Editorial Staff
The Innovation Desk covers technology, startups and venture capital in New York — who is building, who is funding, and who is hiring. Reporting under this byline is produced by the editorial staff of Manhattan Standard.
The Commission's AI Scientific Panel met on 9 October on loss-of-control incidents. It has worked on a set of questions with the AI Office for the companies behind the models involved.
Federal exclusions for qualified small business stock now phase in over three to five years. New York's proposed change to them was withdrawn and left out of the May budget.
A world-model startup spun from a gaming platform raised $220 million just nine weeks after its Series A, nearly tripling its valuation.
Growth-stage startups use venture debt to extend their runway 6–12 months with far less dilution than an equity round.
A middle ground between venture capital and traditional IPOs, Reg A+ lets companies tap public markets without full SEC registration. Here's how it works.
Bessemer's $5.75B fund splits early-stage and growth investing into one vehicle. Here's what it signals about how fast founders expect to scale.
The European Commission gained enforcement powers over foundation model developers on August 2, 2026, requiring transparency on training data, copyright compliance, and safety testing.
Profound's Series D validates investor conviction in enterprise infrastructure for AI search visibility. The funding reveals how brands are racing to track citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Institutional investors focus on seven metrics that reveal whether a startup can scale profitably. 5 to be fundable.
Insurers now demand proof that MFA, endpoint detection, tested backups, and incident response plans actually run and were enforced when claims occur.
New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act sets requirements for frontier model developers: safety protocols, incident reporting, and regulatory oversight.
New York requires companies to notify affected residents within 30 days of discovering a data breach and file reports with state regulators.
Software and research companies need just five net new jobs to qualify for New York's Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits. Here is how the thresholds and application actually work.
The go-to-market software startup raised $115 million at more than double last year's valuation, part of a broader surge in New York AI funding.
A $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions is vacated by one court and upheld by another, leaving the nation's top H-1B market to plan around the uncertainty.
A former Navy SEAL co-founded Shield AI to solve a problem he met in Afghanistan. It is now worth $12.7 billion, and he is one of a generation of veterans turning battlefield experience into defense companies.
Job postings are the most honest public document a company produces about its priorities. Here is how to read them.
Every few months a report declares the city's tech sector booming or collapsing. The gap is usually definitional.
The city's funding base is broader than the venture firms that get written about, and the difference matters if you are raising.
The city regulates the use of automated tools in hiring decisions. If you screen candidates with software, this applies to you.
Six questions that separate a working system from a demonstration, none of which require you to understand the model.
The question is not whether a tool was used but whether a reader is misled. That reframing settles most cases.
The simplicity is real and so is the dilution. Founders routinely discover the second at the priced round.
The default is a default for reasons. They apply to some companies and not to others.
Vesting protects the founders who stay, which is exactly why the founders at the start resist it.
Valuation is the term founders negotiate and the one that matters least in a bad outcome.
Management fees and carried interest pull in different directions, and the fund's structure explains behavior founders often find baffling.
Deals rarely die on the business. They die on the corporate record nobody kept.
The state requires manufacturers to make some repair materials available. The scope is narrower than the headlines suggested.
Four sections carry nearly all the meaning. The rest is architecture.
The purchase decision includes a support commitment you are rarely told about.
Notification duties attach to any business holding data on New York residents, wherever the business is.
Turning it on is the easy part. The attacks that work now target the recovery paths around it.
The most costly attacks involve no technical compromise at all. They involve an email and a change of bank details.
Federal grants, philanthropy and institutional support each come with different strings. The mix shapes what gets studied.
Five questions, answerable from the abstract, that separate a finding from a headline.
Each phase answers a different question. Knowing which one a result comes from tells you how much it is worth.