Tuesday, September 29, 2026
In today’s digest, Gateway gets boring (in a good way), the MTA gears up for Yankees-Red Sox, and the AI agent race. 🏁
But first: Only two more days till the next NYC AI Demos from Tech:NYC, Pensar, and Two Trees, and seats are flying fast!
This Thursday, October 1, join us at The Refinery at Domino for an AI demo night themed around media, featuring live demos from ElevenLabs, Kargo, Markup AI, Profound, Minerva, and Air. Register here.
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Representatives from at least four major AI companies are set to testify under oath before the City Council on Monday about the technology and its implications for New York. 🤖 (PIX 11)
The hearing will also feature national AI and consumer-protection experts and explore potential risks, safeguards, and legislative proposals for the city.
After years of fits, starts, and funding fights, the Gateway project has officially entered its boring era. A 1,700-ton machine has begun carving the first new Hudson River rail tunnel in more than a century. 🚇 (The City Reporter)
The $16 billion project is expected to eventually carry 200,000 daily passengers on 450 NJ Transit and Amtrak trains, with officials aiming to open the new tunnel in 2034.
The machine will chew through roughly 30 feet of rock per day beneath the Palisades before another pair takes on the Hudson itself.
The Yankees are getting the express-train treatment. The MTA is adding Metro-North Yankee Clippers, Grand Central shuttles, and extra subway service for this week’s three-game AL Wild Card showdown against the Red Sox in the Bronx. ⚾ (Secret NYC)
Fans can catch direct Metro-North service from the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven lines, while extra 4 and D trains will help clear the bases — er, platforms — after each game.
Game 1 starts tonight at 8pm.
In other reading:
The best Oktoberfest events in NYC this year (Time Out New York)
Falling for apples: 10 orchards near NYC for pick-your-own fun (NY1)
Mayor Mamdani’s new job center aims to connect New Yorkers to careers in public service (ABC New York)
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The Battle to Become Your AI Sidekick
AI agents are graduating from answering questions to actually crossing things off your to-do list — and the race to become your go-to digital assistant is getting crowded fast.
Meta’s Muse is making the biggest splash right now, but Instinct, Open AI’s Dots, Siri AI, Google CC, Grok Bot, and others are all competing for a bigger role in users’ everyday lives.
🤖 Meet your new assistant: Personal agents handle tasks that once required plenty of clicking, calling, and waiting around.
Users have agents do things like negotiate a lower monthly phone bill, find hard-to-locate US Open footage, or save money on travel by booking flights more strategically.
Muse recently climbed to the top of the U.S. App Store, and Meta today announced Muse for Small Business, a version of its AI agent designed to help businesses manage day-to-day operations.
Investors are buying in: Instinct raised a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation just one month after announcing a round that valued it at $2.5 billion. 💰
The invite-only service launched in August and can book travel and restaurants, make purchases, pay bills, cancel subscriptions, and even make phone calls through its “concierge” feature.
Muse is now competing directly with Instinct, with integrations that can summarize Instagram DMs and Facebook Groups or monitor Marketplace listings.
💸 Which reminds us — agents can do your investing, too: Supertake, a new platform incubated by (Tech:NYC member) Union Square Ventures, uses frontier AI and trading agents to turn users’ individual “takes” on the world into shareable investment portfolios.
A classic New York test case: Few places demonstrate the promise — and growing pains — of agents better than NYC’s famously competitive restaurant-reservation scene. 🍝
A new startup, Spot, uses its own agents to monitor reservation availability and only acts through a user’s account when it’s ready to complete a booking, an approach designed to avoid the account bans that have hit some other agent users.
The invite-only service has booked tables at spots including Le Veau d’Or, Don Angie, and Semma, and currently charges $15 or $50 per month.
⚠️ But there are trade-offs: The more an agent can do, the more access it may need.
For example, an AI agent may ask users for information including bank details, passport and license expiration dates, and even food photos for certain tasks.
TL;DR: The personal-agent race is quickly shifting from who has the smartest chatbot to who can most reliably act on your behalf — and in New York, everything from dinner reservations to everyday errands is becoming an early proving ground.
In other reading:
Wait, what are the rules around cellphone etiquette now? (Vox)
The AI tells (Graphite)
This comedian thinks he can help founders pitch their startup — by roasting them publicly (Founder Brew)
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. 🔥
In light of today’s “Today in Tech” section, we’re highlighting some open AI agent-related roles that caught our attention this week.
Agentic AI Engineer, Senior — Deloitte ($122k-$240,500k / year): You’ll design and deploy modern AI, data, and software solutions to help enterprise clients transform critical operations and technology platforms. You’ll also lead small project streams and manage client relationships, scope, schedules, and risk throughout engagement delivery. Apply here.
