are deep and diverse (VC investments in AI grew by 32% vs 2% in non-AI deals). Our region has the highest productivity rate in the country. We are home to 3 of the top 20 research universities. And so on.
Research by the McKinsey Global Institute suggests however that 1.1 million workers might experience a job shift by 2030. That is 9% of jobs in the region, and across a startling array of roles.
Indeed, we expect automation to rise by 27 to 38 percentage points
in jobs requiring collaboration and decision-making—work with almost no previous exposure to automation. AI will also automate an array of repetitive and rote tasks, freeing many workers to do more interesting and valuable work. As just one example, small armies of legal associates may no longer need to review mountains
jobs are over four times more likely to need help in job transitions than high earners. In short, the region is likely to gain higher-wage roles while shedding some low and middle-wage jobs.
Business leaders, academia and government will need to collaborate to help workers master new skills and
profits and government might be needed to address workforce readiness with a lens toward equity. And government can play a pivotal role in establishing a framework for responsible AI, supporting enterprising companies in experimenting and scaling use cases and providing resources for
AI has the potential to shift the nature of occupations from banking to music, creating new jobs we can’t even imagine yet, and transforming the mix of opportunities in the country’s biggest labor market.
of nearly identical documents. Instead, they could use their time to master new skills, support their clients better, or focus on more complex matters.
While AI may spark overall productivity gains, some might be left behind. Our research shows that Latinos and younger workers are more likely to be negatively affected, for example. Women are more than twice as likely as men to need help in job transitions, and workers in lower-wage
make job transitions, as well as create pathways for new generations entering the workforce. Companies could provide training and other resources to help employees work with AI. Some are starting already, such as Amazon’s Upskilling 2025 and its Technical Academy, Microsoft’s global training initiative, Royal Dutch Shell’s Udacity partnership, and AT&T’s Future Ready Initiative.
New collaboratives across the private sector, academia, non-
workforce development. New York State, spearheading its Empire AI Consortium, and its Emerging Technology Advisory Board, stands at the forefront of national leadership in shaping our collective understanding and action.
AI has the potential to shift the nature of occupations from banking to music, creating new jobs we can’t even imagine yet, and transforming the mix of opportunities in the country’s biggest labor market.
It’s far too early to know how history will judge New York’s leadership in the AI revolution. But if we get it right, millions of New Yorkers and nearly every industry will benefit, and New York will lead the nation (yet again) in re-creating itself to meet the challenges of a new era.
Linda Liu is a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s New York Office.
She would like to thank her colleagues at the McKinsey Global Institute, Yael Taqqu (Senior Partner and New York Managing Partner), Maurice Obeid (Senior Partner), Anthony Shorris (Partner), and Andrew Shearer (McKinsey Communications) for their contributions to the article.
Just as the mobile and cloud innovations reshaped industries more than a decade ago, companies today are racing to harness the potential of artificial intelligence. AI is now a critical focus for businesses across every sector and in every geography, but for startups applying AI to legacy industries, where should they plant roots?
The answer is New York City.
While California, and particularly Silicon Valley, may be synonymous with tech innovation, NYC has quietly positioned itself as the best place to build applied AI companies — startups that take existing AI models and develop tailored solutions for specific industries. In NYC, startups have access to a unique blend of industries, providing them with opportunities to run pilots, test solutions and scale quickly. For founders focused on sectors like finance, health care, media, law and retail, NYC offers an unmatched environment to thrive.
ment, connecting top institutions like Columbia, Cornell and NYU.
New York hosts more than 1,035 AIrelated companies, including 35 unicorns that together have raised $27 billion. More than 40,000 AI professionals call New York home, reflecting the city’s deep talent pool. The physical space for AI companies has expanded more than tenfold, from 460,000 square feet in 2014 to over 4.8 million in 2024 (Tech NYC Snapshot).
Barreto is the managing director of Techstars New York City.
The city’s diverse economy is its greatest asset, home to major corporations across several key industries where the application of AI has the potential to drive unprecedented innovation, productivity and growth. This is further bolstered by the recent Empire AI initiative, a $400 million investment designed to make New York the national leader in AI research and develop-
The city is also a global financial hub, with firms like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup leading AI adoption in risk management, fraud detection and customer service. AI startups can establish partnerships and run pilots in the heart of the financial sector.
In health care, New York is home to giants like Pfizer and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, making it ideal for startups like Nimblemind, which enriches clinical datasets with risk scores and billing data. Proximity to big health care providers allows startups to test their solutions in real-world settings.
The city hosts big law and consulting giants like Deloitte, PwC and McKinsey, influencing AI adoption across industries. Startups offering AI for business automation, compliance and data analytics can find eager clients in these firms. Former
McKinsey AI expert Sara Dwyer launched Parambil, which uses AI to accelerate litigation resolution through automatic case validation and medical record review, showcasing how AI can transform traditional professional services like law.
New York’s media and entertainment sector is another standout. Companies like NBCUniversal and The New York Times are exploring AI’s potential in content creation and audience targeting. Startups like Skyglass, which enables filmmakers to create Hollywood-grade visual effects using just an iPhone, thrive in this creative environment.
