On Tuesday night as part of New York Tech Week, NYNext joined forces with Tech:NYC and PensarAI to host our first-ever event. The night celebrated the key players — from scrappy startups to giants such as Google and IBM — that are making big moves in artificial intelligence.
Nearly 150 people took part in NY AI Demo Night. Founders and venture capitalists snacked on figs and tuna tartar and sipped rosé — as well as our new favorite non-alcoholic beverage Töst — at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg. The factory has gotten a major facelift and now houses a number of startups as well as a sweeping view of Manhattan.
Eight AI companies presented their newest ideas to the audience with the goal of getting people to download their apps and invest in their companies
“One of the most unique aspects of the NY tech scene is the ability to bring together and showcase tech heavyweights implementing AI at scale alongside startups in deep builder mode,” Caroline McKechnie, Director of Platform at Tech:NYC, told me.
“We saw a real need for an event that gives founders and engineers a window into what’s being built across the city’s AI landscape — all against the iconic skyline. The energy of having established players and emerging talent demo side by side is something you can only capture in a city like New York.”
Reality Defender, which detects deepfakes, showed just how effective it is in finding AI-generated images among a slew of photos. Founder Ben Colman told me it would have made the plot of HBO’s “Mountainhead” — a film based on the premise that deep fakes are destroying the world — completely null.
PromptLayer, which aims to empower lay people to create their own apps with AI, demonstrated how seamless it is for anyone to prompt AI to build a product. Founder Jared Zoneraich said, “The best AI builders, the best prompt engineers are not machine learning engineers … they’re subject matter experts.”
Representatives from IBM presented their newest insights into AI. But the company also made headlines this week with its newly unveiled watsonx AI Labs in NYC.
“This isn’t your typical corporate lab. watsonx AI Labs is where the best AI developers gain access to world-class engineers and resources and build new businesses and applications that will reshape AI for the enterprise,” Ritika Gunnar, General Manager, Data & AI, IBM, told me. “By anchoring this mission in New York City, we are investing in a diverse, world‑class talent pool and a vibrant community whose innovations have long shaped the tech landscape.”
Other presenters included Flora, an AI tool for creatives; Every.to, a podcast and newsletter network powered by AI; Superblocks, an AI platform building software; Run Loop AI, which helps companies scale coding; and Google’s Deepmind.
This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC’s power players (and those who aspire to be).
The event was just one piece of what has become a sprawling and celebratory week for anyone in technology.
The idea for a tech week came from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The firm launched with a Tech Week in Los Angeles in 2022. In 2023, they expanded to San Francisco and New York City.
Since the first New York Tech Week in 2023, the seven-day conference has ballooned to more than 1,000 events with 60,000 RSVPs. This year, over half of the events focused on AI.
“The energy that is in this room, the startups that we’re going to hear from, these are the ideas that are
going to propel New York’s economy for generations to come,” Tech:NYC CEO Julie Samuels told me. “These are the idea that are gonna change the way we all live, we all work, we all do business, we communicate. We are on the cusp of such an exciting time for New York, and tonight is just a little bit of a
flavor of that.”
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