Tech:NYC Digest: November 6

Tech:NYC Digest: November 6

November 06, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Monday, November 6, 2023

If you didn’t vote early, tomorrow’s your day! 🗳️ In today’s digest, the AI answering mothers’ parenting questions, NYC public transit gets a major funding boost, and a recommended reading list for new founders.

  • You’re invited: We just opened registration for the next installment of our monthly Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg speaker series, featuring Rho co-founder and CEO Everett Cook. RSVP to join us 11/20.

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  • It’s an off year for politics for much of the country – but not New York City. Each of the 51 City Council seats are technically up for grabs tomorrow, but many of them are uncontested races.

    • There are seven Council races in NYC’s “purple” neighborhoods that are expected to be close. (THE CITY)

    • There will also be two additional questions on every voter’s ballot, one about schools and one about sewers. (Gothamist) 

    • Confirm your polling place and see your personalized sample ballot here.

  • Construction of a tunnel under the Hudson River is set to pick up steam thanks to a $3.8 billion boost in federal funding. Sen. Chuck Schumer and US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced Friday that work would begin this month on the next phase of the Gateway project. (New York Times)

    • A day later, the pair joined Gov. Kathy Hochul to announce that the Second Avenue subway expansion would receive $3.4 billion from the federal government to expand the Q line deeper into East Harlem and connect it to the 4, 5, and 6 trains, benefitting an estimated 100,000 daily riders once completed. (CBS New York)

  • In other transit news: Lyft announced it would double its fleet of electric Citi Bikes and launch new charging infrastructure pilots by the end of 2024. E-bike rides have increased from less than 14% in 2020 to more than 46% so far this year despite making up about one-fifth of the fleet. (Crain’s New York)

In other reading:

AI is now being tapped to bring parenting support to millions of mothers – answering all of their questions from conception to college.

What’s new: Verneek, the NYC-based deeptech AI startup, launched a partnership with Motherly, the parenting-focused content platform, to provide Motherly users with an AI coach called Quin.

  • Motherly reaches 40 million monthly users, and Verneek’s Quin tool will synthesize the site’s library of expert-driven content to provide answers to questions from those users.

  • With the partnership, Motherly still owns the expert content IP, CEO Jill Koziol said, and protects from its data being scraped by large language models. 

The future of AI is “purpose-built,” Verneek’s co-founder Nasrin Mostafazadeh told us. “It’s AI-out-of-the-box. We fully manage and maintain it, all the way from the underlying AI technologies running on the backend to the front-end UI itself.”

  • Verneek’s AI tools gets integrated with any website or app in about two weeks, Mostafazadeh says, and can return answers via voice or text for questions that need reasoning capabilities beyond a keyword search.

  • “A fun example was when a mom asked, ‘It’s 54 degrees out, how should I dress my baby?’ With Quin, you get a trustworthy answer, in the empathetic voice of Motherly, synthesized based on Motherly’s own curated content.”

AI for industries over functions: Since its founding two years ago, Verneek has been focused on “deep domain expertise,” a strategy that builds and deploys custom AI for domain-specific applications – think AI for restaurants, AI for teachers, and, in the case of Quin, AI for mothers.

  • “Motherly’s Quin AI is such a great, tangible use case of AI helping everyday Americans make better and faster decisions,” said Mostafazadeh. “Convincing the public about the helpfulness of AI by rolling out more and more domain-specific applications is good for everyone involved: good for consumers and good for businesses.” 

In other reading:

  • The New Headache for Bosses: Employees Aren’t Quitting (Wall Street Journal)

  • The Power Lunch is Dead, Long Live the Power Lunch (Air Mail)

  • 100 books every CEO and founder should read (Fast Company)

  • ESG Flo, a NYC-based AI-powered data infrastructure platform, raised $5.3 million in seed funding. Rho Ignition and Tola Capital co-led the round.

  • ex/ante, a NYC-based venture capital firm focused on “agentic tech,” raised $33 million for its first fund.

  • Lexeo Therapeutics, a NYC-based gene therapy startup focused on genetic cardio and central nervous system conditions, went public on the Nasdaq under the symbol LXEO, raising $100 million in its IPO.

  • Llama, a NYC-based access control and governance platform for smart contracts, raised $6 million in seed funding. Founders Fund and Electric Capital co-led the round and were joined by Amplify Partners, Reverie, FJ Labs, and a group of individuals.

  • November 7: In-person: AWS Startups Women’s Demo Day, with Calibrate CEO Isabelle Kenyon, AWS North America Startups Business Development Leaders Kathryn Van Nuys, Gilly CEO Laraib Khan, and others. Register here.

  • November 14 – 15: In-person: 2023 Urban Tech Summit, with NYC chief climate officer Rit Aggarwala, Kelvin CEO Marshall Cox, Brooklyn Navy Yard CEO Lindsay Greene, Near Space Labs CEO Rema Matevosyan, and others. Hosted by Cornell Tech. Register here.

  • November 15: Virtual: State of Fundraising Briefing, with AlleyCorp general partner Marshall Porter, Stellation Capital managing partner Peter Boyce II, Carta head head VC and accelerator business development Ryan O’Conor, and Tech:NYC president Julie Samuels. Hosted by Tech:NYC. Register here. 

  • November 20: In-person: Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg speaker series, featuring Rho co-founder and CEO Everett Cook. Hosted by Tech:NYC, Bloomberg, and Cornell Tech. Register here.

  • December 8: In-person: Nonprofit TechCon, with BetaNYC executive director Noel Hidalgo, Queens Deputy Borough President Ebony Young, and others. Hosted by City & State. Use code TECH23 for 50% off tickets here.

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