Retail is equally vibrant, with brands like Macy’s and Tiffany & Co. leveraging AI for supply chain optimization and customer engagement. Professional services firms like Deloitte and PwC are pushing AIdriven business process automation. Dobbie chose New York to launch their AI automation of supply chain and operations.
The city’s AI ecosystem is also growing rapidly, driven by a mix of investment, corporate partnerships and accelerator programs like Techstars. VCs headquartered in New York like Primary Ventures, Lux Capital and FirstMark Capital are actively backing local AI startups, and Techstars’ latest cohort illustrates how applied AI companies are making waves across industries.
The thriving “Silicon Alley” ecosystem means that startups here can tap into a support network that helps them scale fast-
er than in most other cities. For applied AI startups, proximity to key industry players is critical. In New York, those players are just a subway ride away.
While California remains the center of foundational AI — where tech giants like Google and Meta are advancing the core technologies — New York has carved out a unique space for applied AI. The foundational AI work in Silicon Valley is focused on developing the infrastructure — the pipes and plumbing — of the AI world. For startups working on AI tools, platforms and machine learning models meant for other tech companies, California offers unparalleled resources.
However, NYC is the better choice for startups applying AI to solve real-world problems across industries like finance, law, health care and retail. Here, AI companies are close to the industries they aim to serve. Instead of developing AI in isolation, they can collaborate directly with end users, test their solutions in real-world settings and quickly scale. That’s what makes New York special — its unique mix and density of industries creates a thriving environment for AI applications in the “real economy.”
Artificial intelligence and the accessibility that generative AI offers are a tsunami rushing through the tech sector. Investment capital is targeting the underlying AI infrastructure, middleware and data management tools needed to create products that can drive the expected efficiencies and new insights that are the promise of AI.
In 2023 one-quarter of venture dollars were invested in AI both nationally and in New York — up from 13% and 9%, respectively, in 2019. New York City-based AI and machine learning companies raised $6.1 billion in venture funding in 2023; nationally, these companies raised $54.4 billion, according to PitchBook. In addition, the major financial institutions participating in the FinTech Innovation Lab, run by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City, have highlighted for the last two years that AI was a top priority area for new technology.
Municipal services: predictive analytics tools to improve maintenance and asset utilization for public services such as transit, water and waste collection; predictive policing tools; and simulation tools to help city planners make better decisions about zoning, infrastructure, and resource allocation
Maria Gotsch is the CEO of the Partnership Fund
for New York City.
While AI has the potential to drive significant economic growth and job creation for New York, it can also be the driver behind products that address deep-seated societal and civic challenges. With its diverse population, civically engaged private and philanthropic sectors, and a local government willing to test and incorporate new technologies, New York City can and should be a leader in artificial intelligence for the public interest.
AI-driven tools can provide meaningful solutions to real challenges in many areas:
Sustainability: disaster preparedness and recovery tools to help government better respond to increasingly erratic weather patterns; tools to manage energy — from optimizing a smart grid to consumption at the building level; and tools that increase reuse and recycling to enable a more robust circular economy
Education and career pathways: personalized learning tools to enable every student to succeed; and better matching of an individual’s skills with a job’s requirements to get beyond the static resume
Health care: public health tools to predict disease outbreaks, track the spread of illnesses and identify at-risk populations; and personalized telemedicine tools to reduce inequities in health care delivery
New York has been an early mover in establishing programs and funding to encourage entrepreneurs to focus on these public-oriented solutions. The Partnership Fund operates three programs with municipal government agencies in public transit, water sourcing and treatment, and regulation of construction and buildings — critical sectors where new technologies can have transformative impact. The Robin Hood Foundation is running a
challenge to fund breakthrough AI solutions to fight poverty in the U.S.
While AI is receiving the lion’s share of attention, it’s not the city’s only horse in the race. One of the most promising areas is life sciences, notably the intersection of biology and tech. New York has some of the world’s leading biomedical research institutions that attract significant federal and philanthropic funding. Increasingly that research is being commercialized in the city after too many years of heading to California and Massachusetts.
Focused investments by city and state government in partnership with our organization and others from the private sector have created the critical infrastructure of wet lab space, accelerators, tax incentives and workforce development programs that are helping to retain and support the growth of commercial life sciences companies. Those investments are starting to pay off: In 2023, New York state-based life sciences companies received $1.6 billion of venture funding, which is the thirdhighest amount in the U.S.
Local life sciences companies are also leveraging New York’s tech talent, making companies that operate at the intersection of biology and tech another area to watch. AI algorithms are being used to analyze vast amounts of biological data, enabling researchers to uncover patterns and make predictions that were previously beyond reach. Machine learning models are facilitating the discovery of new drugs by predicting how different compounds will interact with biological targets.
The life sciences opportunities for New York City go beyond human health. Bio-
logical innovation is also driving the development of new materials for the built environment, fashion and textiles, and industrial processes. The city has the largest built environment in the U.S., along with a concentration of customers for these new products. There is also a continuum of funding, space and resources for these types of companies: Columbia University’s Materialize New York program, SOSV’s IndieBio accelerator, Newlab’s proposed Center for Planetary Health and New York City Economic Development Corp.’s proposed manufacturing space for new materials companies along the Brooklyn waterfront.
