The Seattle skyline. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Founder Institute, the global business incubator and pre-seed startup accelerator, is getting up and running again in Seattle. Tech veteran Aniket Naravanekar, co-founder and CEO of Skillsheet, is one of the program directors working...
Pallavi Mehta Wahi. (Arnold & Porter Photo) Pallavi Wahi‘s latest career move is both a professional leap and a personal bookend. Wahi, a veteran lawyer and business community leader, came to Seattle 25 years ago as an immigrant with no local network. She built a career and civic presence,...
Scowtt CEO Eduardo Indacochea. (Scowtt Photo) Scowtt, a Seattle-based startup that wants to reshape how advertisers optimize paid campaigns, raised $12 million in Series A funding round led by New York venture firm Inspired Capital. Founded in 2024, Scowtt helps companies analyze their...
On a cold winter’s day in December 1995, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates shook the tech world with plans to embed internet connectivity into all of Microsoft’s major products, making headlines across the country. Click to enlarge. (GeekWire Graphic / Geof Wheelwright) December 7...
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 Nov. 30, 2025. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
An astrophotograph of the interstellar comet known as 3I/ATLAS highlights its green coma and a wandering blue-tinted ion tail. (Copyright Victor Sabet and Julien De Winter, republished with permssion) Is an interstellar spacecraft zooming through our solar system? That’s the big question for...
Colleen Aubrey, AWS senior vice president of Applied AI Solutions, speaks during the AWS re:Invent keynote about the company’s push toward AI “teammates” and agentic development. (Amazon Photo) LAS VEGAS — Speaking this week on the Amazon Web Services re:Invent stage, AWS executive Colleen...
Amazon is experimenting again. This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we dig into our scoop on Amazon Now, the company’s new ultrafast delivery service. Plus, we recap the GeekWire team’s ride in a Zoox robotaxi on the Las Vegas Strip during Amazon Web Services re:Invent. In our featured...
The former headquarters of PayScale — which has relocated to Boston — now houses interactive experiences, including a winter wonderland-themed Elf Bar pop-up this month. (GeekWire Photos / John Cook) Looking for a dose of festive cheer this holiday season? You might just find it in an...
From left: Microsoft CFO Amy Hood, CEO Satya Nadella, Vice Chair Brad Smith, and Investor Relations head Jonathan Nielsen at Friday’s virtual shareholder meeting. (Screenshot via webcast) Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting Friday played out as if on a split screen: executives describing a...
Members of GeekWire’s team in Las Vegas posing for a selfie after taking Amazon’s Zoox robotaxis for a spin in Las Vegas, L-R: Brian Westbrook, Todd Bishop, Steph Stricklen, Holly Grambihler (front), and Jessica Reeves (right). LAS VEGAS — Our toaster has arrived. Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi...
Rep. Shaun Scott, D-43. A newly proposed payroll tax would add new costs for large businesses in Washington state. But Rep. Shaun Scott, a Seattle Democrat sponsoring the bill, argues it would protect the basic services that help companies recruit and retain talent. “People are looking to...
(Photo by Patty Zavala on Unsplash) Does everyone in Seattle hate AI? That’s one of the surprising questions to arise this week in response to a viral blog post penned by Jonathon Ready, a former Microsoft engineer who recently left the tech giant to pursue his own startup. In the post,...
AWS CEO Matt Garman, left, with Acquired hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) LAS VEGAS — Matt Garman remembers sitting in an Amazon leadership meeting six or seven years ago, thinking about the future, when he identified what he considered a looming...
Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of SecureSave, during the “Elevator Pitch” finale at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong) Fintech startup SecureSave, a 2020 spinout of Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs, has been acquired by Wisconsin-based HSA Bank. SecureSave helps...
Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine blazes during a hot-fire test in 2024. (Stoke Space Photo) OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is thinking about expanding into the final frontier for data centers, and his efforts to follow through on that thought reportedly turned into talks with Stoke Space, a rocket...
Jordan Arnold. (LinkedIn Photo) — Jordan Arnold is the new director of the Washington State Broadband Office within the Department of Commerce, effective Jan. 2. Under the Biden administration, Arnold served as a senior policy advisor on the Infrastructure Implementation Team within the...
Examples of interactions with Otto the Agent, an AI-powered business travel assistant. (Otto Images) Seattle-based startup Otto announced the wide release Thursday of its AI-powered travel assistant — Otto the Agent — in a bid to bring a concierge-level experience and...
