GEEK News
June 05, 2015 - 02:04 PM
Ditch your smartphone for a flip phone for a month? This group wants Seattleites to try
Maggie Hollinbeck and James Wagar are leading the charge on Month Offline Seattle, a move to get people off their smartphones. Seattle helped create the modern smartphone era. Now, nearly 40 people in the heart of one of the world’s biggest technology hubs are voluntarily putting theirs away. The inaugural Month Offline Seattle cohort challenges participants to swap their smartphones for...
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Seattle indie hit ‘Stardew Valley’ is coming to ‘Magic: The Gathering’
Credits: Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone and Sylvain Sarrailh for Wizards of the Coast. One of the biggest hits ever produced by Seattle’s independent video game scene is joining the Magic: The Gathering multiverse later this month. Sort of. Magic, the long-running collectible card game published and developed by Renton, Wash.-based Wizards of the Coast, frequently puts out special crossover...
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Icertis CEO is departing; contract management company names CFO and board member interim leaders
Anand Subbaraman. (LinkedIn Photo) Anand Subbaraman is departing as CEO of Icertis, the Bellevue, Wash.-based contract management software company said Friday. Chief Financial Officer Rajat Bahri and longtime executive and Icertis board member Jim Moffatt will serve as interim co-CEOs as Icertis searches for its next CEO. Subbaraman took the helm in August 2025 when Icertis co-founder Samir...
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Departing AWS exec Dave Brown is reportedly joining Meta, as Facebook parent mulls its own cloud
Dave Brown, the departing AWS senior vice president, has been a member of its senior leadership team. (Amazon Photo) One of Amazon’s top cloud leaders will be joining Meta as the Facebook parent company considers turning its massive AI buildout into a cloud business of its own. That’s the report from the Wall Street Journal overnight, quoting anonymous sources saying that Dave Brown, the...
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Seattle Sounders FC pay tribute to S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, beloved tech leader and team owner
A tribute to venture capitalist S. “Soma” Somasegar before the Sounders FC match. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook) The Seattle Sounders paused before Thursday night’s rivalry match against the Portland Timbers to honor one of their own. Before the match at Lumen Field, the club paid tribute to S. “Soma” Somasegar, the longtime Microsoft executive, Madrona venture capitalist and Sounders...
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Seattle region’s office market shows signs of life as AI companies bring stability
Part of the Seattle skyline as seen from the waterfront. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) For the first time in several years, there are indications that the worst may be over for the Seattle region’s battered office market — and artificial intelligence companies appear to be playing a leading role. The regional office market (spanning Seattle, Bellevue and the surrounding Eastside) posted...
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Whatnot acquires Madrona-backed AI startup Shaped to boost live shopping recommendations
(Image via Shaped) Live-shopping unicorn Whatnot is expanding its AI capabilities with the acquisition of Shaped, a startup that builds real-time recommendation and search technology. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Shaped founder and CEO Tullie Murrell will join Whatnot to lead a new applied AI research team focused on improving how buyers discover live streams, sellers...
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Tech Moves: Former Amazon exec joins F5; Microsoft security CVP departs; Qualtrics adds leadership
Cathy Peterman. (F5 Photo) — F5 named former Amazon executive Cathy Peterman as executive vice president and chief people officer of the Seattle-based application-delivery and security company. In May, F5 celebrated its 30th year in business. “Cathy brings a rare combination of strategic depth and genuine humanity that will raise the bar for how we invest in our people,” said CEO François...
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Recycler rescues mysterious trove of rare aerospace hardware, and sets out to discover its past
Tyler Rivers, founder and CEO of Seattle-area electronics recycler Living Green Technology, examines some of the artifacts he rescued this week, including vintage hybrid microcircuits, left, which showcase the delicate gold-bonded wiring and silicon architectures hidden inside. (Photos courtesy of Tyler Rivers) A technological time capsule of artifacts from the Seattle region’s...
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The code AI forgot: logcat.ai raises $2.55M to put agents to work on device operating systems
Varun Chitre, CEO, left, and Tarun Vashisth, CTO, co-founders of logcat.ai. (logcat.ai Photos) The past two years have transformed the world of software development, but there’s at least one area that remains largely untouched by artificial intelligence: the operating-system layer inside phones, vehicles, and other connected devices. A Seattle startup called logcat.ai has raised $2.55...
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AWS EC2 and AI leader Dave Brown to exit, replaced by Amazon exec and Microsoft vet Dave Treadwell
Dave Brown, departing AWS executive, in 2023. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) [Update, Friday, July 17: Brown is joining Meta, the WSJ reported. More here.] Dave Brown, who joined Amazon Web Services as one of its earliest EC2 engineers and rose to lead its compute, AI and machine learning services, is leaving after nearly 19 years. AWS CEO Matt Garman told employees in a memo posted...
