Hochul made the announcement on Thursday. Public money for the institute comes from Empire State Development, the city's Economic Development Corporation and the Queens Borough President's Office, while private funders including Ascendium Education Group, Google.org, Wells Fargo, Con Edison and Adobe will pay to operate it.
"During a time when AI is transforming our workforce and causing uncertainty, New York is continuing to lead the nation with policies and training to ensure New Yorkers workers are protected and prepared for the future," Hochul told Fortune. "The AI Jobs Institute will connect thousands of New Yorkers with cutting-edge courses and career pathways, giving them the opportunity to keep up with rapidly evolving technology."
The hub opens into a tech labor market that has shifted toward New York. The metro area added 30,640 tech workers between 2022 and 2025, reaching 394,300 and passing the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time in the 13-year history of CBRE's annual tech talent report. Much of that growth came from banks and other financial firms hiring AI talent, though the Bay Area still employs more AI specialists.
Hochul's FutureWorks Commission is due to deliver proposals by the end of December on job training and placement, job quality, the social safety net and support for small businesses. The institute builds on a relationship the state already has with Pursuit: when Hochul launched FutureWorks in March, Empire State Development named Pursuit the statewide lead for AI Prep for Jobs, a program to train 420 low-income New Yorkers through accelerated courses instead of degree programs.
Founded in 2012, Pursuit spent most of its history training people for software jobs. About three years ago it replaced that curriculum with a 630-hour AI course it updates every week. About 400 to 500 people have gone through the new program, meaning the 40,000 target would require growing that number roughly eighty-fold in about six years. The nonprofit says 70% of its participants are Black or Latine, half receive public assistance, 60% lack a four-year degree and 40% are immigrants, and that its programs have produced more than $1 billion in lifetime wage gains for participants. The state's release does not set placement or wage targets for the new institute.
The hub also arrives as the entry-level jobs that once absorbed new tech workers are shrinking. Census Bureau research shows that since ChatGPT's release, graduates of AI-exposed majors such as computer science have been landing fewer jobs and lower pay, often in retail and food service, and entry-level postings increasingly ask for skills once expected only of experienced workers.
"Something we're really thinking about this time is the institute is really focused on lower income New Yorkers and making sure that this time they are able to be at the front of the line," Pursuit CEO Nick Simmons said. Trainees start with the basics of tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, then learn to build AI agents that handle routine business tasks.
Former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will chair the institute's national advisory council, whose members include AI industry figures and CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez. Simmons said OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are supplying credits, certificates and access to their training platforms, and employers on the council report which skills they are hiring for. The institute also plans to work with CUNY on add-on AI certificates; Pursuit trained 100 students this year at LaGuardia Community College, across the street from the new site.