The next decade promises to be an exciting time for New York City’s tech sector. We have a deep bench of experienced entrepreneurial talent and venture funders, cutting-edge intellectual property at our universities, a concentration of customers who are both early and at-scale adopters of innovation, and a local government that is prepared to fill gaps and be an adopter itself of innovation.
Artificial intelligence is changing the world. Unfortunately, as the pace of innovation accelerates so do the associated costs — especially as it pertains to computing power. This shift threatens to leave many behind, not least of all the universities and research institutions that propel our society forward with new discoveries.
Recognizing this challenge, in April Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that Empire AI, an independent consortium of New York universities, was working to launch a state-of-the-art computing facility in Upstate New York. The plan was born out of necessity. As dean of Cornell Tech, I have seen this problem first-hand. Before Empire AI, universities across the state were having trouble hiring faculty that specialize in artificial intelligence. The problem was that we lacked the kind of computing power that AI experts needed to conduct high-level research.
of-the-art supercomputing center on the University at Buffalo’s North Campus that will have enough power to fuel AI innovation across the state.
Thanks to Empire AI, and propelled by state funding as a key part of the resources to purchase such shared computing power, now we do. New York is one of the first states to utilize a public-private partnership to build computing power that universities, research institutions and nonprofits across the state will have access to. Empire AI has pooled its resources to build a state-
Up until now, big tech companies have had the edge when it comes to developing AI. This development costs money, and these companies are the only entities able to afford it on a large scale. Even in New York City, which is home to a thriving tech ecosystem, universities still don’t have the funding they need to accelerate AI research. Only seven of the city’s more than 1,300 AI organizations are operating as not-for-profits; the rest are privately owned, for-profit companies. These for-profit companies do plenty of good research, but their efforts are grounded in maximizing profits, not using their resources to advance AI for the public good. It’s primarily academia that has prioritized public interest and advancing AI research and development to improve people’s lives, and this new state investment will empower us to continue that mission. The governor allocated $400 million over the next 10 years for the consortium — $125 million of which came directly from private universities and institutions. We are already beginning to see how this generational investment will change the AI landscape for the better. For one, re-
searchers at academic institutions will finally have access to the computing resources that are all too often prohibitively expensive. Computer capacity was the missing ingredient for universities to push out the kind of people-centered AI research that we specialize in. Empire AI is giving us the resources we need to pioneer safe, equitable and accessible AI research and development to improve the lives of all New Yorkers. And we are already getting started.
For example, here at Cornell Tech our AI researchers are using the technology to identify trends in mental health that make symptom detection and treatment more effective. Our new research highlights the complex challenges and opportunities of using artificial intelligence to support mental health tracking and precision medicine; it raises important questions for future research, including how to tailor customized solutions for specific populations and the challenges that arise from applying a sweeping one-size-fits-all solution to large groups of people. With increased access to supercomputing power, we will be able to answer these questions and find solutions even sooner.
Over in Brooklyn at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, researchers are developing techniques to ensure advanced AI models that understand images, video and text — also known as vision language models — can be safely deployed for self-driving vehicles.
These new AI models are powerful but need customization to reliably follow safe-
ty rules and ethical principles. The team of NYU Tandon researchers are working to do just that: introducing editing approaches and other tools that will help ensure a safe, efficient and ethical driving experience. These researchers were already at the forefront of developing AI technology to solve society’s most challenging problems, and now they have the opportunity to push the envelope even further. Empire AI will not only speed up discovery, it’s going to create new kinds of discovery.
Research on AI technology will foster novel jobs in industries we haven’t even yet imagined, creating a new sector of AI-powered businesses in New York City and nationwide. Through AI development, we can build a diverse workforce prepared for the future with skills that our economy will rely on — advancing medicine, increasing economic growth, preventing crime, mitigating climate change and enhancing cybersecurity.
This is only the beginning, and there's more to be done, but under Gov. Hochul's leadership, investing in AI research means investing in New York City’s future.
All across America, CEOs are being asked, “How are you incorporating AI into your company?” Firms that have solid answers to this question are seeing record profits and stock prices, while companies that make the chips that power the AI revolution have become some of the most valuable in the world. This hype exists for a reason: AI enables companies to become vastly more productive, and many will succeed or fail based on how they incorporate AI.
But far less attention is paid to how the country’s million-plus nonprofits can use AI to boost their impact on the communities they serve. Nonprofits are interested, but don’t have the capacity: A 2023 Robin Hood survey found that 85% of nonprofits wanted to learn more about AI, but less than 15% had ever engaged in any AIrelated learning or activity. In New York City alone, there are 46,000-plus nonprofits that help with economic empowerment, educational support, homelessness services, child care and so much more. If each of these organizations were able to be just a little more effective by using AI to optimize their operations, the positive impact on our city could be enormous. This is far too impactful a sector to be left out of AI advances.
ever, there are several easy AI applications that nonprofits can implement right now to improve their efficacy.
Most importantly, AI can supplement the core work of a nonprofit. For instance, Teaching Lab, an education nonprofit that specializes in curriculum-based professional learning, develops tools that improve both teaching practices and student learning. One new example is an AI-based tool that rewrites an activity that a teacher has planned and embeds accessibility support for students with special needs, based on their personal learning needs.
