Ali Farhadi speaks at the Tech Alliance State of Technology annual luncheon in Seattle, May 2024. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Microsoft is hiring a group of top AI researchers from the Seattle-based Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington, including former Ai2 CEO Ali...
There’s still time to grab a last-minute ticket for GeekWire’s Agents of Transformation, a half-day summit in Seattle on Tuesday that will explore how agentic AI is redefining work, creativity, and leadership. Keep reading for details about our speaker lineup, the schedule, logistical...
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Helion Energy’s Polaris fusion demonstration reactor operating with tritium and deuterium fuel. (Helion Photo) The Seattle-area fusion company Helion Energy is negotiating a deal to supply OpenAI with massive amounts of energy, Axios reported Monday. The deal under discussion would have...
Startup founders who pitched for a chance to join the latest Plug and Play Cohort. (Photo courtesy of Plug and Play) Plug and Play has selected the 10 startups that will take part in its third Seattle-area accelerator cohort as the program marks its one-year anniversary in the region. The...
Ryan Gosling set out to save the planet, and he may just save Amazon’s movie-making credibility. “Project Hail Mary,” the sci-fi epic that stars Gosling as a scientist sent on a mission to save Earth from extinction, grossed $80.6 million in its opening weekend, marking the biggest box...
Jeff Bezos framed this copy of a 2006 BusinessWeek cover, reflecting Wall Street’s skepticism about AWS. (Jeff Bezos via X, May 2022) In the early days of Amazon Web Services, technical evangelist Jeff Barr was putting in long hours on the road, pitching a novel concept: rent computing power for...
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 March 15, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
An artist’s conception shows a constellation of satellites in orbit. (OneWeb Illustration) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is asking the Federal Communications Commission for authority to send up to 51,600 data center satellites into low Earth orbit, signaling its entry into an...
An artist’s conception of Amazon’s Leo satellite constellation. The satellite internet initiative sits in the same division as Amazon’s new phone project, raising the question of whether Amazon could eventually provide its own wireless connectivity. (Amazon Illustration) When Reuters reported...
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon is working on a new smartphone, code-named “Transformer,” more than a decade after the Fire Phone debacle, according to Reuters. We dig into the connection to a past GeekWire scoop: former Microsoft Xbox leader J Allard joined Amazon’s devices team...
Different this time? Jeff Bezos unveils the Amazon Fire Phone in June 2014. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon is working on another phone. That’s the jaw-dropper from Reuters this morning, reporting that the company is developing a new smartphone codenamed “Transformer” within its...
Marc Cummings, president and CEO of Life Science Washington, speaking at a one-day forum focused on AI-driven biotech that was held in Seattle in October 2025. (Life Science Washington Photo) Seattle is already a top global hub for AI-driven biotechnology. It just doesn’t know how to say...
Kevan Kryslter, CFO of Carbon Robotics. (Carbon Robotics Photo) Agtech company Carbon Robotics appointed Kevan Krysler as chief financial officer. The Seattle startup, known for zapping weeds with lasers, reports it has surpassed $100 million in annual revenue. Carbon has also been name-checked...
Amazon’s beloved Treasure Truck finally ran out of road in 2022, after about a seven-year run. But Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores and an early champion of the deals-on-wheels concept, once worried that Marshawn Lynch was going to crash the party just as it got rolling. In...
A Lime e-scooter rider cruises past on the sidewalk in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, home to Amazon HQ. New tech on the scooters coming this summer will generate audible and app alerts warning riders to move to a safer riding area. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Lime scooters in...
Decentralized social network Bluesky revealed on Thursday that it raised $100 million in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Knight Foundation and True Ventures. The round closed in April 2025. Bluesky previously...
The finalists for Deal of the Year at the 2026 GeekWire Awards. Clockwise from top left: Temporal co-founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev; Protect AI co-founders Badar Ahmed, Daryan Dehghanpisheh, and Ian Swanson; Kestra Medical Technologies’ cardiac monitoring device; the ribbon cutting at...
The TMF program is a partnership between the City of Seattle and community organizations improving digital literacy and skills for underserved communities. (City of Seattle Photo) The City of Seattle is awarding $455,000 in Technology Matching Fund grants to help support 11 community...
