Agents of Transformation speakers, from left: Charles Lamanna of Microsoft; Deepak Singh of Amazon; and Angela Garinger of Outreach. Early bird ticket pricing ends this week for GeekWire’s Agents of Transformation, a half-day summit in Seattle that will explore how agentic AI is redefining...
One eye on AI: How much of the technology should a seventh grader be using and understanding? (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) I recently asked my 13-year-old daughter, a Seattle Public Schools seventh grader, how much she was currently learning about and/or using artificial intelligence. “Not...
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A photo sequence shows the total lunar eclipse of March 14, 2025. (Sky & Telescope Photo / Edwin L. Aguirre and Imelda B. Joson). Tonight’s full moon will turn into a red moon during the last total lunar eclipse we’ll be able to see for the next two years — but whether we’ll truly be able to see...
Elizabeth Scallon. (LinkedIn Photo) — Elizabeth Scallon, a longtime leader in Seattle’s startup ecosystem, has left HP after serving for nearly four years as director of technical and business incubation and strategy. “At HP, I had the privilege of diving deep into technologies ranging from...
Baiju Bhatt, founder and CEO of Aetherflux. (LinkedIn Photo) Aetherflux, a Bay Area-based space startup, is expanding to Seattle to open what it calls a “core center for satellite development.” In a post on LinkedIn last week, Aetherflux said its team is growing and the company is currently...
The Seattle skyline. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Seattle tech leaders are warning that a new income tax proposal could stall the region’s momentum in artificial intelligence. In a letter sent Monday to Gov. Bob Ferguson, a group of AI researchers, founders, and investors argue that...
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a multi-year strategic partnership on Friday that includes a $50 billion investment from Amazon into the AI company. (GeekWire File Photos) Amazon’s OpenAI investment and cloud partnership made big headlines Friday, but the...
Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Feb. 22, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
Carbon Robotics founder and CEO Paul Mikesell with the company’s LaserWeeder G2. (Carbon Robotics Photo) Carbon Robotics, the Seattle startup that builds robots used by farmers to eliminate weeds without the use of chemicals, got another vote of confidence from the nation’s health policy...
A Microsoft Azure data center. (Microsoft Photo) The race to regulate artificial intelligence infrastructure has arrived at a crossroads in Washington state. After weeks on the sidelines, Microsoft publicly declared its opposition to a controversial state bill that aims to rein in the...
Anthropic acquired Seattle startup Vercept on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about the impact of early exits on the broader Seattle startup ecosystem, and the question of whether AI startups can compete long-term against the giants of the field. We dig into the deal, the public feud...
The Rivian showroom at University Village in Seattle in 2025. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) With the threat of a ballot initiative looming, a slate of auto dealers in Washington have come out in support of EV makers Rivian and Lucid Motors in their pursuit of direct sales to...
An artist’s conception shows the integrated design for the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. (Blue Origin Illustration) NASA is reworking its Artemis moon program to add a test mission for commercial lunar landers in low Earth orbit next year, with a crewed lunar landing to follow in 2028 at the...
Rob Lloyd, chief technology officer for the City of Seattle, announced that he is stepping down from his role in March. (Photo courtesy of Rob Llloyd) Rob Lloyd, Seattle’s chief technology officer, is leaving his post to become executive director of the Center for Digital Government. His last...
(Photo by Jason Richard on Unsplash) Washington state has received a federal green light for its final plan under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program — the national push to extend high-speed internet to places that still don’t have adequate service. The National...
Inside Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Amazon is doubling down on OpenAI, announcing a strategic partnership Friday that includes a $50 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker. The companies said Amazon will start with $15 billion, with $35 billion more...
Confido Legal, a Seattle startup that builds financial software for law firms and legal tech companies, raised $9 million across two rounds. The company spun out of Seattle-based Gravity Payments and is led by Emery Wager, a Stanford grad and former Marine who was previously featured in...
(BigStock Photo) Uber and Lyft drivers protested in downtown Seattle on Wednesday, calling on the companies to stop adding new drivers to what they call a “flooded” market. The action comes as a new report shows the majority of miles driven by rideshare drivers are without a passenger. The...