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JPMorgan Chase bets on Seattle to build its AI control layer
Lori Beer, JPMorgan Chase’s global chief information officer, at the JPMorganChase Center in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) JPMorgan Chase is building out a new AI software infrastructure team, anchored in Seattle, focused on running AI across its data centers and outside providers in a way that controls costs, protects its intellectual property, and avoids tying its fortunes to any...
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M&Ms, solar panels and plain language: Inside the climate strategy of Slalom’s Meagan Breidert
Meagan Breidert, Slalom’s senior director of sustainability and impact, taking a break outdoors. (Photo courtesy of Breidert) While working for PwC in Jamaica early in her career, Meagan Breidert focused on international development clients. There, she learned about a Caribbean-wide initiative to make the region’s communities more resilient to climate change — adapting infrastructure and...
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Startup Spotlight: Hedgehog bets that open-source networking will power the next generation of AI clouds
Marc Austin of Hedgehog. As AI workloads drive soaring cloud bills, more companies are weighing whether to move computing out of public clouds and into their own data centers. But building and operating AI infrastructure is far more complicated than simply buying servers — networking has become one of the biggest technical hurdles. That’s the opportunity Seattle startup Hedgehog is...
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As General Fusion makes historic Nasdaq debut, report shows global funding surged to $4.5B
The control room for General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26. (General Fusion Photo) General Fusion’s stock is trading up after it became the first fusion energy company to go public on a major exchange, debuting Monday on Nasdaq. The launch of GFUZ stock coincided with the release of the Fusion Industry Association’s annual report, which reflected that same investor enthusiasm: private funding...
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Vieu launches AI-ready map of business relationships, challenging tech incumbents
Vieu co-founders Simon Skaria (left) and Samir Manjure. (Vieu Photo) Vieu, a Seattle startup aiming to replace cold outreach with warm introductions, launched what it calls the “Business Graph,” a live map of trusted relationships that drive business-to-business sales, marketing, recruiting and fundraising. The 40-person company, which raised an $11 million seed round in October 2024, has...
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Apptio co-founders reunite to launch enterprise AI startup Thira with $21M in funding led by Madrona
Thira co-founder and executive chairman Sunny Gupta at a 2017 event. (GeekWire File Photo) Sunny Gupta has led two prior enterprise tech companies with backing from venture capital firm Madrona in the past 20 years. iConclude sold to Opsware. Apptio sold to Vista Equity Partners, then to IBM for $4.6 billion. Now they’re getting the band back together for the AI era. Madrona’s Matt...
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Salesforce’s Tableau renews Fremont office lease, signaling long-term Seattle commitment
Tableau’s Data 1 building in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. (Weber Thompson Photo) Salesforce’s Tableau business has renewed its lease for roughly 114,000 square feet at the Data 1 office building in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, extending its long-term home in the city. The lease renewal takes effect after the current agreement expires in 2029, according to an announcement Monday first...
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Motorola leads $125M round for Brinc, fueling 911 drone expansion amid U.S. import crackdown
The multi-sensor camera array on Brinc’s Guardian drone, which the company says is built to replace police helicopters. (Brinc Photo) Brinc Drones, the Seattle-based maker of 911 response drones, has raised $125 million in a new funding round led by Motorola Solutions, boosting its ambitions to put a drone on the roof of every police and fire station in America. The company says it will use...
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Grunge meets slop: An AI time traveler visits 1992 Seattle when music, not tech, ruled the city
“Roxy” the AI time-traveling vlogger in front of the famed Crocodile Cafe music venue in what’s supposed to be 1992 Seattle. (@roxyintime via Instagram) The best thing about Seattle’s grunge era is that it existed before the internet could completely spoil it — although the mainstream media, MTV and fashion designers eventually did their best. None of them would be any match today for...
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Tech Moves: Remitly CMO departs; Temporal names EVP; Veeam and Qualtrics leadership changes
Rina Hahn. (LinkedIn Photo) — Rina Hahn has left Seattle’s Remitly as chief marketing officer. Hahn joined the remittance company in 2018 as director of digital marketing and rose to CMO after four years. Before joining Remitly, she was an executive at Blue Nile and Big Fish Games. The publicly traded company helps customers in more than 170 countries send money internationally. “I’ve...
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Venture funding drops in Seattle area as AI boom reshapes startup world
Seattle-area startups raised $2.7 billion in venture funding through the first half of 2026, across 163 deals, down about 40% from $4.5 billion in 210 deals during the same period a year ago. The figures come from the recently released PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report for Q2 2026. The decline in capital reflects fewer deals across the board in the Seattle region, with...
