Hola,

Famous and semi-famous people have been going viral this week with posts, tweets, and op-eds on whether NYC is dead or not.

It's part of a wider conversation on the future of work and cities. FWIW, Facebook and Amazon certainly don’t buy into the narrative that Manhattan will become a skyscraper graveyard.

• Earlier this month, Amazon announced it plans to add 2K jobs in the 5th Ave Lord & Taylor building that changed hands a few times recently (it was purchased by WeWork and then sold to Amazon earlier this year).
• Also in August, Facebook leased an entire building near Penn Station.
• In May, TikTok announced a massive lease for a Times Square space.

Change it up

AI monitoring startup Fiddler Labs received a strategic investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund on Tuesday. 

Fiddler was one of our picks for our Game Changers 2020 report — a list of high-momentum startups with world-changing potential. See the rest here.

Better than Blue's Clues

Our final Future of Health (September 23-25) mystery speaker clue is live: the mystery speaker's employer’s mission is to improve the lives of as many people as possible and is currently using technologies to assist in diagnosing cancer, predicting patient outcomes, preventing blindness, and more.
 

Only 3 more days to submit your guess. Read all the clues here. You can win a free ticket to Future of Health and/or an Oculus Quest.

Get $300 off your ticket with code mystery.

Doing the dirty work

Enterprises are turning to robotic process automation (RPA) to help automate repetitive software tasks like data entry and document processing.

Clients can see 40+ startups reshaping the RPA market here.

• Senior Ecosystem Principal, VSP — Location flexible
• Ecosystem Principal, VSP — Location flexible
• Market Intelligence Analyst, American Medical Association — Chicago, IL 

Covid-19 has largely accelerated what’s known as the “retailpocalypse” — the ongoing shuttering of brick-and-mortar retail operations — finally forcing retailers like Brooks Brothers, Muji, and GNC into bankruptcy.

But the space is not without its bright spots: On-demand and food delivery services, for instance, were buoyed by social distancing measures. Our latest State Of Retail Tech report digs into how the pandemic has impacted VC investment and where investors and startups are moving next.

Additionally, startups in both e-commerce and new retail formats have seen upticks in funding as retailers look to engage consumers outside of the physical store.

Our senior lead retail analyst delved into these trends and more in Tuesday’s webinar. Get the slides and full recording here.

Have a great rest of the week.

Marcelo