These are the breakout startups hiring in New York this month — meet them before everyone else does.

Upscale AI is an AI native platform that generates, launches, and optimizes high-performing video ads across Streaming TV and YouTube for fast-growing consumer brands. They sit at the intersection of creative, media, and measurement—using AI to automate production, accelerate experimentation, and drive real business outcomes. Founded by Mike Chang and Kevin Weatherman, backed by Microsoft's Venture Fund and Eniac Ventures.

Hiring: account executive, technical PM, senior backend engineer. Details here.

Brij is an AI-powered platform that helps consumer brands unify their offline and online customer experiences—and finally own their first-party data. They work with brands like Feastables, Caraway, Heineken, Chobani, Lowe's & Skullcandy. Founded by Kait Stephens and Zack Morrison. Series A company.

Hiring: SDR, commercial account executive, mid-market account executive, enterprise account manager. Details here.

Hanover Park is the AI-native fund administrator that bundles full-service fund administration with products like AI Portfolio Management, an AI Inbox Analyzer for board decks, KPI collection, and an investor portal. They've raised $31M from Emergence, have $10B+ in assets on the platform, and support approximately 10,000 LPs, including top endowments and financial institutions. Founded by Chris Hladczuk and Nick Puljic. Series A.

Hiring: multiple open roles. Details here.

Bustem protects ecom brands from copycats, counterfeiters, and unauthorized sellers that siphon revenue and damage trust. They combine AI detection with a hands-on enforcement team to find and remove bad actors across marketplaces, ads, and fake domains, putting real dollars back into the brand's pocket. Founded by Oliver Brocato. Series C company.

Hiring: account executive, chief of staff to CEO/founder, founding customer success manager, social media content creator, founding engineer. Respond to this!

Speechify is an Applied AI Research Lab that has built the largest consumer Voice AI platform in the world, focused on text-to-speech reading, voice chat, AI podcasts, and AI voice typing. Used by 50M+ people, it's a top 5 AI Assistant on the App Store alongside Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT, and Claude. Series B company founded by Cliff Weitzman and Tyler Weitzman.

Hiring: multiple engineering and product roles. Details here.

FLORA is Cursor for creatives: a professional AI creative tool with every single creative AI model across text, image, and video, which you can connect together to accelerate your creative process. Used by teams like Nike, Pentagram, Netflix, and Lionsgate. They just raised a $42M Series A from Redpoint, with existing investors including a16z, Menlo Ventures, and the founders of Frame.io, Vercel and MSCHF. Based in the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg. Founded by Weber Wong and Harish Venkatesan.

Hiring: multiple roles across engineering, product, and design. Details here.

Giga is building the next generation of customer experience—real-time AI agents that can understand emotion, resolve issues instantly, and scale across the world's largest enterprises. They're working toward becoming the go-to AI platform for all enterprise automation, powered by their voice superintelligence. Founded by IIT Kharagpur graduates Varun Vummadi and Esha Manideep. Recently raised a $61M Series A, with paying customers including DoorDash.

Hiring: forward deployed engineers, backend engineers, enterprise sales directors, head of growth, head of product marketing. Details here.

Norm AI is a legal and compliance automation platform that transforms how enterprises handle legal, regulatory, and industry requirements. Their "compliant by design" approach integrates compliance checks directly into business activities—from AI-generated content to marketing materials. Founded by John Nay. They've raised $87M over the past 18 months, with their latest $48M round from Coatue, Craft Ventures, Vanguard, Blackstone Innovations Investments, Bain Capital, New York Life Ventures, Citi Ventures, TIAA Ventures, and Marc Benioff.

Hiring: legal engineers, forward deployed engineers, full-stack engineers, senior product designers, account directors. Details here.

The Funding Landscape

2026 is shaping up as a tale of two markets. AI, climate/energy, and infrastructure companies (chips, data centers, logistics) are pulling in massive rounds, while consumer and social startups face a tougher environment.

This week alone:

Simile raised a $100M Series A from Index Ventures (Feb 12)

Anterior landed $40M Series B from NEA (Feb 12)

Loyal closed a $100M Series C from The Longevity Fund (Feb 11)

Monaco secured $25M Series A from Founders Fund (Feb 11)

Hades Mining raised $18M Seed from Headline (Feb 11)

The Reality Check

Despite the funding rebound at the top end, tech layoffs have already surpassed 30,000 cuts in the first few weeks of 2026. At this pace, we're on track to potentially exceed 2025's roughly 245,000 tech job losses.

The takeaway for you: If you're evaluating your next move, look closely at what companies are raising. AI infrastructure, climate tech, and enterprise automation are where the capital—and therefore hiring—is flowing.