New York City is redefining the global AI landscape, emerging as the world capital of Applied AI - where cutting-edge technology meets real-world challenges across diverse industries.

At the forefront of this transformation is the NYCEDC (New York City Economic Development Corporation) a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a vibrant and equitable economy for all New Yorkers. Through strategic initiatives, NYCEDC drives innovation, fosters business creation, and develops workforce programs to ensure the city remains a global leader in technology and economic opportunity.

In this exclusive interview, we sat down with Cecilia Kushner, Chief Strategy Officer at NYCEDC, as she delves into NYC’s AI Advantage strategy, highlighting the city’s unique strengths: a thriving tech ecosystem valued at $694 billion, unparalleled academic and research infrastructure, and a diverse economy spanning finance, healthcare, media, and more.

From fostering AI literacy through public libraries to empowering small businesses with AI tools, NYCEDC is committed to ensuring that AI benefits every New Yorker. Discover how New York City is leveraging its unmatched talent pool, cross-industry connections, and robust investment community to lead the way in Applied AI, shaping the future of technology and inclusion.

NYC's AI Advantage Strategy & Vision

The AI Summit Series: In January 2025, NYC EDC published "New York City’s  Artificial Intelligence Advantage" - the first-of-its-kind study positioning NYC as the global leader in Applied AI. What was the catalyst for creating this?

Cecilia Kushner (CK): We released this to establish the city's strengths in AI and outline a series of commitments to optimize this growth and catalyze equitable adoption across sectors of New York City’s economy. We want to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to AI’s benefits and its innovations so that technology does not widen gaps in workforce equity but helps to close them.

New York City is absolutely at a pivotal moment in the evolution of artificial intelligence. Our city isn’t just participating in the AI revolution – we’re helping to shape it.

New York City is cementing its place as a global leader in both tech and life sciences. We remain the second-largest tech ecosystem globally, valued at $694 billion, with more than 360,000 tech workers, over 25,000 tech-enabled startups, 200 coworking spaces, 100 accelerators and incubators, and more than 1,200 investment firms financing emerging technologies. At the same time, NYC has rapidly established itself as a top-tier life sciences hub – with world-class research institutions, growing wet-lab space, biotech accelerators, and a deep concentration of clinicians and scientists – creating a unique environment where breakthroughs in AI, biology, and healthcare can intersect.

And now, we have emerged as the Applied AI capital of the world.  Our diverse economy and top-tier talent pool presents countless opportunities for AI to meet and solve the toughest challenges, including as a game-changing tool in the fight against climate change. The city is home to more than 40,000 workers in the New York metro area already possessing AI-related skills, and we’re home to a diverse economy of thriving AI-ready sectors, such as finance, insurance, healthcare, advertising, real estate, life sciences, and more.

Our three goals and eighteen commitments outlined in our report underscore our dedication to enabling all New Yorkers, and all industries, including small and medium sized businesses can harness the strengths of our AI ecosystem.

The AI Summit Series: The report outlines three strategic goals. Can you walk us through how these goals - advancing NYC's Applied AI leadership, fostering business creation, and developing an AI-ready workforce - work together to create a competitive advantage?

CK: These goals are mutually reinforcing parts of a single ecosystem play, designed to ensure AI touches and strengthens all parts of our economy.

Advancing our Applied AI leadership signals demand: when New York City highlights and invests in real-world AI use cases across health, media, retail, biotech, and more, it attracts founders and customers who want production-grade solutions.

Business creation, whether building startups, spinouts, or providing venture support, like in our NYC AI Nexus initiative, converts that demand into firms and hopefully into industry adoption through pilots — accelerating technology commercialization and local growth for businesses of all sizes and across neighborhoods. We are talking about supporting the AI transformation of food, beverage and retail spaces, our brick-and-mortar community that is a critical part of our economy. We want to ensure small law firms have access and knowledge to adopt AI to stay competitive. And we want to ensure sectors like fashion, hospitality, media and entertainment, legacy sectors of our economy, don’t fall behind in this moment.

Workforce development ensures that employers and startups can hire locally and scale: training, literacy pilots, and university pipelines keep talent in the city and lower friction for adoption and makes AI literacy and opportunity accessible to all of our workers.

