Tuesday, July 15, 2025

July 15, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

Tuesday, July 15, 2025 

In today’s digest, new ferry routes, Restaurant Week returns, and our policy priorities for the next mayor. 🗽

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  • Reservations opened today for NYC Restaurant Week, which officially kicks off July 21. Despite its name, the program will run for almost a month — until August 17! 🍽️ (Fox 5)

    • You can get a taste of the five boroughs and snag a res (and great deals) here.

  • For the first time since first launching eight years ago, the NYC Ferry system is proposing major route changes, including adding direct service from the Bronx to the Rockaways. ⛴️ (Secret NYC)

    • New routes will be implemented into service by the end of the year.

    • You can provide feedback on the proposed changes here, or join the public meeting on July 21.

  • After torrential rain yesterday resulted in the city’s second-wettest hour in history, the rest of the week is shaping up to be a hot one. Real-feel temperatures will likely peak Thursday at 100 to 104 degrees. 🥵 (Gothamist)


In other reading:

  • New York City’s hotel market is envy of the country (Wall Street Journal)

  • Plus Pool finally lands in NYC, minus the plus (The CITY)

  • The hottest party in New York right now? Labubu raves (Gothamist)

As NYC gears up for the 2025 mayoral election, Tech:NYC isn’t sitting on the sidelines. We just released our tech-forward policy priorities for the next mayor — a roadmap for how the next leader of our city can partner with the innovation economy to build a more inclusive, competitive, and future-ready New York. 🗽

  • After all, the city’s tech sector has firmly established itself as one of the city’s most powerful economic engines, growing by 142% over the past decade and now employing nearly 200,000 New Yorkers. 💪

  • This industry’s continued momentum is vital to NYC’s economic resilience.

Here’s what we’re pushing for:

  • 📈 Modernize city government: Make City Hall as agile as a startup, with better procurement tools, less bureaucracy, and clear pathways for startups to work with the city.

  • 📊 Unlock city data to drive innovation. The goal is to build real-time, secure, and accessible data platforms that empower startups, researchers, and communities to create tech-driven solutions to urban challenges.

  • 💡 Grow the AI advantage: Cement NYC’s leadership in AI with policies that accelerate innovation and prepare all New Yorkers for an AI-powered economy by equitably expanding computing education and teacher capacity.

What’s good for NYC is also good for tech: Beyond technology and AI integration, the city needs to continue to attract and retain tech workers. 🧑‍💻

  • That means making the city both affordable and livable by supporting housing and transit solutions that make it easier to live and work in NYC. 

  • Think: expanded micromobility options, championing nightlife, arts, and culture, and supporting streetscape improvements and outdoor dining to ensure neighborhoods remain vibrant hubs for work, dining, and innovation.

Why it matters: NYC is home to over 25,000 tech-enabled startups, and tech is powering the city’s job growth. 

  • But global competition is heating up, and aside from a few mentions of AI here and there, we haven’t heard a whole lot about tech from the mayoral candidates.

As we approach a pivotal mayoral election, it’s essential that conversations highlight the issues critical to the tech sector’s growth so that New York can sustain its competitive edge and remain a global hub for technology and inclusive economic opportunity.

In other reading:

  • Why you should be able to vote on your phone (TED)

  • Ambiguity is a feature, not a bug (Decoded Futures)

  • The role of AI in improving employee engagement in the workplace (Forbes)

  • Amogy, an NYC-based clean tech company building solutions to use ammonia as a fuel, raised $23 million in funding. Korea Development Bank and KDB Silicon Valley led the round and were joined by BonAngels Venture Partners, Pathway Investment, and JB Investment.

  • Dakota, an NYC-based crypto-integrated banking platform, raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by CoinFund, with participation from 6th Man Ventures and Triton Ventures.

  • Datavations, an NYC-based intelligence provider for the building materials and home improvement industries, raised $17 million in Series A funding. Forestay Capital led the round and was joined by Morpheus Ventures, existing investors Sage Venture Partners, Nevcaut Ventures, and others.

  • Heka Global, an NYC- and Tel Aviv-based real-time digital fraud prevention company, raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Windare Ventures, with participation from Barclays and Cornèr Banca.

  • Kaleidoscope, an NYC-based podcast company, raised a $5 million Series A led by Burda Principal Investments and North Base Media.

  • July 16: Live Demos, featuring demos from Databricks, Pensar, LastMile AI, and Nomic. Register here.

  • July 16: Brderless’ July Founder Breakfast, ​for seed-stage founders who have raised or are in the process of raising series A, and are now focused on scaling — building the team, refining GTM, and shaping the story for the next round. Register here.

  • July 16: Justworks Small Business Soirée, where you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs and key players in a relaxed, open-air setting. Register here.

  • July 17: How the RAISE Act Affects You, where you can learn how New York’s RAISE Act would impact open-source AI innovation, and how you can get involved. Register here.

  • July 19-20: Agentic AI App Hackathon, a two-day event to build and deploy your own agentic applications on Google Cloud with Cloud Run. Register here.

  • July 23: Digital Art Salon, a monthly meetup for artists, builders, and creative technologists working across AI, AR, generative systems, and digital debris. Register here.

  • July 31: Healthcare x AI Agents Hack & Learn, ​a hands-on sprint to build safer, smarter AI agents for healthcare. Register here.

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