San Francisco startup Nooks hosted a panel in Seattle last month focused on vertical AI agents. From left: Chinmay Barve, vice president of engineering at Nooks; Nikhil Cheerla, CTO at Nooks; Sharbani Roy, VP of AI Services at Arm; and Joe Duffy, CEO and founder at Pulumi. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor...
Research underway at UW Medicine’s Institute for Protein Design. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) Nobel Laureate David Baker will lead a new University of Washington initiative that’s launching with $7 million to develop designer enzymes and proteins to solve challenges in medicine, technology...
An artist’s conception shows Portal Space Systems’ Starburst spacecraft at left and its larger Supernova platform in the distance at right, both outfitted with Paladin Space’s Triton payload for orbital debris tracking and removal. (Portal Space Systems Illustration) Bothell, Wash.-based Portal...
Eclypsium co-founders Yuriy Bulygin, left, and Alex Bazhaniuk. (Eclypsium Photo) Eclypsium, a Portland-based cybersecurity startup, raised $25 million in new funding to expand its hardware and firmware security platform. The round was led by PEAK6 Strategic Capital, with participation from...
Screen grabs from the Lamu app show various interactions with AI, including, from left, answering profile questions, receiving a “love score” and completed profile, and discussing date location options. (Lamu Images) Ada Jin was suffering from dating app fatigue. She was tired of the constant...
(BigStock Photo) This story originally appeared on Real Estate News. One of the biggest lawsuits to capture the real estate industry’s attention over the past year has come to an abrupt end. Compass International Holdings announced Wednesday that it is dismissing the lawsuit it filed last...
Microsoft’s Fairwater data center near Atlanta is part of the company’s broader AI expansion. (Microsoft Photo) Amid widespread blowback against the spread of data centers, Microsoft on Wednesday announced it is abandoning its practice of secrecy with local governments when deploying new...
Phaidra leaders, from left: CTO Vedavyas Panneershelvam, CEO Jim Gao, and COO Katherine Hoffman. (Phaidra Photo) Phaidra, a startup using artificial intelligence to make data center operations more energy efficient, this week announced key collaborations with Nvidia, CoreWeave and Applied...
Part of the Seattle skyline as seen from the waterfront. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Seattle ranks No. 3 nationally in AI industry growth according to a new study that measures employment, salaries, job concentration and more in metropolitan areas across the U.S. The new report from...
There’s a new No. 1. Fusion power company Helion Energy has taken the top spot in the latest update of the GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top privately held technology startups in the Pacific Northwest. Helion replaced Highspot, which announced a merger with Seismic in a...
Vantari co-CEO Vijay Paul, COO Jagrup Kahlon, and co-CEO Nishant Krishnanathan. (Vantari Photos) Vantari, a virtual reality startup that builds “flight simulator” software for doctors and nurses, has officially moved its headquarters to Seattle as it ramps up work with health systems and device...
The team from Auger accepts the Startup of the Year trophy at the 2025 GeekWire Awards. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong) Boot up the robot trophies, it’s time to vote for the finalists for the 2026 GeekWire Awards! This is your chance to help us honor the top innovators and entrepreneurs in...
The Cove team. (Photo via Cove) Cove, a Silicon Valley startup that helps workers collaborate while using AI agents, announced Tuesday that its team is joining Microsoft. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Cove will shut down its product on April 1. “When we started Cove, we set out...
Steven VanRoekel. (ESP Photo) — Steven VanRoekel, a longtime former Microsoft leader and U.S. chief information officer under President Obama, is now CEO of Earth Species Project (ESP). The non-profit research lab is using artificial intelligence to better understand animal communication in...
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, will shift his focus to building frontier AI models and leading the company’s superintelligence efforts under a reorganization announced Tuesday. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota) Microsoft is reorganizing its Copilot organization, unifying its consumer...
Native CEO Amit Megiddo. (LinkedIn Photo) A new cloud security startup called Native came out of stealth mode on Tuesday, announcing $42 million in funding to build what it describes as a “control plane” for cloud security. The funding includes a $31 million Series A round led by Ballistic...