Friday, March 6, 2026
Welcome to another Friday edition of the Tech:NYC Digest, featuring our favorite five highlights in New York and tech this week.
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How NYC small businesses are putting AI to work for them (The CITY)
AI is having an impact far outside of the tech community. It’s also helping nonprofits, restaurant owners, and other small businesses get more done with fewer resources. 🤖
Welcome to Chinatown, a nonprofit alum of Tech:NYC’s Decoded Futures initiative, developed an app to turn an administrative slog into a two-minute task.
As a result of this work, Welcome to Chinatown has been selected to lead an AI training program for small businesses across the state’s 25 New York Entrepreneur Assistance Centers.
Can tech work with Zohran Mamdani? (Newcomer Podcast)
Tech:NYC President and CEO Julie Samuels went on the Newcomer Podcast to make the case that tech policy in New York should be about more than startups and fundraising decks. 🗽
The conversation touched on modernizing government, building smarter public systems, and figuring out how AI can actually improve city services instead of just generating buzzwords.
It also widened the frame: if tech is going to play a bigger role in New York’s future, the conversation has to include housing, education, public services — and who actually benefits.
NYCEDC unveils selection of 60 early-stage startups to participate in fifth cohort of the Founder Fellowship (NYCEDC)
New York City just picked 60 early-stage startups for the next round of its Founder Fellowship. And the program puts up real numbers. 🚀
Since launching in 2022, the Fellowship has supported ~400 founders across ~250 startups, with alumni going on to raise $170+ million and hit a combined valuation north of $1 billion.
The bigger point is access: NYC Economic Development Corporation designed the program to back founders who are often overlooked by venture capital.
High-tech snowplows and AI help cities clean up from big storms (News 2)
Our New York friends to the north (👋 Syracuse!) are using tech to change the way they handle big storms, and the results are snow joke.
Syracuse brought in GPS tracking, dashcams, and AI tools to monitor plows in real time; complaint calls have dropped about 30% since the system launched.
NYC runs its own version called BladeRunner, which tracks every plow route across the five boroughs — and the city could eventually use AI to help process the thousands of snow-related 311 complaints that pour in during major storms.
New York City was shaped by women. This walking tour wants you to know their stories (Afar)
A new walking tour is aiming to spotlight the women who shaped New York, even if their names never made the plaques. 👟
The two-hour She Shapes History tour launches March 21 and traces a two-mile route from Grand Central to Central Park, highlighting activists, journalists, architects, and policymakers who helped shape the city.
New York’s a heavyweight for female-founded deals:
Have a fantastic weekend, New York! 😎
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