There are no better proving grounds than the streets of New York City. It’s where dreams meet steel and concrete, where visionaries make their names and leave their marks on the world. From being the first capital of the fledgling nation to building the city’s first subway to creating hip-hop, New York has sparked revolutions. Frank Sinatra sang it, Jay-Z rapped it: if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
And it’s true for artificial intelligence, too — both a stand-alone industry and a tool that will touch almost every other part of our economy.
As the leader of New York City’s Economic Development Corp., I’m throwing down the gauntlet: AI founders, researchers, investors — come to New York. This is the ultimate test market. The biggest stage for your big ideas. We are the applied AI capital of the world, where diverse customers, from banks and law firms to retailers and research hospitals, will adopt your innovations.
You’ll be in good company. OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, just chose the iconic Puck Building to launch its first East Coast office. Google, Meta, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon have opened a combined 6 million square feet of space in New York in recent years.
The Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub is applying AI to biotech at Columbia University, while Meta’s chief AI scientist leads NYU’s Computational Intelligence, Learning, Vision, and Robotics Lab. More than 40,000 AI-ready workers, 1,200 active investors, and more than 2,000 AI-startups — including 35 AI unicorns — already call New York home.
We’ve got the talent. Since 2021, 500,000 recent graduates have flocked to New York City and an equal number are enrolled in our academic institutions. We’ve produced STEM Ph.D.s three times faster than the rest of the country.
And the mayor and tech leaders are doubling down on the AI transformation. As announced in a comprehensive new report, EDC is working with industry advocates at Tech:NYC to launch a new branding campaign to spotlight the city’s tech innovators, researchers and talent and to stand up an “AI Advisory Council” to guide the equitable growth of this ecosystem.
We’re launching an “AI Nexus” program to supercharge AI adoption across all sectors. And city agencies are piloting AI education at our public schools, public universities, and public libraries, to equip every New Yorker with the tools to thrive in an AI-driven economy. All of this, building on the mayor’s ambitious 2023 “Artificial Intelligence Action Plan,” which laid a foundation for responsible and innovative use of AI across city government.
City leaders are also creating the physical infrastructure to support the revolution, from Civic Hall, an 85,000-square-foot tech training and event space in Union Square, to SPARC, a new, two-million-square-foot academic, health care, and biotech campus on the East Side of Manhattan.
And don’t forget the state government’s big bets. Last year Gov. Hochul launched the “Empire AI” consortium with $400 million in public and private funding to secure New York’s place at the forefront of supercomputing infrastructure and innovation.
With the right investments and oversight, we’re confident that AI, like the internet and other major technological advances before, will be net positive for the economy, creating many more new jobs than it disrupts.
Of course, there are some things that New York can’t offer. We don’t have Silicon Valley’s disconnected, sprawling campuses. We’re not a one-industry tech town, where everyone has identical résumés and identical interests.
But that’s New York’s advantage. This is a city of contrasts, where you might hear Quechua and Fuzhounese while riding the subway, or Haitian Creole and Yiddish while waiting in line at your corner bodega. Our economy is as diverse as our population, with fast-growing life sciences, green economy, and tech industries intersecting our world-leading finance and cultural sectors.
And there is a big AI opportunity in every one of these industries. New York startups are already developing AI tools to help lawyers grind through terabytes of documents, clothing retailers to minimize fabric waste, banks to issue micro-loans to small businesses. They’re optimizing power distribution across green grids, and developing tech that might detect rare cancers earlier or synthesize life-saving drugs faster. AI companies here are augmenting existing jobs as they create entirely new ones.
If you want to test your tech in the real world, if you want to apply your AI to real problems, there’s no place like New York. The streets are your proving ground. The skyline, your daily inspiration.
If you’re ready to take on the world, New York City is ready for you.
Kimball is president & CEO of the New York City Economic Development Corp.