The AI Summit Series: NYC has seen its share of nationwide VC funding to AI companies jump from 7.7% to 11.3%, with $21.4B invested from 2018-2022. How is NYC EDC building on this momentum to attract even more AI investment?

CK: NYCEDC is laser focused on structuring public–private partnerships and creating signals about the city’s cross-industry market and talent depth.

As part of that, NYCEDC and Tech:NYC have launched a marketing and awareness initiative called Obviously NYC spotlighting New York City as the most compelling place for building in tech, especially with AI. Obviously NYC highlights our city’s role as a global hub for AI innovation, and it emphasizes the unique cross-industry connections that enables New York City to turn bold ideas into real-world impact.

We are also focused on building programmatic pipelines (such as incubators, accelerators, and industry matching) and advancing partnerships with major companies to make it easier for investors to see deal flow and for startups to scale in-market. These actions are designed to convert awareness and capital into repeatable exits and later-stage investment in New York City-based AI companies.

The AI Summit Series: You've positioned NYC as the world capital of Applied AI - AI that solves real-world problems across diverse industries. What makes NYC uniquely suited for this cross-industry AI application compared to other tech hubs?

CK: New York City's premier talent pool, diverse economy, strong access to capital, and leading researchers are cementing the city as a global hub for Applied AI.

Our unmatched depth of AI-ready industries – finance, media & advertising, fashion & retail, healthcare, real estate, travel and hospitality – all concentrated in one city means startups can build verticalized, revenue-first AI products and get early paying customers.

The scale of our customer base –  large enterprises, global media firms, major hospital systems, key financial institutions, thousands of small- and mid- size enterprises (SMEs), and municipal agencies – provide complex data and real operational problems that reward applied solutions.

And the city’s academic and talent pipeline — world-class research, academic, and professional training institutions — plus a large base of workers with AI and adjacent skills create a talent flywheel. Together, these produce rapid product-market fit opportunities that many pure-tech hubs (where consumer apps or core-model playbooks dominate) don’t offer as readily as New York City.

For years, NYCEDC has tapped into the strength of New York City's globally unmatched talent field, through initiatives like the Founder Fellowship program that supports diverse tech founders, and the Startup and VC Internship Programs aimed at matching startups to skilled New York City students and addressing disparities in the sectors' workforces. As the greater technology ecosystem expands to include AI, New York City's competitive labor force is already incredibly well positioned to serve as a home to this growth.

NYC AI Nexus & Ecosystem Building

The AI Summit Series: "The NYC AI Nexus", launched with C10 Labs and Plug and Play, focuses on AI adoption across SMEs and key sectors. How is the AI Nexus facilitating those meaningful collaborations between AI startups and industry partners, and what success stories can you share from the program so far?

CK: We’re very excited about the NYC AI Nexus. This initiative is a central piece of NYCEDC's work to ensure that the greater New York City economy is equipped to reap the benefits from AI innovation. AI has the potential to increase productivity and boost business outcomes, but it essential that businesses keep up with this evolution to remain competitive. EDC is especially invested in our SMEs: from retail stores to smaller law firms, family-owned restaurants, independent real estate agencies, and more, all of our local business owners should have opportunities to leverage AI’s capabilities.

Our operators have deep expertise in scaling ventures, building bridges between industry and academia, and ensuring technology works for people, and the initiative will launch its first cohorts in early 2026. To connect AI startups and industry and accelerate Applied AI across the city, the AI Nexus will identify high-impact use cases for AI through industry-focused boards that include SMEs; support venture growth through accelerator and venture studio programming and facilitate pilots, proofs of concept, demo days, and reverse pitches, so that the most promising ideas from AI startups can turn into real-world solutions.

The operators will also hold ecosystem events that engage and train businesses in AI across the five boroughs, to further develop our AI ecosystem and prime industry for this emerging technology.

Workforce Development & Inclusion

The AI Summit Series: The AI Literacy Pilot across NYC's public libraries is fascinating - partnering with Brooklyn, New York, and Queens Public Libraries to enhance citywide AI literacy. How do you measure the impact of making AI education accessible through public libraries?

