AI Startups Are Making Their Home in New York | Hacker News Reader

AI Startups Are Making Their Home in New York

wsj.com

14 pointsphilip120917 comments

from the article: "...according to investors, founders and businesses with ties to the region." seems to confirms my bias that this is based more on hopes and dreams than reality.

NYC wants to be seen as a hub for tech startups, but they aren't. There's lots of great investment there, especially for building around stuffy old-business workflows, but its not exactly an innovation R&D center and that's ok.

But yes, I'm sure more funders in NYC would love a greater slice of the VC pie that's been historically over-allocated to SF.

Having now been around the NYC startup scene a bit, it's a very different scene than SF and others. NYC's scene really focuses on product companies and companies that fit into finance and big company workflows. Aside from Google, Facebook, and the finance industry, there's very little R&D in many of these companies. NYC's history with IBM and Bell Labs means that it's also not a terrible place for some technical infrastructure companies.

It's not surprising to have a bunch of AI there, because most of the AI scene is sort of perfunctory technical infrastructure around hosting Nvidia GPUs (Lambda, Coreweave, etc.) and end products.

New York was also a great place to host GPUs and ASICs for cryptocurrency mining 5 years ago, incidentally, and there is a lot of infrastructure both in terms of datacenters and old industrial plants that can be converted into datacenters.

The fact that New York (a city of 8M people) has only received ~150% more funding than Mountain View (a city of 81K people) tells you all you need to know about the promise here.

Mountain View is a tiny part of the Bay Area, which just so happens a population of ~8M. So, Apples/Apples maybe?

Or should we talk about AI startups in East Harlem only?

The promise that New York doesn't hinge on the existence of a single industry?

Mountain View is part of a contiguous suburb stretching between South San Francisco, San Francisco, and San Jose which have massive biotech, tech, and manufacturing industries, respectively.

It doesn't hinge on any one of them.

New York is part of a contiguous megalopolis stretching between Boston and Washington DC, which features the same industries.

Oh oh, I sense a return of the 'East vs West Computer Bowl' coming. Someone get Stewart Cheifet on the line!

I work in Big Tech. Whenever we open positions both in the Bay and in NYC, we are flooded with applications to NYC with a lot less in the Bay. A good chunk of these come from people in the Bay wanting to move out.

I've been in the Bay for a few years now. I've noticed that a lot of people I talk to don't really like it here. They like their job and the paycheck but they would move out in a heartbeat if they could. As opposed to all the folks I know who live in NYC, most of them really enjoy it.

I wonder if that has something to do with it ["it" being the article]

If you spend all your time working the Bay Area sucks. But if you enjoy the outdoors and can find a healthy work life balance, it’s amazing. Where else can you go skiing and surfing in the same day?

This has been my experience as well, although I’ve started hearing folks complain about wanting a slightly slower pace of life after living in NYC for a couple of years. Especially those who moved out of the Bay.

https://archive.ph/zycY0

> In January, New York state announced plans to build up its AI research bona fides through a $400 million public-private partnership dubbed “Empire AI.”

How is this not just straight graft?

NY State politics 101: Donate to politicians, get funded, repeat.

Are you new to New York?

Everything the state does is graft.

Why would it be graft?

"Empire AI"? Now we're just putting "AI" after geographic labels now? Like how NYC tried to be "Silicon Alley" and Northern VA tried to be "Silicon Dominion".

I guess next century we'll have people say "I grew up in one of the rundown AI Belt cities then moved here."

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