Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Welcome to Q3! In today’s digest, a scorching holiday week approaches, New York sets more money aside for kids’ college funds, and a new study on how AI adoption correlates with hiring (it’s not what you think). 🤖
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Dads around the city are finally letting you touch the thermostat, as temps could climb as high as 105 degrees in parts of NYC by Friday. Officials have activated additional cooling centers and heat safety measures. 🥵 (Gothamist)
The city is expanding cooling center capacity as it prepares for large crowds visiting for World Cup matches and Fourth of July celebrations.
Here’s a handy guide for how to slash your cooling costs this summer.
July is here, and it brings a handful of new laws for New Yorkers with it — including protections for rideshare drivers, luxury homeowners, and food vendors — as several state and city laws take effect this month. 📅 (Secret NYC)
Changes include a new tax on some high-value second homes, licensing requirements for mobile food vendors, updated compensation standards for private security guards, and changes to New York’s Essential Plan that could affect health insurance coverages for 450,000 residents.
NYC public school kindergartners are getting a bigger head start on college. Under the city’s new budget deal, every kindergartner will automatically receive $1,000 in a college savings account (up from $100) while several education programs initially slated for cuts will continue receiving funding. 🎓 (Chalkbeat)
The savings can be used for vocational programs, community colleges, or four-year universities, and city officials say it’s now the nation’s largest universal college savings program.
The budget also restores funding for school-based mental health services, restorative justice programs, disability support services, outreach to immigrant families, and college access initiatives.
In other reading:
The ‘SNL’ ticket lottery is officially opening. Here’s everything you need to know to score a free seat in Studio 8H (Secret NYC)
New York City ranks top six for pet-friendly coworking spaces nationwide (Coworking Cafe)
Is the city’s tap water as good as New Yorkers claim? We looked into it (Gothamist)
AI Adopters Are AI Hirers
Does investing in AI actually mean hiring fewer people? A new study from Revelio Labs and (Tech:NYC member) Ramp suggests that’s not the case. The answer is more nuanced than many headlines imply. 💼
By tracking actual AI software purchases across more than 21,000 U.S. companies, the researchers found that companies making the biggest investments in AI are also the ones growing their workforces the fastest.
Here’s what stood out from the report:
Early AI adopters are also hiring the most: Companies making the largest AI investments grew employment by an average of 10.2% after adopting AI, while companies making smaller AI investments saw no statistically significant employment gains. 🤖
Researchers found employment gains emerged gradually over time, suggesting companies expand as AI becomes integrated into workflows rather than immediately after implementing AI tools.
Not all AI adopters look the same: Companies that adopt AI tend to already be larger, faster-growing, more engineering-heavy, and more likely to be venture-backed than companies that haven't yet adopted it. 📈
AI adoption is also highest in Information (53.7%), Finance & Insurance (43.6%), and Professional & Technical Services (36.0%) — three sectors that make up a significant share of New York City’s tech economy.
🎓 What about entry-level jobs?
The study found little evidence that AI adopters are disproportionately cutting entry-level workers overall.
In fact, companies making the largest AI investments increased the share of entry-level employees by 1.15 percentage points, while lower-intensity adopters saw a modest decline.
🗽 The New York angle: New York’s tech ecosystem is heavily concentrated in industries that are among the fastest AI adopters — including information, finance, and professional services — suggesting many of the city’s startups and established tech companies are well positioned to benefit as AI investment continues to scale.
In other reading:
Remote work continues to thrive (Axios)
How companies are managing AI token spend (Wall Street Journal)
Trump drops restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models (TechCrunch)
Aligned, an NYC- and Israel-based B2B sales workspace raised $60 million in Series B funding. PeakSpan Capital led the round, joined by insiders Hetz Ventures, JAL Ventures, and NFXT.
Pie, an NYC-based AI-powered growth platform for small businesses, raised $19.5 million in Series A funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Capital One Ventures, SciFi VC, F-Prime, Commerce Ventures, WEX Venture Capital, and existing investors.
KPMG Private Enterprise is accepting applications for their 6th Annual Global Tech Innovator Competition for entrepreneurs who are successfully making the transition from the startup phase to the next stage in the growth of their businesses. Apply here by July 6.
Endless Frontier Labs has opened applications for its 9-month program which helps founders transform their science and tech based ideas into commercially scalable companies. Apply here by July 31.
Gutter Capital is accepting applications for their accelerator, Elbow Grease. They’ll embed with a small group of founders to recruit the team, deliver the product, close customers and otherwise do whatever it takes to build a company of consequence. Apply here by July 31.
Applications are now open for the New York Climate Exchange’s Climate Tech Fellowship, designed for early-stage innovators working on energy technologies with meaningful urban resilience potential. Apply here by August 1.
The Social Justice Fund is launching the Brooklyn Pitch Competition to help local businesses access the growth capital, strategic support, and connections they need to scale. The competition will award a total of $450,000 in unrestricted grant funding to selected Brooklyn-based businesses, including a $150,000 grand prize and additional finalist awards ranging from $25,000 to $75,000. Apply here by September 4.
CUNY 2x Tech’s NYC Tech Talent Pipeline Residency Program, connecting high-potential Computer Systems Technology students with NYC-based employers for 10-week, full-time internships focused on software engineering and data analytics. Employers can express interest here.
HubSpot’s How You Hustle, where you and your business could be featured and receive free press exposure to their 1.5 million subscribers. Apply here.
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