The fresh capital brings total funding to $22.9 million for the Bellevue startup, which launched in May 2025 with a $4.9 million seed round. Read More
Space Northwest gathers statistics on the state of the state's space ventures — and selects eight startups for its accelerator program. Read More
Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa, whose company is building a fully reusable rocket, told a Seattle audience he isn't sure he'd start the company in Washington state today. Read More
Launched in 2005 as a platform where human workers could perform quick digital chores that early software couldn't handle, the marketplace became a fixture for researchers, remote freelancers, and data labelers worldwide — and its exit is triggering a wave of nostalgia and anxiety across online forums. Read More
Meadow AI develops an artificial intelligence "co-manager" platform that gives operators real-time visibility into physical locations. The software ingests video and audio feeds alongside labor and inventory data to continuously monitor team execution, service speed, and overall store conditions. Read More
As Climate Week NYC buzzed over the environmental toll of the AI boom, GeekWire’s Positive Charge podcast moderated a private panel with Amazon Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst and Earthshot Prize CEO Jason Knauf to tackle the world's mounting carbon challenges. Read More
Gov. Bob Ferguson introduces the 23-member Washington Space Council during the kickoff for Seattle Space Week. Read More
Sales technology company Outreach confirmed plans to move its headquarters from Interbay to Seattle's Fremont neighborhood early next year, joining a campus that Adobe has anchored since the late 1990s. Read More
The Emerald City landed at No. 4 overall in the newly released Oxford Economics Global Cities Index 2026, which scored 1,000 major urban centers across economics, human capital, quality of life, environment, and governance. Read More
Seattle-based startup Nimbus Aerospace has completed successful test flights of its quarter-scale hybrid aircraft prototype in Oregon as it works toward a 2028 full-scale build. By combining pre-certified parts, high-lift wings, and an AI certification tool, the team aims to bring a fuel-efficient six-to-eight passenger plane to market by late 2030. Read More
Meg McCann didn't take the traditional path to leading a major marine science institution, moving from trial lawyer and state official to CEO of the Seattle Aquarium. Now, she's using that policy and leadership background to tackle issues like kelp recovery, cut institutional fossil fuel use and position the aquarium as a global hub for ocean conservation. Read More
A philosopher argues that the debate over AI risk focuses too narrowly on whether AI systems share human goals, and not enough on the methods those systems are allowed to use to reach them. Drawing on the intrusion into Hugging Face by OpenAI's agents, he makes the case that companies and policymakers should decide in advance what AI agents may not treat as a tool. Read More
See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of Sept. 20, 2026. Read More
Amazon's move to block Meta's Muse AI assistant is an early sign of a much bigger fight over whether AI agents can use websites and apps on people's behalf. Plus, veteran startup leader Mike Fridgen joins us to talk about whether Seattle is still the place to build. Read More
AI House brought investors from Boston, New York, Colorado, the Bay Area and other cities to Seattle for a demo day where 25 early-stage startups pitched, many of them from outside the incubator's own portfolio. The goal was to bring more outside capital to local founders. Read More
Shankar Sundaram, a former Boeing engineer and enterprise sales leader, said the ultimate goal of East West Club is to create a "third place" in the city that's centered around genuine connection rather than corporate networking or status. Read More
Niantic Spatial hired Microsoft AI product leader Dave Citron as chief product officer, the late Paul Allen's Fund for Science and Technology named Brown University's Jane Dietze its first chief investment officer, and Zillow AI product leader Nicholas Stevens joined Stripe. Plus, moves at Scowtt, ThriftBooks, Jack in the Box, Fortive, the American Astronomical Society and Yoodli. Read More
Microsoft's revamped Copilot app adds AI coding, always-on agents and full versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint as the company competes with OpenAI and Anthropic and shifts more of its AI pricing to usage-based billing. Read More
A new state filing lists all 277 positions Microsoft eliminated in the Seattle region, one job title at a time. Art, game production, game design, technical art and audio design account for 77 of them, with software engineering the largest single category at 60. Read More
Kompeld analyzes how companies describe themselves and scores their messaging. It looks at websites, sales materials and other company communications to identify what's clear, what's not, and where the message could be stronger. Read More
Microsoft is moving communications out of its marketing group and under Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, as CEO Satya Nadella calls for a fundamentally new approach that makes employees a bigger part of how the company tells its story. Read More
New reports this week from The New York Times and NBC's TODAY show detail how residents in Richardson, Texas, — a Dallas suburb near a major Amazon fulfillment facility — are bearing the brunt of Prime Air’s ambitious expansion. Read More
Founded in 2021 by former Amazon Web Services engineers Breck Fresen and Nick End, Row Zero set out to build a spreadsheet capable of processing millions of rows at cloud scale without lagging or crashing. Read More
Amazon is introducing tools to let independent sellers manage their sales on four of its biggest rivals — eBay, Shopify,… Read More
All systems go for Starfish's Otter space vehicle, which is designed to inspect inoperable satellites up close for NASA's SSPICY mission. Read More