Senior / Staff Software Engineer (AI Agents) — Actively ($180k-$220k / year + equity): You’ll architect and build scalable, event-driven infrastructure to power autonomous GTM AI agents that reason over real-time data and execute workflows. You’ll also design robust orchestration primitives with human-in-the-loop controls to ensure high reliability and fault tolerance across complex, long-running systems. Apply here.
Applied AI ML Senior Associate – AI Agents & Agentic Systems — J.P. Morgan ($137,750-$195k / year): You’ll serve as a machine learning subject matter expert, writing end-to-end Python code to benchmark, experiment with, and productionize generative AI models. You’ll also partner with engineering teams to optimize system performance, resolve bottlenecks, and integrate state-of-the-art agentic capabilities into enterprise platforms. Apply here.
EliseAI, an NYC-based housing and healthcare AI automation company, raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, joined by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Sapphire Ventures, and Navitas Capital.
Ortet, an NYC-based frontier health AI lab, received a $500 million commitment from Thoreau.
Rivet, an NYC-based dating site from former Tinder and Match Group executive Taru Kapoor, raised $10.5 million in seed funding, backed by Peak XV Partners, Shine Capital and Blume Ventures.
Zero Infinity Partners, an NYC-based venture capital firm, raised $156 million for its second fund focused on early-stage infrastructure tech companies.
Featured events:
⭐ October 1: NYC AI Demos, from Tech:NYC, Pensar, and Two Trees, this month featuring a hand-picked lineup of companies themed around media including ElevenLabs, Kargo, Markup AI, Profound, Minerva, and Air. Register here.
⭐ October 14: POLITICO New York Outlook, a deep dive into the affordability, economic, and policy challenges shaping New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Join in person or watch virtually beginning at 3pm ET. Register here.
Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Ping Politico here.
⭐ October 29: Crain’s Tech Summit, bringing together leaders across tech, business, policy, academia, and workforce development to explore how New York is building the infrastructure, talent, and partnerships needed to lead in the AI economy. Register here with promo code FRIENDSOFTECHNYC for 15% off.
Other great events:
September 30: Cohort Wednesday Coworking, a weekly working session in NYC for everyone making something. Spend the day alongside passionate people in different fields and different stages, but deep in the work that’s more than a job. Register here.
October 1: Crain’s NY Business Wall Street Meets Blockchain: The Future of Digital Asset Infrastructure, a conversation on the future of cryptocurrency in the finance capital of the world. Register here.
October 1: XR Brooklyn: Worlds by Hand, a conversation with artist-practitioners, curators, talent, ecosystem builders, and collaborators creating the next generation of virtual and extended worlds. Register here.
October 1: Stripe Apps Developers: Simplify building your tech stack with AI, a hands-on hackathon where you’ll explore how app development is changing, learn how Stripe Projects simplifies building your tech stack with AI agents, and then try it hands-on. Register here.
October 1: HealthTech Happy Hour NYC, a community for the people behind healthtech, bringing together founders, clinicians, operators, and others building what’s next in healthcare. Register here.
October 2: Community Led Growth “CLG” Conference, bringing together 50 of the top Heads of Community, Community Leads, and Community Founders who are focused on building a community full-time. Register here.
October 5: NYC Cybersecurity HH: Pints & Pentests — come for a great Guinness pour, stay for some good convo with security community folks & the Cotool and Pensar teams. Register here.
October 6: Tech x Market Decoders, a salon-style, small curated weekly meetup for operators, investors, and builders across New York. This week’s topic is about an AI startup called Jev that just went viral for doing the opposite of what every other AI company is doing — it doesn't chat at all. Register here.
October 6: Grid Futures: Powering New York’s Energy Transition, a panel discussion bringing together innovation leaders from the public and private sectors to explore what it will take to modernize New York’s grid. Register here.
October 6: Brooklyn Tech Expo, featuring AI seminars, emerging technologies, and real-world applications, along with valuable networking opportunities and free professional headshots. Register here.
October 9: Real-Time Video Agents Hack – NYC, a three-city technical event series bringing together founders and engineers across New York, London, and San Francisco to build production-ready AI systems. Register here.
October 10: Civic Tech’ish: Island Edition, a happy hour on Governors Island for people working across civic and urban tech, with optional volunteering with the Billion Oyster Project. Register here.
October 13: Agent Baseline Demo Night, a short panel to explore Agent Baseline followed by six lightning demos to show how to achieve these outcomes in practice. Register here.
October 13-15: EdTech Week, where the brightest minds and the boldest innovators gather in a technological playground dedicated to transforming education. Register here.
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