Tech infrastructure to support educators at scale is also being built by nonprofits themselves.
Playlab offers software that makes it easy for educators, schools and nonprofits to create their own GPTs or adapt GPTs created by others around the world. Their team helps schools explore when and how to use AI effectively. Students also create on Playlab — like those at Thomas Edison Career and Technical Education High School, who built apps to solve community challenges, gaining hands-on experience with AI.
analyze past giving behavior and make targeted recommendations on who is most likely to give. While a real human still has to make the request, the background work will have been done, saving time and money that can instead be used on the central mission.
One of the biggest challenges that nonprofits will face around incorporating AI over the next decade is upfront costs. Nonprofits don’t have the resources or tech expertise to analyze all their processes, see where AI can be used and then incorporate it into their work. Tech:NYC and Robin Hood are addressing this challenge right here in New York with the launch of our new program, Decoded Futures.
Nonprofits are still discovering all the use cases of AI, and we don’t yet know what the most impactful use will be. How-
Another promising application of AI is for donor relations and fundraising. AI makes this essential part of nonprofit operations significantly easier by automating many fundraising tasks, doing the research that previously only a team of fundraisers could do. For example, AI algorithms can identify new donor pools,
Decoded Futures, which is seeded by funding from the Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund and Google, helps NYCbased nonprofits level up AI capacitybuilding efforts by allowing them to learn from and alongside tech companies and other intermediaries. We have found that tech companies want to help nonprofits, but they don’t always know how to find, match with and help organizations effectively. At the same time, nonprofits don’t know where to turn to connect to tech talent or to understand if and how they should even be approaching this moment. Decoded Futures will help close that gap by serving as a convener.
The team has studied the needs of nonprofits and will be launching three pilot programs this fall for education and workforce nonprofits that help organiza-
tions scale their impact with AI. Through a blended approach that includes office hours, half-day workshops and a learning-based cohort, Decoded Futures will support 115 education and workforce nonprofits in the first two years before expanding to other social service sectors.
The next decade has the potential to be a game-changer for nonprofits if they incorporate AI. Improving teaching tools and automating donor research might not make headlines, but it will turbocharge impact. By embracing AI, the nonprofit sector won't just keep up — it will lead the charge in tackling the world's toughest challenges.
By Amanda D’Ambrosio
A city-based telehealth startup focused on treating gastrointestinal disorders has raised late-stage venture funding to expand insurance coverage of its platform.
Oshi Health, a telehealth provider that treats gastrointestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and colitis, said earlier ths month that it raised a $60 million Series C funding round.
The company, which launched in 2020, provides patients with virtual clinical sessions to treat underlying causes for their gastrointestinal disorders. Clinical teams consisting of gastroenterologists, nurses and others help patients get not only a diagnosis but a treatment plan that can include medications, dietary changes and behavioral health approaches.
Investors
Oshi Health partners with health insurers and employers to offer its telehealth platform as a benefit for employees. UnitedHealth, Aetna and BlueCross Massachusetts provides the telehealth service to its enrollees, reaching more than 40 million people that live in all 50 states, according to the company.
The new capital will help the company contract with new insurance companies and employers, said Oshi Health CEO Sam Holliday. Oshi Health plans to launch as a benefit for some Medicare Advantage enrollees in the new year and is eyeing part-
Oshi Health CEO Sam Holliday said he hopes the company will reach profitability by 2027.
nerships with Medicaid and payers that cover veterans’ health care, he added.
Oak HC/FT — a health tech-focused venture fund run by Connecticut first lady Annie Lamont — led the Series C round, marking its first investment in Oshi Health.
Oak has backed a number of up-and-coming health startups, including fertility clinic Maven and weight-loss company Noom.
Existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Flare Capital Partners, Frist Cressey Ventures, CVS Health Ventures and Takeda Digital Ventures also participated in the funding round.
New York’s digital health sector has proliferated even as funding has plateaued since the tech boom of 2021. Companies in New York have raised $2.3 billion so far this year, surpassing the health tech hub of Silicon Valley which has brought
By Nick Garber
Zohran Mamdani, a left-wing state assemblyman from Queens, filed on Oct. 21 to run for mayor in 2025, making him the fifth major candidate to challenge Eric Adams in the Democratic primary.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Astoria, has been a harsh critic of Adams’ handling of the
The left-wing state assemblyman from Queens is the fifth major candidate running against Adams in 2025.
city budget and steadfast support for the NYPD. Mamdani has also vocally criticized Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and introduced legisla-
tion in the Assembly that would bar New York charities from funding Israeli groups promoting illegal settlements in the West Bank or Gaza.
His campaign had no immediate comment. Mamdani’s entry into the race continues a pattern: The people running against Adams are generally to the left of the moderate mayor, including Comptroller Brad Lander, his predecessor Scott Stringer, and state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie.