(Coinme Image) Washington state regulators ordered Seattle-based cryptocurrency company Coinme to stop transmitting money for customers in the state, alleging the startup improperly claimed more than $8 million in customer funds as its own income. The Washington State Department of Financial...
Govstream.ai aims to drastically improve cities’ permitting processes and reduce costs and timelines associated with housing development. (Govstream.ai Illustration) Govstream.ai, a Seattle-area startup building AI-native permitting tools for local governments, raised $3.6 million in funding,...
From left: Bill Gates, Dr. Bosede Afolabi and Dr. Opeyemi Akinajo at Lagos University Teaching Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria in June 2025. (Photo via Gates Foundation / Light Oriye, Nigeria) Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation are raising the alarm over the deadly impacts of international funding...
A bag of Amazon Now groceries, delivered in Seattle on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Amazon’s new “Amazon Now” ultra-fast delivery for household essentials and fresh groceries passed the speed test on Tuesday. During a trial of the newly launched service, it took 23 minutes from...
The Gradial team. (Gradial Photos) Seattle startup Gradial raised a $35 million Series B round to expand its AI platform that automates the behind-the-scenes work of enterprise marketing. VMG Partners led the round, with participation from existing backers Madrona and Pruven Capital. It’s the...
A protein created by RFdiffusion3, a newly released protein design tool from Nobel laureate David Baker’s lab, interacting with DNA. (UW Institute for Protein Design / Ian C. Haydon Image) David Baker’s lab at the University of Washington is announcing two major leaps in the field of AI-powered...
Amazon Flex drivers deliver packages, food and grocery items for Amazon. (Amazon Photo) Amazon has agreed to pay more than $3.7 million to settle claims with the City of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS) over allegations that it violated ordinances protecting gig and app-based workers...
AWS CEO Matt Garman unveils the crowd-pleasing Database Savings Plans with just two seconds remaining on the “lightning round” shot clock at the end of his re:Invent keynote Tuesday morning. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) LAS VEGAS — After spending nearly two hours trying to impress the crowd...
Installation of a Modern Hydrogen methane pyrolysis device at NW Natural, a natural gas public utility in Portland, Ore. (Modern Hydrogen Photo) Modern Hydrogen — a clean energy startup with technology that at one time seemed to delight Bill Gates and attracted his investment — has now laid off...
Curi Bio’s ribbon cutting in April 2025 for its new headquarters on Seattle’s waterfront. Elliot Fisher, co-founder and chief business officer, cuts the ribbon with a sword while CEO Nicholas Geisse holds a pair of scissors. (Curi Bio Photo) Seattle biotech startup Curi Bio, which enables the...
The Yoodli team in Seattle. (Yoodli Photo) Yoodli is on a roll. The Seattle startup, which sells AI-powered software to help people practice real-world conversations such as sales calls and feedback sessions, announced a $40 million Series B round on Tuesday to fuel growth. WestBridge...
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman opens the 2025 AWS re:Invent conference Tuesday in Las Vegas. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) LAS VEGAS — Amazon is pitching a future where AI works while humans sleep, announcing a collection of what it calls “frontier agents” capable of handling complex,...
Kiana Ehsani skiing near Camp Muir on Mount Rainier in April. (Photo courtesy of Kiana Ehsani) Editor’s note: This series profiles six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the...
A mockup of a fuel bundle for TerraPower’s Natrium reactor. (TerraPower Photo) Nuclear power company TerraPower has passed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff’s final safety evaluation for a permit to build a reactor in Wyoming. The Washington-based company backed by Bill Gates and NVIDIA...
Scott Torrey. (Smartsheet Photo) — Smartsheet’s C-suite shuffle continues with the hiring of Scott Torrey as chief revenue officer. Torrey previously led salary data company Payscale as CEO from 2019 to 2021. He spent the past three years as executive chairman at finance software startup...
Amazon’s former Fresh Pickup site in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, which closed since early 2023, is slated to become a new rapid-dispatch delivery hub for Amazon Flex drivers, according to permit filings. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon on Monday officially launched Amazon Now, a new...
The state Capitol Building in Olympia, Wash. (Photo by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash) Washington state is moving to set its own regulatory framework for artificial intelligence in the absence of federal legislation, laying out recommendations for how lawmakers should regulate AI in healthcare,...