Inside an Amazon data center. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Data center titans Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are headed to the White House next week to sign a commitment to fund their own energy infrastructure costs, CNBC reported today. The deal, teased by President...
Paul Allen and Bill Gates in 1980. The Microsoft co-founders shared a love for computer software, but pro sports was Allen’s thing. (Photo courtesy of Microsoft Archives) Cross Bill Gates off the list of super rich potential buyers for the Seattle Seahawks. Gates said he has no interest in...
(Read AI Image) Seattle startup Read AI launched a new “Digital Twin” product that works through email and can help schedule meetings, answer questions, and keep conversations moving. The AI bot, branded as “Ada,” builds on the company’s existing meeting and productivity tools. Read AI says...
A high-speed passenger-only ferry crossing Washington’s Puget Sound. (Kitsap Transit Agency Photo) Five days a week for more than three decades, Greg Nance‘s dad commuted by ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle where he worked as a public defender. “That’s how he put food on the table....
(Valve Software Image) A new suit filed by the New York attorney general seeks to stop Valve Software’s use of “loot box” mechanics in its popular PC games, accusing the Bellevue, Wash.-based company of making billions of dollars by luring children and teenagers into gambling on rare...
Each night, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory issues thousands of alerts about changes in the night sky. (NOIRLab / NSF / DOE-SC Illustration) An astronomical alert system developed at the University of Washington started off with a bang this week, sending out 800,000 notifications about moving...
Zillow Group’s new senior leadership team members, from left: Christopher Roberts, Jon Lim and Marissa Brooks. (Zillow Photos) Zillow Group announced three promotions to its senior leadership team. After nearly two decades with Zillow, Christopher Roberts is now chief product officer....
Vercept’s Ross Girshick (left), Kiana Ehsani, and Luca Weihs. Ehsani shared this on LinkedIn with the news that Vercept is joining Anthropic, noting, “Vercept is much bigger than the founders and there are many amazing team members that made this happen, but I love this ‘thinking’ photo of us...
The Union.ai team. (Union.ai Photo) Bellevue, Wash.-based startup Union.ai announced that it closed a $38.1 million Series A round, led by NEA, with participation from Nava Ventures and new investor Mozilla Ventures. The total includes a previously announced $19.1 million portion...
Bill Gates, pictured here in 2020, apologized to Gates Foundation staff over his past interactions with Jeffrey Epstein in an internal town hall on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Bill Gates apologized to Gates Foundation staff on Tuesday for his...
Solar panels on a Seattle house. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) The pitch for rooftop solar has never been easier to make: energy costs are up, the strain on the electrical grid is real, and the sun shines for free. But the math has gotten harder, as federal tax credits evaporate and utility...
Alexa responds with “All systems operational” in the new Brief personality mode on an Echo Show. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Tired of Alexa’s constant chatter? Wish Amazon’s voice assistant would just get to the point without all the extra stuff? Maybe I’m just speaking for myself? Anyway,...
The front lobby of Kumo, an Amazon office building at 1915 Terry Ave. in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Amazon plans to exit an office building near its Seattle headquarters, 12 years after taking over the space during the height of its growth in the city. Amazon is not renewing its...
Jared Nakahara (left), co-founder of life sciences startup Levity and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington, demonstrates an acoustic limitation system designed to manipulate small liquid droplets using sound waves as Microsoft President Brad Smith looks on. (GeekWire Photos /...
David Luan led the team responsible for Amazon’s Nova Act agentic technology. (Amazon Photo) David Luan, who led Amazon’s San Francisco-based AGI Lab and oversaw one of its most important agentic AI initiatives, is leaving less than two years after joining the tech giant through an acqui-hire...
An artist’s conception shows the Sophia 40 TILE satellite, with each tile powered by its own solar panel. (Sophia Space Illustration) Sophia Space says it has closed a $10 million seed financing round to accelerate the development of orbital computing systems that could serve as the foundation...