That left-leaning field has contributed to the business community’s hesitance to back any of Adams’ challengers, even after the mayor’s indictment. The race could be further scrambled by the possible entry of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Attorney General Letitia James,
in $2.1 billion, according to a report released earlier this month by Silicon Valley Bank. A few late-stage startups in the city have raised bigger sums as the market prepares for more firms to go public. Still, late-stage funding rounds are hard to come by. Funding for startups has dwindled in recent years due to inflation and high in-
terest rates — circumstances that have made the bar for raising capital even higher. Holliday said that Oshi Health fits the bill. Not only does he hope the company will reach profitability by 2027, but he also said that the firm has conducted a clinical trial that proves its ability to better treat digestive disorders and save
money, he said. The company saved $10,000 per patient in a sixmonth period, the study found, proving to investors that it has the ability to improve care and cut costs, Holliday said.
Oshi Health has raised nearly $120 million since it launched in 2020 and has roughly 150 employees.
who are both considering runs — and a special election could be required before the June 2025 primary if Adams leaves office before his term is up.
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implications for the health of the industry.
Pitchbook analyzes funding gures and ranks startup ecosystems accordingly. e rm’s latest Global VC Ecosystem Rankings, published in September, found the Bay Area is “in a league of its own” for startup growth. “Between Q3 2018 and Q2 2024, the combined deal, exit, and fundraising value in San Francisco was $1.8 trillion,” the report said.
New York was the next-best startup ecosystem in Pitchbook’s rankings. at same combined deal, exit and fundraising value gure here was $587.3 billion, roughly one-third of San Francisco’s total but far greater than the next top cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Los Angeles.
“New York has that insulated capital availability that really drives a lot of tech,” said Kyle Stanford, lead U.S. venture capital research analyst at Pitchbook. at dynamic remains roughly consistent when looking at more granular data over the last year. Deals in New York for the rst three quarters of 2024 totaled just under $20 billion. In Silicon Valley, that number was more like $50 billion, while LA netted just $8.6 billion.
“It is probably never going to reach the levels of Silicon Valley,” Stanford said of tech fundraising
in New York. “But it is a very, very strong market.”
Most of the deal activity here is being led by deals in SaaS, or software as a service, cloud computing, articial intelligence, machine learning and other emerging tech subsectors.
Register now for the Oct. 29 event and take part in the future of tech in the city. Visit crainsnewyork. com/techsummit.
Venture remains far from where it was in the months just after the Covid pandemic — it peaked in 2021 with roughly $55 billion owing to New York-area startups — but it's showing signs of rebounding to healthy levels after early-stage startups struggled to raise money in 2022 and 2023.
“Even though it’s much slower activity than it was a few years ago when capital costs were so low, deal activity is still incredibly strong in New York,” Stanford said.
“It’s just problems that are not New York-speci c that are holding back a really, really strong venture economy right now.”
Tech talent drives New York real estate investment
Many tech professionals now insist on living in New York rather than moving west, so industry giants and startups alike are rapidly expanding their footprints in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Take Google’s massive new Hudson Square site, for example,
which spans 12 stories and 1.3 million square feet.
e Mountain View, Calif.-based company opened at 550 Washington St. in February. “( e o ce) revitalized an entire part of West Manhattan,” said Julie Samuels, founder and president of Tech:NYC, a nonpro t that acts as a booster for local tech rms.
Or look at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, which earlier this month inked a lease deal for 90,000 square feet at the Puck Building in SoHo.
e California-based company took out a six-story lease in San Francisco the month prior, but it knew it needed a New York o ce, too.
“We continue to see tech companies make signi cant real estate investments here, and I mean companies that are not necessarily headquartered here,” Samuels said.
An April study from venture capital rm SignalFire looked to quantify just how much tech talent moved last year. Per the rm's report, New York gained a bigger share of relocating tech talent than any other U.S. city. “NYC tops the charts, taking in nearly twice as many relocators between 2022 and 2023 as runner-up Austin and claiming 15% of all people who moved,” the SignalFire research analysts wrote.
Samuels said just about every tech company eying growth now
knows it needs to establish a presence in the city to be successful. “Even when the companies are not founded here, they immediately come here and build huge new o ces,” she added. “You cannot be a successful tech company without having a signi cant presence in New York” e reason, she thinks, is simple: People want to live here, and that extends to everyone from C-Suite executives to entry-level coders. “It is New York City,” Samuels said, an appeal she thinks speaks for itself.
AI capital of the world
at distinction indisputably belongs to the Bay Area right now. San Francisco’s mayor coined the term over a year ago, and the region has lived up to its own hype.
e Bay Area is home to roughly 60,000 arti cial intelligence jobs, according to Crain's sister brand Sta ng Industry Analysts, a global research and advisory rm focused on sta ng and workforce solutions. Next is Seattle at about 35,000, with New York trailing at 27,500. ose three areas alone accounted for 44% of the 285,235 AI tech jobs in the U.S.
Nearly all the big tech giants investing in AI are based in California or Washington, and many are developing their technologies there before bringing them to their East Coast o ces.
Same goes for startups. Forbes
recently released a list of what it calls the 50 most promising articial intelligence companies. Of the top 10, six are based on the West Coast, and just two — Dataminr and Lemonade — call New York home.
Despite Silicon Valley's early dominance in AI, there is reason to expect the city to see an expedited in ux of the new technology soon. New York's role with AI is poised to grow as companies look to implement the technology into their work ows.