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Archives to avatars: Famed historian is moved by Microsoft’s AI-powered Theodore Roosevelt at new library
The lifelike avatar of President Theodore Roosevelt, which relies on artificial intelligence to answer visitors’ questions, at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, N.D. (Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Photo via Microsoft) “Speak softly and carry a big prompt.” That’s not exactly how Theodore Roosevelt put it, but presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin found...
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Augmodo raises $21M to push its spatial AI beyond just retail toward the broader physical workforce
(Augmodo Image) Augmodo, the Seattle startup that straps AI-powered cameras onto retail workers to track store shelves, has raised $21 million as it pushes its technology beyond grocery aisles and into warehouses, factories, and other physical workplaces. The new funding, led by existing investor TQ Ventures, values Augmodo at $350 million. CEO Ross Finman, who told GeekWire he wasn’t...
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Etzioni on AI: Who disagrees with you about AI? Here’s what the research shows
(AI Illustration via Google Gemini) Attitudes towards AI differ by country, gender, profession, age, and political affiliation. A few of those gaps are startling. This article is chock-full of stats. Read it for the surprises, or glance at the bar graph below for a quick overview. Let’s start with geography, the widest split of all. Ask people in China whether they trust AI and, Edelman...
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Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of July 5, 2026
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 July 5, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on GeekWire HashiCorp co-founder Armon Dadgar argues that convenience-driven apps and AI are pushing us...
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What to know about Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley legend whose family is buying the Seahawks
Vinod Khosla speaks at a fireside chat at AI House in Seattle in March 2025. (GeekWire File Photo) Vinod Khosla has spent four decades building and funding companies around a single idea: hire the right people and get out of their way. He’s one of the most respected and influential investors in Silicon Valley, with a track record of big bets and a habit of not backing down. On Saturday, a...
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Microsoft’s reset, a new era for Seattle startups, and how AI is changing everything for founders
Scenes from this week’s founder open house on the deck at GeekWire HQ in Seattle, where we also recorded this week’s podcast. Thanks to Delta Air Lines, Prime Team Partners, WTIA and ALLtech for sponsoring the event. (Photos by Kurt Schlosser and John Cook) On this week’s show, we’re on the GeekWire deck for our annual founder open house, where we dig into Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs —...
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Elon Musk’s Mars illusion
Elon Musk takes a bow at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in May 2020 after the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission, which carried two astronauts to the International Space Station, about 250 miles up, and a world away from Mars. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Ever since its founding, SpaceX has fixed upon a single idea: Elon Musk’s vision of colonizing Mars. Everything the company does...
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What’s Howard’s end? Former Starbucks CEO is ripping Washington state again
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota) For the second time in the past 60 days, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that takes direct aim at the state’s political leadership, calling Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson “inept” and noting that Gov. Bob Ferguson continues to “burden businesses with one tax increase...
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General Fusion set to become the first publicly traded fusion stock on a major exchange
General Fusion’s Lawson Machine 26, its fusion demo device. (General Fusion Photo) British Columbia-based General Fusion on Friday completed its deal to become first publicly traded fusion stock on a major exchange. The 24-year-old company is trying to harness the atom-smashing reactions that power the sun, aiming to create commercially viable amounts of electricity — a feat no one has yet...
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Data vs. gut instinct: Seahawks coach leans into analytics to support, not drive, in-game decisions
Seattle Seahawks head coach and self-professed football nerd Mike Macdonald just doesn’t understand why any coach or team would ignore the chance to lean into data and analytics. “Why wouldn’t we use the best information out there?” he said during an interview this week on the Dan Patrick Show. “Why would you be scared about things that are going to possibly help you?” Macdonald...
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The awkward timing of the Xbox CEO’s new Federal Reserve gig
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. (File Photo) Which is worse, sailing your superyacht through the city where your company just made mass job cuts, or getting named to a U.S. Federal Reserve panel on jobs and productivity three days after announcing thousands of layoffs? It might not be a full Zuck, but Microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is getting lots of attention, and not in a good way, for the latter...
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Opinion: The WALL-E Economy
A scene from Pixar’s 2008 film WALL-E. (Image: Disney/Pixar) [Note: Armon Dadgar, a UW computer science alum, was co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp, a cloud infrastructure automation company that was founded in 2013, went public on the NASDAQ in 2021, and sold to IBM in 2025. In his role, he spoke with thousands of companies adopting cloud across a wide range of industries, giving him a unique...
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Why the video game industry may be sliding toward its next big crash
4 generations of Xbox hardware. (GeekWire Photo / Thomas Wilde) Commentary: The last couple of weeks have served as a capstone to what’s become a bad few years for the international video game industry. Now it appears the larger sector is headed directly into a significant crash, as several unsustainable practices all seem to be approaching a crisis point at once. The first and most obvious...
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