Monday, August 18, 2025

August 18, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Monday, August 18, 2025 

In today’s digest, foot traffic returns, Citi Bike age verification, and computing education for New Yorkers. 🧑‍💻

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  • Quite the feet: Foot traffic in Manhattan has surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time in more than five years, according to Placer.ai. 🦶 (Gothamist)

    • ICYMI: Visits to office buildings in the city’s commercial districts were also up 1.3% last month compared to July 2019.

  • Coming soon to a Citi Bike near you: Age verification. Citi Bike riders will need to be at least 16 years to ride, as Lyft agreed to roll out an age verification request from First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro within the next three months. 🚲 (amNY)

    • The rideshare company is currently exploring options for how riders will verify their age. 

  • Calling all nature aficionados: Brooklyn’s backyard (aka Prospect Park), officially has its first formal nature trail system — five marked routes through 250 acres of woodlands, meadows, and waterways. 🌳 (TimeOut New York)

👑 Referral royalty: Big thanks to Alex Randall Kittredge, Francis Sabio Jr., Matt Bilsky, Rebecca Gielowski, and Steve Schultz and for referring subscribers to the Tech:NYC Digest this week! Join them and win swag by participating in our referral program — details at the end of this email.

In other reading:

  • The strange beauty of New York’s bodega ramps (New York Times)

  • Second Avenue Subway expansion moves forward after MTA OKs $1.9B contract (PIX 11)

  • Humanoid robot turns heads at NYC sneaker store (Fox News)

New York City is rising above the rest of the state and earning top grades in preparing students with the foundational digital and computational skills, according to a new report from the Center for an Urban Future (CUF).

🔢 By the numbers:

  • Computer science participation in NYC high schools (10.5%) is more than double the state’s average (4.8%).

  • While NYC enrolls roughly 40% of all public school students statewide, it accounts for over 80% of those taking a computer science course in high school. 

No surprise here: NYC’s recent initiative launches, like Computer Science for All (CS4All), have drastically expanded computer science instruction.

  • The number of students enrolled in computer science courses has more than tripled — from just over 54,000 students (5.5%) in 2016 to more than 175,000 (18.2%) in 2023. 💪

  • Plus, each year the Tech:NYC Foundation partners with Gotham Gives on the CS Fair, bringing together thousands of high school students from across the city to meet with tech companies and learn about computer science opportunities.

  • Check out highlights from the most recent CS Fair here.

Still, the state lags behind others that are introducing important new policies to strengthen K-12 computing education. 

CUF has several recommendations for how to accelerate computing education in New York State to prepare students for an AI-powered community, including creating a Smart Start 2.0 grant program. 

  • This program aims to reach more teachers and school leaders with high-quality professional development in computing education and ensure that New York City is eligible for future funding rounds, something the city has been left out of with the current Smart Start Grant program. 💸

Our takeaway: NYC is doing a lot to prepare students with computing skills, as AI skills and jobs only become more frequent. But there is still more work to do.

In other reading:

  • Inside Zillow’s AI strategy, from gaming-style graphics to real-estate agent tools (Tech Brew)

  • Using generative AI, researchers design compounds that can kill drug-resistant bacteria (MIT News) 

  • NASA and Google are building an AI medical assistant to keep Mars-bound astronauts healthy (TechCrunch)

  • Cognition, an NYC-based AI coding startup, raised nearly $500 million in Series C funding at a $9.8 billion valuation led by Founders Fund.

  • Sola, an NYC-based AI co-pilot for robotic process automation, raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. A16z led, joined by Conviction and YC.

  • August 26: Exiting Strong: Strategies and Wins Under $100MM, a chance to learn how to position your company for acquisition, different deal structures, and how to negotiate favorable terms while avoiding common pitfalls. Register here.

  • August 26: Brderless x Rho Founder Breakfast, for curated seed-stage founders (post raise) who are scaling or gearing up for Series A. Register here.

  • September 3-4: Go-To-Market: Building Distribution Engine that Scales, a two-day workshop for early-stage founders to master go-to-market strategy, build a scalable distribution engine, and get real feedback from top operators and founders. Register here.

  • September 8: Make It in Brooklyn Meetup: Design + Technology Panel, a discussion on how design-driven innovation is shaping the future of product development, and how products are conceived, prototyped, and launched. Register here.

  • September 9-10: New York Venture Summit, featuring 220+ leading VCs speaking on moderated panels and judging startup pitches, and 180+ innovators across AI, cleantech, fintech, medtech, life sciences, and more. Register with promo code early200 for $200 off a ticket here. 

  • September 10: NYC Summit, Primary’s annual invite-only conference, bringing together 2,000 top founders, VCs, and LPs. This year’s speakers include Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona Cardinals), David Karp (Tumblr), Toyin Ajayi (Cityblock Health), Lina Khan (FTC), Kareem Amin (Clay), and more. Apply to attend here.

  • September 18-20: The Atlantic Festival relocates to NYC with its screenings, book talks, and more with influential thinkers including Scott Galloway, Keri Russell, Mark Cuban, H.R. McMaster, Robert Downey Jr., Richard Ayoade, David Letterman, Dr. Becky Kennedy, Tom Hanks, and others. Register with promo code TECHNYC20 for 20% off one-day passes here.

  • September 23: Deep Tech Forum + Startup Showcase in NYC, bringing together deep tech startups from across the globe alongside corporate innovation leaders, investors, and ecosystem partners. Register with promo code TECHNYC for a 20% discount here.

  • September 25: 11th Annual Bloomberg-Columbia Machine Learning in Finance Conference 2025, with talks by international practitioners and academics on AI applications in finance including asset pricing models, neural SDEs, market sentiment analysis, and fairness in financial ML. Register for early rates here. 

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