CK: Our AI literacy pilot, led by the global AI literacy organization Day of AI, will leverage an invaluable public resource, the city’s libraries, to reach New Yorkers across the five boroughs and empower them to effectively and responsibly use AI. The initiative uses a train-the-trainer model so library staff are prepared to run their own local trainings for library patrons about AI. We’re focused on geographic coverage across the city, knowledge retention, and increased AI-related engagement.

That means having a widespread reach across all neighborhoods of the city, from staff to patrons; an increase in understanding AI and confidence in using tools; and also a rise in AI activity at the libraries, from patron participation to new staff-led workshops.

New York City's economy cannot reach its full AI potential unless everyone, from job seekers to business owners and more, understand the use cases, benefits, and risks of this emerging technology. Without that literacy, New Yorkers and businesses without proper AI education are at risk of being victimized by the technology. By embedding AI education into trusted public spaces, we’re creating an inclusive, citywide foundation for digital literacy—helping every New Yorker access the tools of the future.

Again, a big part of NYCEDC’s mission is to train the largest, most diverse, most AI-ready workforce in the world through programs like the AI library literacy pilot, and the NYC Startup & Venture Capital Internship Programs, and as New York City continues to lead in applied AI, we must ensure that nobody is left behind. Across all of our work, our priority is building a vibrant and equitable economy for all New Yorkers, through programs like the Founder Fellow and Venture Access Alliance.

Academic & Research Infrastructure

The AI Summit Series: With Cornell Tech spinning out over 100 startups valued at $695M (94% staying in NYC) and Columbia's Data Science Institute graduating 1,290 students with 95% job placement, how is this academic foundation translating into economic impact?

CK: With more than 100 higher education institutions and a student population of over 503,000 - on par with the overall population of Atlanta and far exceeding that of Cleveland and Pittsburgh - universities and colleges are an important part of New York City’s economic and physical fabric.

New York has more academic institutions than any other metro area in the country. Not only do these institutions represent an industry that generates $35 billion in economic impact every year, they also are an important cornerstone of innovation and equitable economic development.

Academic institutions help attract and grow young talent - strengthening our workforce and promoting economic mobility - and drive research and innovation that can translate to new business and solutions.

Government Innovation & Future Outlook

The AI Summit Series: NYC issued the first-of-its-kind "AI Action Plan" in 2023, with 30 actions initiated or completed in year one. How is government leading by example in AI adoption, and what does this signal to the private sector?

CK: It signals that the City of New York is also a place where AI can also be put to work.

The City issued the first-of-its-kind AI Action Plan in October 2023, released by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation (NYC OTI). This plan creates a blueprint for responsible AI use and identifies the opportunity for AI to improve services and processes across government.

The AI Summit Series: Looking at the 2,000 AI companies now in NYC and the trajectory you've outlined in "New York City's AI Advantage," what does success look like for NYC's AI ecosystem in 2026 and beyond?

CK: New York City’s economy is strong today, and it will be stronger tomorrow. EDC doesn’t think in one-year or four-year increments. We think in decades and generational change.

As AI catalyzes innovations across all industries, New York City will continue to lead in Applied AI – solving problems in various domains, from media to retail, professional services, digital health and healthcare, real estate, finance, and everything in between. And we want to ensure that all of our businesses, sectors of our economy, and New Yorkers can realize the opportunities of our Applied AI ecosystem.

That means continuing to fuel commercialization and expand the number of AI-enabled businesses across the city and helping our traditional sectors falling behind in AI adoption to keep pace. We will also continue to advance partnerships with CUNY and local training providers to embed AI literacy and applied tools into programs across every field and into all the programs that we support – from our internship programs with CUNY and through our workforce development partners – students graduate ready to use AI on day one.

New York City’s AI Advantage strategy is focused on equipping every New Yorker to use AI responsibly and productively, not just computer scientists.

We see AI as the next essential literacy, like digital skills 20 years ago, and New York City is committed to ensuring every community has access to those opportunities, not just a few.

To dive deeper into the strategies and vision outlined in this article, don’t miss Cecilia’s upcoming Headliner session at The AI Summit New York, "The Nexus for Applied AI Innovation: Where Builders Meet Industry Adopters”.

Tune in on December 11, 2025, 10:10 - 10:35 AM on the Headliners Stage to explore how NYC is cementing its position as the world capital of Applied AI. Be part of the conversation and discover how AI is revolutionizing industries and creating opportunities for all.