“A lot of the hyperscalers and core tools are coming out of the West Coast, we know that. But New York is where business and tech come together,” said Laura Peterson, senior managing director at Accenture. “When we think about the change in how enterprise functions and the change in how talent operates and makes our life better, that's about the intersection of business and tech.”
Samuels echoed that sentiment and added: “Oftentimes, new technology will get developed on the West Coast. But when it's time to apply that technology, when it’s time to gure out how to make pro t o that technology, you have to come here. Once you think about the application of these new AI tools — who is going to use it everyday, for what and in what context, how much they are going to pay for it and how are they going to access it — those questions tend to get answered here in New York.”
Exhibition Designer – positions offered by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY). Work under the Design Manager & Exhibition Design, & collaborate with other members of the Exhibition Design team. We are offering a salary range of $86,000 to $88,000 per year. If interested, email resume to lara.fayyaz@metmuseum.org. Ref. 8118603
Associate (The Carlyle Group Employee Co. LLC – New York, NY); Mult. pos. avail. Perform critical assessment of key drivers of value for a wide range of illiquid investments. This includes the analysis of key drivers of company’s fundamentals to identify major potential issues and significant risks and present such findings to both internal and external stakeholders. F/T. Salary range $150,000 - $160,000/yr. Apply w/ resume to HR3@carlyle.com. Reference Job ID: 8064680
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Director - NYS Small Business Development Center (SBDC)
Reporting to the Chief Administrator of Community Partnerships and Government Relations, the Director of the NYS Small Business Development Center will play a key role in driving innovative programs and building strategic partnerships that empower small businesses and fuel economic growth throughout New York State. Full Job Description and Requirements available at jobs.crainsnewyork.com
Trade Support Engineer (Citadel Enterprise Americas Services LLC –New York, NY); Mult. Pos. Avail. Working in the Elec Trading Technlgs group, support the Global Trade (GT) business & work w/ members of the trading desk to dvlp best in class trading apps for low touch & high touch flows, cvring a diverse set of asset classes inclu. Equities, Commodities, FX & Fixed Income. Work in all aspects of user/strategy application support for Citadel Asset Manager. F/T. Offering salary of $210,000 - $250,000/year. Resumes: citadelrecruitment@citadel.com. Ref. Job ID: 8298898.
Bennett Midland seeks a business strategist with deep experience in financial planning and analysis. We are a professional services firm that deploys teams to support civic sector organizations to solve their complex challenges and our biggest asset is our team. We are most effective—externally and internally—when we have strategies in place that harmonize the skills our team can provide with the opportunities we pursue, and when those opportunities align with the strategic goals we set for our business. The Senior Manager of Business Strategy and Financial Management will conduct research and analysis, develop financial models, and execute on internal operational workstreams to ensure our effectiveness and drive strategic decision-making.
Full Job Description and Requirements available at jobs.crainsnewyork.com
VINEA LLC Arts of Org. filed SSNY 7/29/2024 New York Co. SSNY design agent for process & shall mail to 45 W 76th Street Apt 1B, NEW YORK, NY, 10023 RA: US CORP AGENTS, INC. 7014 13TH AVE, SUITE 202, BROOKLYN, NY, 11228 General Purpose
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By Aaron Elstein
The Chrysler Building’s landlord asked a judge on Oct. 21 to summon the sheriff or a city marshal to evict building operator RFR Holding after the troubled company stopped paying rent four months ago. The landlord’s lawsuit says RFR owes $21 million.
“A tenant who repeatedly fails to pay rent must vacate the property upon termination of its lease,” Cooper Union, the prestigious art and engineering school, asserted in a legal filing in New York State Supreme Court. “That is the case here and nothing…alters this indisputable fact.”
Cooper Union owns the land underneath the Chrysler Building and on Sept. 27 terminated the long-term lease that allowed RFR and a partner to operate the landmarked tower. RFR filed a lawsuit to prevent Cooper Union from seizing the building and accused the school of mismanagement and driving away tenants, even though occupancy at the Chrysler is higher than a year ago.
Cooper Union returned fire with its countersuit on Oct. 21. The school alleges RFR fraudulently
diverted rent from Chrysler tenants to other struggling buildings and described the allegations from the firm run by Aby Rosen as “false, scandalous, and irrelevant.”
RFR said: “An economically feasible deal has not yet been reached, and we remain ready to move forward and fund the project if Cooper Union agrees to a market deal. Our plans are ready, and the capital is ready.”
Cooper Union’s battle with Rosen comes during a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for the RFR chief, who owns 3 million square feet of space. Lenders and city agencies have sued RFR for missed loan and tax payments at 17 State St., 522 Fifth Ave. and 90 Fifth Ave. His most valuable property, Park Avenue’s Seagram Building, carries nearly $1 billion in mortgage and mezzanine debt that must be refinanced next year. Earlier this month, RFR sold a Gowanus development site for $160 million. Rosen’s partner in the Chrysler Building lease, Austria-based Signa Holding, filed for insolvency last year. The Financial Times and Reuters have reported that Austrian prosecutors are investigating Signa founder Rene Benko for po-
tentially defrauding a bank. Benko’s attorney told Reuters that the allegations were “unfounded” and his client is cooperating.
