Tuesday, May 26, 2026
In today’s digest, the Knicks sweep the Cavs to go to the NBA Finals, a sweeping new housing plan, and quick sweep of what’s new in fintech. 🏀🧹
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani is rolling out a “Block by Block” housing plan centered on building 200,000 affordable units over the next decade, as well as preserving affordability on another 200,000. The plan also includes a pledge to issue $75 million in loans to help renters turn apartments into co-ops over the next two years. 🏗️ (Crain’s New York Business)
City Hall is also betting big on union-built housing, modular construction, rezonings, and new NYCHA financing tools as part of a broader push to treat public housing as central to the city’s housing strategy instead of a separate system.
NYC primary season is sneaking up quickly, with early voting starting June 13 and Primary Election Day landing on June 23 for races that could shape everything from Albany to City Hall. 🗳️ (FOX New York)
Here are resources on registration, early voting, voting by mail, poll sites, and what’s on the ballot.
PSA: Manhattanhenge is back this week! It’s that magical time when the sunset perfectly aligns with Manhattan’s street grid and floods the city’s east-west corridors with golden light. 🌆 (Patch)
The half-sun will line up on Thursday, May 28, at 8:14pm, followed by the full-sun version on May 29 at 8:13pm, with some of the best viewing spots along 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, and 57th streets.
What started as a niche astronomy term coined by Neil deGrasse Tyson has evolved into a full-blown NYC spectator sport, complete with cheering crowds, gridlocked cabs, and thousands of people standing in the middle of the street trying to get the perfect Instagram shot.
In other reading:
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Fintech 🤝 New York
New York Tech Week kicks off next week, and you better believe there’s a big share of fintech-focused events.
A quick search shows nearly 180 events during the week focusing on the sector alone — that’s 12% of all NY Tech Week events.
🔌 Pause for a shameless plug: Tech:NYC has one of those events, co-hosting a fintech media and comms breakfast with J.P. Morgan Payments on June 2.
The event will feature an on-the-record fireside chat with Zack Anderson, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at J.P. Morgan Payments, moderated by Bloomberg’s Paige Smith. Register here.
Back to the action: As Fintech companies race to reshape how money moves, New York is right at the center of the action (per usual). Let’s take a look.
💰 Deal count may be cooling, but big fintech bets are still getting done.
Global fintech deal count fell to a multi-year low in Q1 ’26 (762), with fintech M&A dropping 26% quarter-over-quarter to just 199 deals.
Still, fintech companies raised $12.1 billion in Q1, higher than the first quarter of 2025 and 2024.
🗽 NYC fintech is still attracting serious capital. It’s part of the reason Tech:NYC spotlighted fintech founders in our recent Companies to Watch series.
New York fintech companies raised more than $7.8 billion across 372 VC deals in 2025, following $7.2 billion across 401 deals in 2024, according to PitchBook data.
NYC fintech startups have already logged more than $5.2 billion across 113 deals in 2026 alone.
The city’s fintech ecosystem has grown into a behemoth that spans payments, spend management, crypto, embedded finance, wealthtech, and market infrastructure — sectors increasingly woven into how businesses and consumers operate every day.
🌐Crypto is becoming one of fintech’s hottest categories again.
Crypto startups posted an average valuation of $6.4 million per employee in Q1 ’26 — nearly double the broader fintech average of $3.5 million.
Seven of the 10 highest-valued fintech teams in Q1 were crypto companies, according to CB Insights.
📈 Wealthtech and capital markets tech are having a moment too.
Wealthtech (AKA tech that enhances wealth management and investment services) funding rebounded sharply in Q1 ’26, with global deal funding climbing back above $2 billion in multiple recent quarters after a slower 2024.
Capital markets tech startups are also landing larger checks, with median deal sizes jumping to $40 million in 2026 year-to-date.
🌎 Zoom out: Fintech increasingly looks like infrastructure.
Payments, lending, treasury management, fraud prevention, and trading systems are becoming embedded into how businesses operate rather than standalone startup products.
That evolution is one reason New York keeps gaining ground: the city already dominates industries where fintech tools are most deeply integrated, including banking, advertising, real estate, media, and enterprise software.
TL;DR: When it comes to the business of moving money, New York keeps tightening its grip on the fintech world.
In other reading:
A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria (MIT Technology Review)
Too much work to do? Have your digital twin handle it (Wall Street Journal)
One job that is growing in the AI era? Cybersecurity experts (New York Times)
Welcome to our weekly jobs section, where we spotlight a selection of the NYC tech jobs from Tech:NYC’s Jobs Board — all recently posted. 🔥
Today, we’re highlighting a few software engineering roles:
Staff Software Engineer — Strobe Power ($180k-$240k + equity): You'll own Strobe’s data integration and cloud infrastructure layer — the connective tissue between utilities, grid operators, OEM hardware, weather services, and their optimization engine. Apply here.