Speaking at Climate Week NYC, Alaska Air Group sustainability chief Ryan Spies outlined how thin margins and complex physics are driving the carrier's strategic bets on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). To cut emissions, Alaska Air is co-funding SAF innovators while investing in next-generation aircraft developers like JetZero and Ampaire. Read More
The fresh capital propels the Seattle startup into unicorn territory as it works to connect billions of everyday, off-the-shelf devices directly to space. Read More
Amazon announced new AI tools for its independent sellers, led by a plugin that lets them run their Amazon businesses from Anthropic's Claude or Amazon's own Quick assistant. Read More
Augmeta assigns an AI agent to each of a company’s key business metrics, watching the numbers around the clock and investigating when they move. The startup, whose anchor customer is Tractor Supply, raised $3 million in a seed round led by Depth Ventures. Read More
Impacted positions span across technology, product, and corporate roles — including data scientists, software engineers, finance managers, and senior leadership. Read More
Mayor Katie Wilson's proposed budget closes a $175 million deficit through spending cuts and leaves the JumpStart payroll tax untouched, offering big tech employers a period of tax stability. Read More
Amazon's decision to block Meta's Muse AI agent from shopping on its site raises questions about whether the big platforms will agree on rules for agents, how money will change hands, and whether shoppers want agents in the first place. Read More
To build Music for Business Finer — which allows shop owners to compare legal streaming options and calculate compliance requirements — John Boyle relied on a combination of AI models including Gemini, Claude, and autonomous bots. Read More
The cuts total about 600 globally, including about 300 in Washington state, and 268 worldwide in Xbox Game Studios. The restructuring folds some existing studios under Activision, Bethesda and King, and leaves Ninja Theory, the studio behind the Hellblade series, facing a potential closure. Read More
Bungie, the Bellevue-Wash.-based video game studio behind Destiny and Marathon, began its week with an apology from its new studio head, as it tries to win back its audience after several recent missteps. Read More
Former Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson has launched CivicTide, a website that tracks City Council legislation, publishes policy briefs and opinion pieces, and gives readers tools to contact councilmembers. The site runs on a custom AI-powered system built by Seattle tech communications executive Viet Nguyen. Read More
Founded in 2024, Truelist built an AI-powered listing platform to help real estate brokers and agents manage, create, and distribute property listings across fragmented MLS systems. Read More
Seattle health-tech startup DexCare has acquired fellow local startup Mila Health, an AI agent developer that automates patient calls and texts for appointment scheduling. The deal, whose terms were undisclosed, integrates Mila's rapidly deployable AI communication tools into DexCare's patient-access platform serving 57 million patients nationwide. Read More
Ten of the participating startups are based in Seattle, joined by Tokyo-based wireless power developer Aeterlink, which is participating in an exploratory international track to support its expansion into the U.S. and Pacific Northwest. Read More
Amazon says it has cut off Meta's new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com, citing data security and other concerns. It's part of a larger industry fight over who controls the shopping experience and customer relationship in agentic commerce. Read More
See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of Sept. 13, 2026. Read More
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Zillow's Toby Roberts says AI agents will assist real estate agents rather than replace them, and explains how the company's ChatGPT app works. Recorded live in Seattle this week in partnership with meetup group Real Estate At Work. Read More
Ascend promoted Nate Bek to principal, and the technical lead for "Agent Mode" in Microsoft Word left to start his own AI company. Also in this week's roundup: new leaders at Technology Access Foundation, Zillow Group, VanillaSoft, A Place for Mom, the Gates Foundation and Juno Industries, and board seats for Joy Chik and Mike Katz. Read More
Unorthodox strategy aims to put Seattle-area space startup in the fast lane for going public — and boost the development of orbital carriers. Read More
Several years after leaving Seattle’s startup scene to build a “tech outpost” in the Alaskan wilderness, serial entrepreneurs and twin brothers Lee and Lucas Brown, founders of Tune, have set their sights on a new frontier: replacing the traditional newsroom with artificial intelligence. Read More
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs runs trade missions that put Washington tabletop game makers in front of publishers in Japan and Germany. The rest of his time at PAX went to voter outreach. Read More
ModernVivo's software reads millions of published animal studies to help drug researchers design their own experiments, work that has traditionally meant weeks of manual literature review. The Seattle company says customers who once spent a month on that step now spend as little as an hour. Read More
One of the hottest infrastructure companies in AI today traces its roots to work its founders were doing before the cloud was even a thing. Fresh off a big funding round, Temporal co-founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev explain the decades of work behind their solution, and why AI agents make it even more relevant. Read More
The early-stage plan for the landmark property envisions radio broadcast facilities, a roof venue for live performances and community events, space for group and individual music lessons, and a public "third space" intended for year-round daily gathering. Read More
Seattle startup Ravel isolates and removes elastane from blended fabrics to turn old clothes into reusable plastic pellets. A new $8.2 million seed round will allow the company to scale up from its local pilot plant to commercial operations and validate its tech with production partners. Read More