Tuesday, April 1, 2025

April 01, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Tuesday, April 1, 2025 

Welcome to Q2! In today’s digest, Redbirds return, composting commences, and tracking emerging tech trajectories. 🧑‍💻

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  • Return of the Redbirds! More than two decades after the MTA retired them, the vintage red train cars will be taken out of storage for a commemorative ride to the Mets home opener at Citi Field this Friday. 🚂 (Gothamist)

    • Baseball fans and railroad aficionados alike can take the old trains from Hudson Yards-34th Street station at noon. ⚾

  • Today in StreetEasy scrolling: It was a record week for luxury real estate sales in New York, with 45 contracts signed for properties costing more than $4 million, according to Olshan Realty’s weekly luxury market report. 🌆 (Crain’s New York Business)

    • The most expensive property under contract was a penthouse located east of Columbus Circle — a four-bedroom triplex listed for $56 million. 💸

  • Starting today, New York residents must compost all household food and organic scraps in city-designated compost bins, or risk being fined. First time composting? Check out this explainer of what to know about composting in NYC. (Brooklyn Paper)

In other reading:

  • With chai and Chappell Roan, play puts a spotlight on flood preparedness (THE CITY)

  • ‘More than just a place to eat’: Smorgasburg celebrates 15 years in Brooklyn with Jamaican sandwiches, Guatemalan coffee, and much more (Brooklyn Paper)

  • NYC prepares for expansion of red light cameras across boroughs this year (amNY)

➕ Round two of Tech:NYC’s “On-Screen March Madness Showdown” is open! Can 'Law & Order' litigate a successful round two? Will 'Taxi Driver' keep the pedal to the metal and cruise to the 'ship? You decide! Vote here.

Early-stage tech investing may be cooling from its 2021 fever pitch, but the Q4 2024 Emerging Tech Indicator (ETI) report from PitchBook suggests something even more interesting: A recalibration toward focus, scale, and staying power. 

Here’s what you need to know:

  • 💸 Funding remains strong: ETI startups raised $5.1 billion in Q4, just a hair down from Q3’s $5.2 billion — and nearly double Q4 2023’s $2.7 billion.

  • 📉 Fewer, bigger bets: Deal volume dipped slightly (175 vs. 179), but the money followed the winners — 19 deals topped $50 million, and eight exceeded $100 million.

  • 🤖 AI is still king: AI & ML drew $1.5 billion across 37 deals, proving that frontier tech still commands investor confidence.

  • ☀️ Clean energy gets a glow-up: Climate tech companies secured $1 billion — a huge leap and a reminder that green innovation is in fashion.

  • 🧬 Biotech and healthtech steady the ship: Biotech brought in $362.8 million, while health & wellness tech rebounded with $355.8 million across 18 deals.

  • 🔧 DevOps had a breakout: With $283 million raised — up 7.7x YoY — this once-niche vertical is proving its staying power.

The NYC angle 🗽

  • NYC’s AI and climate tech ecosystems stand to benefit big from this trend toward “fewer but deeper” early-stage bets. 

  • As Empire AI continues to roll out, and as homegrown AI firms scale their infrastructure, expect our local innovation economy to keep punching above its weight. 

  • Plus, with capital flowing into sectors like healthtech and DevOps — areas where NYC’s talent pool runs deep — there’s no shortage of opportunity for founders who can marry tech ambition with real-world application.

Bottom line: Investors are doubling down on what works. That means larger checks for sharper ideas — and a startup environment that’s more sustainable, if a bit more selective.

  • The bluetooth lady speaks! Voice-over actors will be artisans in the AI age (Wired)

  • Brain technology interfaces face a critical test (MIT Technology Review)

  • Workers and managers are clashing over RTO. What can HR do? (HR Dive)

  • While this section is dedicated to rounds raised by NY companies, we'd be remiss if we didn't take a moment to spotlight the largest private tech deal on record closed by (Tech:NYC member) OpenAI: $40 billion led by SoftBank. Other participants included Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive.

  • April 2-3: Smart City Expo USA, featuring the CEOs of the Miami Dolphins, Paris 2024 Olympics, TONOMOUS.NEOM, five FIFA World Cup 2026 Host Cities, and Tech:NYC’s very own Julie Samuels! Register with promo code TECHNYC20 here.

  • April 3: Leading Product Strategy as a Founder, a workshop focusing on product processes customized for lean startup teams that will make your team more efficient and strategic. Register here.

  • April 3: Software’s Agentic Future, a Deep Tech Week panel discussion and fireside chat on the emergence of coding agents and their impact on software development. Register here.

  • April 7: Entrepreneurs Roundtable 200, an opportunity for five startups to pitch their businesses and receive feedback and guidance. Register here.
     

  • April 8: #NotAPitch, to get feedback on concepts, prototypes, and ideas without it counting as a pitch. Register here.

  • April 8: Startup Fundraising Summit, designed to give 70 early-stage tech founders the opportunity to meet investors. Register here.

  • April 9: Hype Night, where founders don’t just pitch themselves — they bring a hype man, or an investor/advisor/mentor/customer, to pitch the founder and startup. Register here.

  • April 10: GenAI Collective Demo Night, where eight startups will showcase their products. Register here.

  • April 27: hackNY Spring, a one-day conference for early to mid-career developers who want to level up in tech. Register here.

  • April 29: Latest & Greatest from Jonathan Frankle, an AI Review talk from the Chief AI Scientist at Databricks on his latest research on the newest AI methods. Register here.