The takeaway. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Masters of Scale Live that IBM is tripling entry-level hiring in the US for 2026, while most of the industry has spent the year cutting junior headcount. From the JPMorgan Payments breakfast, banks are still slow to rebuild on AI rather than bolt it onto existing systems. From the Agent Era panel, digital twins are hot but the infrastructure is not ready. Mikayla Ellis reports.
New York Tech Week brought 1,600+ events to the city this year. CapV spent the week in panels, breakfasts, and after-hours conversations across fintech, AI, and venture. Here's what stood out.
The Best Part of Tech Week Happened Off Stage
To kick off the week, Capital V hosted Made In This Room, an exclusive dinner that connected founders, investors, and the media from outlets including the Wall Street Journal and NBC. Going into the week, our team went to events, including Masters of Scale Live, where we got to meet Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, the JPMorgan Payments breakfast, and Agent Era: How Women Founders Are Building AI That Works for Their Business.
IBM Is Hiring More Junior Talent, Not Less
At Masters of Scale Live, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna shared that IBM is tripling its entry-level hiring in the US in 2026. His reasoning: the business is growing, and AI now lets someone with one year of experience perform like someone with five.
The jobs themselves are changing too. Fewer clerical and back-office roles. More engineering, sales, and digital work. Junior developers now spend less time on routine coding and more time with customers and on new product builds.
Most of the industry has spent the past year cutting junior headcount and pointing to AI as the reason. IBM is taking a contrarian approach.
Banks Are Adopting AI Slower Than the Headlines Suggest
At the JPMorgan Payments breakfast, the conversation was more grounded than the broader AI narrative. Banks are using AI mostly to make existing processes more efficient. Rebuilding core banking systems around AI, rather than bolting it onto what already exists, is still a slow process.
The concrete cases are narrower than the headlines. Faster fraud detection. Smoother transaction processing. Real, but incremental. The promise outruns the delivery.
That gap between flashy AI announcements and the actual infrastructure work is the real story worth watching in fintech this year.
Digital Twins Are Everywhere, but the Infrastructure Isn't Ready
At Agent Era: How Women Founders Are Building AI That Works for Their Business, digital twins came up repeatedly as one of the biggest themes in AI right now. The panel was direct about the gap between interest and execution. The demand is there. The infrastructure to support it at scale is not.
The real takeaway from Tech Week is that the people building this stuff are already past the hype. They know what works, they know what's slow, and they're focused on the hard work that actually moves things forward.