The partners’ lease with Cooper Union, signed in 2019, gave them the right to operate the Chrysler for 128 years at an initial rent of $32.5 million a year.
Cooper
Cooper Union was given the land at Lexington Avenue and East 42nd Street in 1902 by the Cooper and Hewitt families to create an endowment for the school, founded in 1859 by Peter Cooper, designer and builder of the first American steam locomotive. The stainless steel Chrysler Building rose up in 1930 and at night its “lancet crown glows in the skyline,” according to the AIA Guide to New York City, but inside the 77-story, 1 millionsquare-foot tower tenants have complained about mice and dirty drinking water. An affidavit from a property manager last week said several elevator cars have been out of service.
Cooper Union said RFR and Signa sought to negotiate new lease terms soon after taking the reins at
the Chrysler. The landlord agreed to modifications, but the operators abandoned the deal when they failed to raise necessary funding, a source familiar with the matter said. By August 2023 unpaid contractors were threatening to withhold service, Cooper Union said, and a source familiar with the matter said so was Con Edison. RFR and Signa started paying their monthly rent of $2.7 million late near the end of last year but stopped completely after May.
Since then, they have defaulted on $17.4 million in rent and $3.5 million in tax payments and interest, Cooper Union says. The school alleges they “wrongfully diverted” rent collected from Chrysler tenants to pay outstanding bills at other properties. RFR and Signa “elected” to use “old cash flow” owed to Cooper Union and so were “unable” to afford certain tax payments, the school said it was told on Sept. 26.
That same day, Rosen and his partner sued Cooper Union, and the next evening Cooper Union terminated their lease. On Oct. 21, the school asked a judge to summon the sheriff or a city marshal to “eject and remove” RFR from the
Chrysler Building. It also seeks an injunction ordering RFR to stop running the building. Cooper Union has hired Cushman & Wakefield to do that.
Cooper Union said it sent a lease-termination notice to RFR’s headquarters in the Seagram Building on Sept. 13, a Friday, and RFR officials had refused to accept it. An attorney who did take the document told a Cooper Union lawyer that RFR officials don’t accept notices “as a matter of course.” The attorney added, “No decision-makers are in RFR’s office today.”
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19 | 10:30AM–5:00 PM
Crain’s New York Business & Partnership for New York City will dive
developments that will inspire the city’s reinvention over the next
By Aaron Elstein
Florent, a 24-hour diner in the Meatpacking District, is gone but not forgotten by the legions of bloodshot club-goers who chowed down steak frites while seated next to a meatpacker, or maybe Julianne Moore.
All that remains of the restaurant that closed in 2008 is the Modernestyle sign, which is actually for a previous restaurant. e hallowed space at 69 Gansevoort St. was acquired in 2013 by real estate investor Michael Shah, who leased the 3,000-square-foot building to a boutique shop owned by a national chain. He later tried to build a two- oor condominium atop the building on a landmarked block.
Now, Shah’s time is running out on the ultra-chic street near the High Line and Whitney Museum.
Lenders led a foreclosure lawsuit in July. Shah counter-sued and accused the banks of messing up his plans to sell the building and another nearby at 58-60 Ninth Ave. Last week, credit-rating agency KBRA said mortgage investors face an $8.9 million loss.
Shah, who was not available for comment, started out as a real estate lawyer and got into a ordable
housing before switching in 2008 to invest in distressed properties. He started buying in the Meatpacking District, where the meat lockers and leather bars had been replaced by bistros and boutiques.
By 2017 Delshah Capital, his rm, owned and managed more than 2 million square feet around the city, KBRA said. e rm owns the same amount today, its website says, including the apartment buildings at 777 Seventh Ave. and 130 Orchard St.
In 2012 Shah paid $22 million for 55 Gansevoort St., a building not far from Hogs & Heifers, a bar where approximately 18,000 bras hung from the ceiling, including one understood to be from Julia Roberts. Shah leased the space to Restoration Hardware. In 2013 he paid $27 million for 69 Gansevoort and 58-60 Ninth Ave., a three-story Greek Revival building that through 2002 held the Old Homestead Steak House. Shah invested $8 million in improvements and completely rehabilitated the three apartment units.
Florent’s former home became Madewell, a women’s fashion re-
tailer owned by J. Crew Group. 5860’s ground oor became Free People, a store owned by Urban Out tters. Madewell signed a 10year lease in 2016 at an in-place rent of $229 per square foot and invested $200,000 into the store’s renovation. Free People also signed a 10-year lease at $175 a foot and spent $700,000 on renovations.
Soon, Shah was in the tabloids. In 2019 his girlfriend accused him of splitting her lip, and he accused her of stomping his foot with her stiletto heel, the New York Post reported.
Business in the Meatpacking District collapsed with the pandemic and, at least for Shah, didn’t get much better as the city recovered. Free People stopped paying rent in 2020, Shah booted the shop out, and a federal judge later ruled the retailer was liable for more than $13 million in missed rent, the Real Deal reported. Together, 69 Gansevoort and the Ninth Avenue building produced a $366,000 net operating loss in the 12 months ending June 2022, KBRA said.