Principal Software Engineer — Microsoft ($142,800-$274,800 / year + equity): You’ll be part of a cross-functional team of software engineers, data scientists, technical program managers, and designers who work side-by-side with high-impact and strategic customers and their engineers to build innovative solutions. Apply here.
Senior Product Engineer (Android) — Adobe ($139k-257,550 / year + equity): You'll own complex Android features from interaction design through engineering and production. You’ll partner with Product, Design, and Engineering leaders to shape and refine product requirements using your technical and UX instincts — bringing a point of view, not just implementation. Apply here.
Farther, an NYC-based digital wealth management platform for financial advisors, raised $150 million in Series D funding. General Atlantic led the round and was joined by existing investors.
OpenRouter, an NYC-based AI model marketplace, raised $113 million led by CapitalG at a $1.3 billion valuation. CapitalG led the round, joined by a16z, Menlo Ventures, NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB, Snowflake, and Databricks.
Vêtir, an NYC-based AI-powered luxury wardrobe platform, raised $5.5 million in Series A funding from Laidlaw & Company and others.
Featured New York Tech Week events:
⭐ June 1-7: New York Tech Week, featuring 1,500+ tech events throughout the city. Get Tech:NYC’s curated Guide to NY Tech Week here in grid view (or list view here).
⭐ June 2: J.P. Morgan Payments x Tech:NYC Fintech Media Breakfast, bringing together leading fintech journalists and tech comms pros to explore how finance innovation is transforming industries. Register here.
⭐June 3: An Insider Look at Empire AI, a peek behind the $500 million consortium of leading universities building world-class supercomputing for the public interest. Register here.
⭐ June 3: Axios AI+ NY Summit, a half-day event convening top leaders across tech, finance, media, health care, and beyond to explore what’s next for artificial intelligence in conversations live from the Big Apple. Register here.
⭐ June 4: Tech:NYC’s Decoded Futures Build Day, bringing together nonprofit leaders and technologists to explore practical ways to use AI to build organizational capacity and scale impact. Register here.
⭐ June 4: Edelman & Tech:NYC Media & Comms Happy Hour, rooftop cocktails and a panel on how new media is reshaping the tech landscape. Register here.
⭐ June 4: The Future of Tech & Talent in NYC: A New Hub for Startups with IBM, exploring how NYC is attracting tech, talent, and growing the startup ecosystem. Register here.
⭐ June 4: Economic Justice + Startups: A Conversation with Deputy Mayor Julie Su + Impact-Driven Demos, a discussion between the Deputy Mayor and startup founders working to solve hard problems for everyday New Yorkers in small business, housing, healthcare, childcare, workforce development, government services, and more. Co-hosted with Gutter Capital. Register here.
Other great events:
May 27: Cornell Tech Frontiers of AI Summit, bringing together academia, industry, and the public sector to explore the foundational perspectives that are shaping the future of AI. Register here.
May 28: Niural AI Summit, a pre-NY Tech Week summit bringing together CFOs, finance leaders, HR executives, founders, and investors shaping the future of AI-native finance and people operations. Register here for a discounted rate for Tech:NYC Digest readers.
May 29: Tech Happy Hour by Startup Grind, a way to connect with the NYC tech and startup community to discover shared interests, explore areas for collaboration, and find your next co-founder or key hire. Register here.
June 1: Batter Up NYC, for founders and investors looking to get feedback on their pitches or founders just looking to learn from other founders. Register here.
June 2: AI on Main Street: How Chinatown's Small Businesses Are Using AI, where you can hear from the owners of Welcome to Chinatown about what they’ve been doing, talk with the technologists who worked with them, and grab some food and drinks. Register here.
June 3: Anthropic Founder Salon: Inside the AI-Native Era, an exclusive, curated gathering brings together founders and leaders from across the AI ecosystem for a conversation on how advancements in model capabilities are rapidly reshaping the startup ecosystem. Register here.
June 4: NYTW Conversations: Crafting Community, a focused, intimate conversation with Jaclyn Johnson, Founder of Create & Cultivate about what it takes to build a community that lasts. Register here with promo code TECHNYC for a discounted pass.
June 9: Mission-Ready Identity: The New Standard of Defense in the AI Era, an executive summit from CLEAR bringing together security, fraud, operations, and business leaders from across industries to reframe identity from a static “system of record” to mission-ready infrastructure. Register here.
June 9-10: DeveloperWeek New York, bringing together thousands of software engineers, architects, dev team leads, and product builders for an event that spans every major area of software development: from AI and cloud to frameworks, DevOps, APIs, and emerging tech. Register here for a discounted pass for Digest readers.
June 16: Business Incubator Association of New York State’s 2026 Annual Conference, featuring high-impact panels with communities building across New York. Register here with promo code TECHNYC for a discounted pass.
June 18: [untitled] series // Craft and Code, a fireside with a few engineers who care about design talking honestly about craft, taste, and how they actually work. Register here.
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