Thursday, November 13, 2025
In today’s digest, 50,000 City Hall applications, three years of ChatGPT, and OneLIC. 🏠
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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s job portal has gone viral with over 50,000 applications in under a week. 💼 (PIX 11)
The City Council voted yesterday to approve a plan called OneLIC — a comprehensive rezoning that aims to create 14,700 new units of housing, 4,350 of which will be affordable. 🏘️ (Curbed)
The city will also build new schools, guarantee 1,300 public-school seats, and create a public waterfront connecting Gantry Park to Queensbridge Park.
All told, the project will be a $2 billion investment in the area.
Nearly a quarter of New York hospitals have earned top scores for patient safety, according to a new report. Thirty-three of the 143 state-wide hospitals (23%) received an “A” for patient safety according to the report, which monitors errors, injuries, accidents, and infections that occur in a hospital. 🏥 (Crain’s New York)
It’s an improvement from last year, when only 12% of hospitals statewide received A grades.
View the full list of A-rated New York hospitals for patient safety here.
In other reading:
The best new restaurants of 2025 (Grub Street)
Trucker’s viral scale model of every NYC building to get official showing (Gothamist)
For the first time ever, the Vessel is hosting a holiday lighting ceremony (Time Out New York)
The State of AI in 2025
November ’22 ⏭️ November ’25. A lot happened within that emoji space.
We’re officially three years to the month from when ChatGPT debuted. What does the state of AI look like?
McKinsey’s latest State of AI report finds nearly every organization now uses AI, but only a fraction have turned it into enterprise-wide value.
🌍 AI is everywhere, but scaling is the challenge:
88% of companies report using AI in at least one business function (up from 78% last year), yet two-thirds are still in pilot mode.
Larger firms are leading the way: Nearly half of companies with $5 billion+ in revenue have reached the scaling phase (vs. 29% of those with less than $100 million in revenue).
Even with the buzz, fewer than 40% of companies say AI is having a meaningful impact on their bottom line. The high performers — AKA the ones seeing real ROI — have a few things in common:
Leadership buy-in: Senior executives are directly driving the AI agenda.
Workforce readiness: They’re retraining teams for AI-augmented roles.
End-to-end integration: AI is built into workflows.
🧠 Agentic AI is taking off: Autonomous systems that can plan, reason, and execute complex tasks with minimal human input are having a moment.
62% of organizations are experimenting with AI agents that plan, act, and execute tasks — especially in IT and knowledge management.
These early deployments are already improving innovation and workflow efficiency, with 64% of respondents crediting AI for enabling new ideas.
🚀 Human creativity meets machine intelligence: A Washington Post analysis of 47,000 public ChatGPT conversations found users often turn to the tool for brainstorming, problem-solving, and research.
This mirrors the same creativity-first use cases McKinsey says drive the most business value.
While companies are redesigning workflows to scale AI, individuals are redesigning how they think and create with it.
The investment gap:
More than one-third of high performers devote over 20% of their digital budgets to AI — helping them scale faster and deeper than peers. 💰
🗽 AI in NY: The authors of the report (QuantumBlack AI by McKinsey), recently stopped by our most recent NYC AI Demo event series. Not to toot our own horn, but it’s the largest recurring AI Demo series on the East Coast.
Missed the last one? Our next one is Dec. 8, featuring OpenRouter, Promptfoo, Slingshot AI, Waymo, and more companies to be announced.
In other reading:
Will people trust voting by phone? Alaska is going to find out (New York Times)
It’s too early to write off college degrees (Wall Street Journal)
Nobody wants to be the boss anymore. Here’s why, in just seven words (Fast Company)
➕ One more thing: Commonweal Ventures wants to hear your predictions on what 2026 holds for “American Tech,” or the technology solving America's biggest challenges. Take the survey here.
The Snow League, an NYC-based winter sports league, raised $15 million in funding from 359 Capital, BITKRAFT Ventures, Wise Ventures, and others.
November 18: Techonomy 25: Human Agency Meets Machine Autonomy, where global innovators, policymakers, and industry leaders, including Tech:NYC’s Julie Samuels, Chief’s Alison Moore, and Wyclef Jean, will convene to discuss how autonomous systems are reshaping the fabric of our society. Register with promo code DAN399 for a $350 discount here.
November 18: Gen Next: Real Talk with the Founders Redefining What’s Next, for founders, creators, and early-career professionals shaping what’s next, and corporate innovators and investors eager to understand Gen Z’s mindset. Register here.
November 19: Join Glean and The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson for Beyond Pilots: How Organizations Can Turn AI Into Real Results, a summit on AI produced by Glean. Apply to attend in person here.
November 19: Decoded Futures Build Day, a day of collaboration between technologists and nonprofit organizations to explore practical, hands-on ways to apply AI to real challenges. Register here. Want to volunteer? Apply here.
November 19: Tech and Business Networking — Long Island City, where you can meet consultants, analysts of all types, bankers, software engineers, entrepreneurs, and more. Register here.
November 20: Insecure Agents: Live Panel & Podcast, a live conversation following day one of AIE Code exploring the cutting edge of AI agent development and security. Register here.
November 20: Smart Fundraising Strategies — Say No to Cold Outreach for Revenue-Generating, where you can learn how to connect with the right investors without a strong network, and to create a credible financial model that passes due diligence. Register here.
November 21: Brits in Tech — Coffee Meet, where you can mingle with fellow founders and tech industry folks from across the pond. Register here.
December 2: Builders and Disrupters in the AI Era, featuring presentations from Cornell Tech graduate students, startups, and researchers tackling real-world challenges through technology and collaboration. Register here.
December 4: The SEEN Summit, the ultimate gathering for NYC-based founders, investors, and advocates of diverse-led teams, designed to foster networking, collaboration, and growth. Register here.
December 10-11: The AI Summit New York, a platform for enterprise leaders and tech innovators to explore and apply commercial AI, featuring Flybidge’s Jesse Middleton, NYCEDC’s Jonathan Schulhof, and Tech:NYC’s Julie Samuels discussing NYC’s startup ecosystem. Register here.
December 10: The AI Summit NY Healthcare Happy Hour, a mixer for healthcare and pharma professionals after day one of the AI Summit in New York. Register here.
December 11: The Future of Applied AI in Finance and Banking, a one-day conference blending elements of TEDx, Foo Camp, and Summit to bring senior managers, C-suite executives, and top AI/ML researchers together for curated sessions on applying the latest technology to problems in finance, banking, and insurance. Register here.
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