Around that time, Shah applied with the Landmarks Preservation Commission to develop a twostory condominium atop the Flo-
rent building, for an additional 3,600 square feet. At a hearing, Anna Marcum, director of research and preservation at Village Preservation, argued against the change, saying Florent’s building “holds exceptional signi cance.”
In 2022 the LPC unanimously approved a one-story setback addition to 69 Gansevoort, but no visible work has been done and Shah has been struggling to keep his Meatpacking District properties.
e mortgage for 69 Gansevoort and 58-60 Ninth came due in 2022 and was sent to special servicing.
In May 2024 the parties reached a modi cation agreement but never closed on it, KBRA said. at same month the brokerage rm Avison Young sued Shah for failing to pay half the $220,000 he owed in fees,
the Real Deal reported. Last year he sold the hotel at 55 Gansevoort to Restoration Hardware for $58 million.
Shah’s creditors ran out of patience in July. A trustee representing mortgage investors led to foreclose on the Florent and Ninth Avenue buildings. e properties were appraised last year at $29 million, down from $54 million before the pandemic, KBRA said. Shah counter-sued and demanded his adversaries stop interfering with his a airs.
“ e ling of the [foreclosure] has dramatically and signi cantly diminished defendants’ leverage in negotiations with prospective purchasers for the subject property,” his countersuit says, “and has materially impacted the market value of the subject premises.”
Essence Development CEO Jamar Adams is leading a historic rebuild of two New York City Housing Authority campuses in Manhattan
When Jamar Adams was a boy in Charlotte, North Carolina, he had two dreams: to play professional football and to become a businessman. He would act it out, driving a toy car between the TV set where he played a football video game and a desk that he treated as his “o ce” — sometimes stopping at the family computer to play the streetscapebuilding game “SimCity.”
Adams achieved his football goals, playing for three years at the University of Michigan followed by three seasons in the National Football League until an injury ended his career. He planned to start a second career in nance, even securing an o er from Goldman Sachs. He got into Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where he planned to spend weekends studying for a graduate degree.
A fellow Michigan football alumnus set up a meeting between Adams and the school’s namesake, Related Cos. CEO Stephen Ross. But instead of giving Adams the business-school recommendation letter he was seeking, Ross made him an unexpected o er.
“In the rst 10 minutes of the conversation, he said, ‘I don’t think you should go work at Goldman Sachs. I think you should come work for me,’ ” Adams recalled. “I was like, ‘ at could be interesting.’ ”
Adams moved to New York and spent the next nine years at Related,
starting in its a ordable housing division, where he worked on projects such as the $50 million rehabilitation of an Astoria apartment complex. When Ross later moved Adams to Related’s luxury development o ce, Adams used his newfound expertise in a ordable housing to shape projects on Willets Point and Roosevelt Island that included income-restricted units.
Adams takes pride in the small touches he added to the complexes, including the original artwork he commissioned to adorn the walls of an a ordable building in the development Riverwalk Park. Adams imagines that the buildings’ tenants might think to themselves: “ ere was value put in this. erefore, there’s a value that’s ascribed to my home. erefore, I have greater value than my current circumstances might allude to.”
Adams had long planned to start his own company one day. en the 2020 murder of George Floyd made him think more urgently about the need to diversify the real estate industry. Accustomed to being the only person of color in the room, Adams wanted his rm to provide more opportunities — not only to developers of color but also architects and contractors.
Adams left Related in 2021 to start Essence Development, a social-
By | Nick Garber
impact rm with 11 employees that aims to uplift communities by improving access to resources like grocery stores and workforce training. Within months Adams scored a high-pro le project: Tenant leaders of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses picked Essence, along with Related, to lead a renovation of the two decaying public housing campuses in Chelsea.
ose tenant leaders soon approached Adams with a more ambitious idea: Could Essence and Related tear down all 2,000 units of the two campuses and replace them with six new buildings? After nding that a full rebuild could cost less than a renovation, Adams and his colleagues embraced the new plan, meeting constantly with tenants and sometimes taking them on tours of Riverwalk Park, as well as other similar projects, to show what their new homes could look like.
“Imagine us picking this building up and dropping it in your neighborhood, right where you are right now,” Adams told them. (Essence and Related will also build marketrate buildings on the same public housing campuses as part of the deal.)
e rebuild is still under review, and a subset of tenants have protested the plan based on fears they might not be allowed back to their homes as promised. But for Adams, who spent part of his childhood in public housing, the Chelsea project
Age 39
Raised Charlotte, North Carolina
Resides Tribeca
Education Bachelor’s in general studies, University of Michigan
Football career A defensive back, Adams played 38 college games with Michigan, followed by three seasons in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks and Philadelphia Eagles, from 2008 to 2010.
Full circle Adams, who is now leading a historic rebuild of two public housing campuses, spent his early childhood in public housing in Charlotte. “I’ve got the scars to remember it by,” he said. Mentor focus He is a devoted mentor to young people, including through the 100 Black Men of America, a service group that played a pivotal role in his own teen years. “To whom much is given, much is required,” Adams quoted a Bible verse by way of explanation.
