Monday, September 15, 2025

September 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Monday, September 15, 2025 

In today’s digest, gridlocks, flower power, and NYC’s tech talent. 🧑‍💻

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  • It’s gridlock season, folks! The Department of Transportation has announced 20 Gridlock Alert Days for the holiday season, beginning on Sept. 22 with the United Nations General Assembly. Officials recommend commuters use public transportation or bikes whenever possible and avoid driving in Manhattan. 🚙 (CBS New York)

    • Check out the full list of Gridlock Days here.

  • Little Italy’s Feast of San Gennaro is underway and will continue until Sunday, Sept. 21 as the celebration of Italian culture, food, and faith returns for its 99th year. 🍝 (CBS New York)

    • Here’s what you need to know about the festival, including its history and what streets to visit.

  • Flower power! Thousands of New Yorkers received daffodil bulbs and wildflower seeds on Sunday as part of the Daffodil Project, an initiative launched after Sept. 11, 2001, as a symbol of remembrance and renewal. 🌼 (Gothamist)

    • It’s not too late to pick up your free bulbs and plant them in street tree pits or community gardens for spring blooming — the next Daffodil Project event is this Saturday at A. Philip Randolph Square in Harlem.


In other reading:

  • NYC health officials warn of possible measles exposure in parts of Manhattan (NBC New York)

  • The best front row style from New York Fashion Week (Vogue)

  • This scenic castle is New York City’s most popular spot for marriage proposals (TimeOut New York)

New York is holding its own (and then some) as the tech talent wars heat up across North America. And FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) is fueling the next wave. 🔥

What’s 🆕: CBRE’s newly-released Scoring Tech Talent 2025 report puts the NYC Metro area in the top five tech talent markets. And while Toronto overtook NYC for the #3 spot this year, New York still leads on one critical front: AI talent growth. 🤖

📈 Here’s what stood out from the report:

  • NYC added 20,000 AI-specialized workers in just one year, the most of any U.S. city. 

  • That growth helped fuel a 50% year-over-year increase in AI-skilled tech talent across the U.S. and Canada.

  • NYC now boasts one of the largest AI-specialty talent clusters in the country, joining the Bay Area and Seattle as a national leader.

  • While the national tech job market slowed, NYC added nearly 48,000 new tech jobs between 2021 and 2024, the most in the nation.

  • Among the top metro areas, NYC has one of the highest concentrations of AI talent working in financial services.

  • FIRE, professional services, and manufacturing combined now make up 36% of NYC’s tech employment.

🎓 NYC’s tech talent is younger and more globally diverse than other U.S. hubs, with top-tier universities continuing to feed the pipeline. 

  • The New York Metro area was the top market for tech degree completion, up 14.8% year-over-year.

  • NYC also led the nation with the most tech graduates last year with bachelor’s or higher degrees (24,000+), nearly 9,000 more than the next closest (LA).

  • The New York Metro area was one of the most diverse markets for female tech degree graduates.

🗽Our takeaway: It may be cheesy to say, but if AI is the future of work, then NYC is where the future goes to work. Pass us some cheddar. 🧀

In other reading:

  • The boss move for ordinary workers: Hiring your own executive assistant (Wall Street Journal)

  • Make AI work by putting people first (Fast Company)

  • Vibe consulting: The new playbook for the AI era (Forbes)

  • Aegis, an NYC-based cybersecurity company, raised $13 million in seed funding. Accel and Foundation Capital led the round.

  • Dazl, an NYC-based AI creation platform for building high-fidelity, production-ready applications, has emerged from stealth with $10 million in seed funding. The round was led by 40RTY Fund, with participation from Wix and Wix co-founder Nadav Abrahami.

  • Diana Health, an NYC-based company that helps companies develop women’s health programs, raised $55 million in Series C funding. HealthQuest Capital led the round and was joined by Norwest Venture Partners, .406 Ventures, LRVHealth, and AlleyCorp.

  • Doctronic, an NYC-based health guidance tech startup, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Lightspeed led, joined by USV, Tusk Ventures, Mantis VC, Seven Stars, and Fei-Fei Li.

  • GreenLite, an NYC-based construction permitting startup, raised $49.5 million in Series B funding. Insight Partners led, joined by Energize Capital and insiders Craft Ventures, LiveOak Ventures, and Chicago Ventures.

  • Kredete, an NYC-based fintech company designed to help African immigrants build credit and access financial services, raised $22 million in Series A funding. AfricInvest and Partech led the round and were joined by Polymorphic Capital.

  • Meela, an NYC-based developer of an AI voice companion for seniors, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Bain Capital Ventures led the round.

  • Spara, an NYC-based developer of go-to-market AI agents, raised $15 million in seed funding led by Radical Ventures and Inspired Capital.

  • Terra Security, an NYC-based provider of web app penetration testing, raised $30 million in Series A funding. Felicis led, joined by Dell Technology Capital and SVCI.

  • September 15-18: The 11th annual Fast Company Innovation Festival, convening thousands of business leaders, makers, and innovators for conversation, networking, activations, and concrete takeaways. Register here.

    • Catch Tech:NYC President and CEO Julie Samuels tomorrow in conversation with Red Antler, Fizz, and Daydream on building a brand in NYC. 

  • September 17: SportsTech Ice Cream Social, where you can connect with fellow founders, investors, and operators over scoops, sprinkles, and good vibes all around. Register here.

  • September 17: Startup Brand Strategy + Design Workshop, giving you the end-to-end brand strategy to guide decisions, from fundraising to go-to-market, content, and beyond. Register here.

  • September 17: Travel Tech's NYC Start-Up Founder Happy Hour, a chance to meet fellow founders and innovators, and plug into the NYC travel tech community. Register here.

  • September 18: NYC AI Demos, a series collab between Tech:NYC, Pensar AI, and the Refinery at Domino, this month featuring live demos from OpenAI, Priceline, Daydream, Tabs, Lumos, Northflank, and AngelList. Register here.

  • September 18: Brderless’ September Founder Breakfast, a private breakfast for a curated group of early-stage founders, especially those who are scaling and looking for international hiring. Register 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 19: Vibe Coding for VCs, ​a crash course for venture investors to move from talking about AI to building with it. Register with promo code TECHNYC100 for $100 off 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 24: ​The First 10 Breakfast Series, bringing together founders, VCs, and operators for candid, unfiltered conversations about the first 10 hires, customers, decisions, and lessons that make or break a company. Register 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.

  • September 25: NYC Climate Week — Scaling Solutions with Fortune 100, exploring how Fortune 500 companies are aligning climate goals with business strategy, leveraging data to drive accountability, and empowering next-gen solutions to scale through meaningful partnerships. Register here.

  • September 29: From Demos to Durable AI: A Fireside Chat with Arize’s Aman Khan, who will share how to turn AI experiments into dependable products. Register here.

  • October 7: Information Security Summit, for public sector leaders, cybersecurity pros, and tech experts committed to safeguarding New York’s state and local government operations. Register with promo code TECHNYC for a 25% discount here.

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