Overview
- Andrew Cuomo unveiled a tech-first platform that would appoint a Chief Innovation Officer to lead work across AI, blockchain, and biotech.
- A proposed Innovation Council would advise the CIO through three committees focused on crypto, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.
- The campaign promises to update what it calls outdated crypto rules, pursue municipal blockchain pilots for recordkeeping and digital identity, and court startups with incentives and workforce training.
- The plan follows Mayor Eric Adams’s creation of a municipal Office of Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology, which Cuomo says he would centralize and expand under a CIO.
- Zohran Mamdani criticized Cuomo’s reported ties to OKX as a conflict of interest, industry figures urged balanced oversight, prediction markets gave Cuomo low odds, and key licensing remains under state and federal regulators such as NYDFS.