AI startup Aaru plans 650 new NYC jobs and an R&D hub near Union Square, with up to $13M in state tax credits

Aaru, a two-year-old Manhattan artificial intelligence company, plans to add more than 650 jobs in New York City over the next five years and make the city the home of its research and development operations, Gov. Kathy Hochul's office announced Friday. The company would grow from about 60 employees today to more than 700.

Aaru will lease and build out more than 27,000 square feet of office space near Union Square, according to the announcement, which was also reported by FingerLakes1.com. The state did not name the building.

What the state is offering

Empire State Development, the state's economic development agency, has offered Aaru up to $13.12 million in Excelsior tax credits. The credits are performance-based: the company has to create the 650 jobs and spend $109 million on research and development in New York to collect them, the governor's office said.

The new positions will span software engineering, computer and information research, product development, enterprise sales, client management and corporate operations. The release did not give salary ranges or a hiring schedule beyond the five-year window.

What Aaru does

Aaru sells AI simulations that companies use to test products, marketing campaigns and strategy before launch. In its own description, it uses language models to run large numbers of AI agents that "mirror humans" and model the behavior of whole populations.

"We made a deliberate decision to build Aaru in New York City," co-founder and CEO Cameron Fink said in the release, citing the city's talent pool and its proximity to large companies. ESD chief Hope Knight noted the company was founded in the city just two years ago.

The bigger picture

The state framed the deal as part of a run of tech expansions in the city, pointing to earlier commitments from PayPal and iCapital, 230 jobs promised by the London-based voice AI startup ElevenLabs, and 115 jobs at Radical AI's planned materials science lab in Brooklyn. It also cited CBRE's 2026 Scoring Tech Talent report, which counted nearly 395,000 tech workers in the New York metro area, more than the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time in the report's 13-year history.

Excelsior credits are paid out only as companies hit their targets, so the full $13.12 million depends on Aaru reaching the 650-job mark. The announcement is on the Empire State Development site.