GEEK News
June 05, 2015 - 02:04 PM
Riding the rails — over a floating bridge: GeekWire Podcast takes the train across the lake to Microsoft
GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop, left, and John Cook on Sound Transit’s 2 Line. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit’s 2 Line as we ride the world’s first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft’s campus in Redmond. It’s an...
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Artemis 2 crew makes triumphant splashdown at the end of humanity’s first trip around the moon since 1972
NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashes into the Pacific Ocean, as seen in an overhead view. (NASA via YouTube) Four astronauts and their Orion space capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean today, bringing the first crewed trip around the moon and back since 1972 to a successful end. “What a journey!” mission commander Reid Wiseman said moments after splashdown. During their 10-day odyssey,...
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Cry til you laugh: Chris Pirillo vibe codes his job-search frustrations into brutally honest apps
Chris Pirillo tears up one of his fake rejection letters. (Photo courtesy of Chris Pirillo) At a time when finding a job in tech has turned into a frustrating cycle of rejections, ghostings or worse, Chris Pirillo‘s work speaks for itself — in that it makes a mockery of the whole process. Pirillo, the longtime tech enthusiast and entrepreneur, has been showing off his skills by illustrating...
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Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft Windows’ new lease on life — why now?
A display of Microsoft Surface laptops at the company’s Build 2025 developer conference. (GeekWire File Photo) For the past few years, it felt as if Microsoft’s Windows org was on autopilot. (No, not THAT Autopilot.) Microsoft leadership seemed content to let Windows run its course as long as people and partners continued to pay for it in some way. The result: New features were...
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Tech Moves: Syndio names 7 execs; avante and Tanium add to C-suite; Amazon leaders depart
Syndio’s new leadership, top row from left: Erik Darby, Shonna Waters, Devin Luquist. Bottom row: Erin McClintock, Elizabeth Temples, Manuj Bahl and Meredith Conroy. (LinkedIn Photos) — Syndio, a Seattle startup that helps companies analyze and address pay equity, announced seven new additions to its leadership team. “This next phase of growth requires innovation and velocity,” said Maria...
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Non-compete ban stirs optimism and uncertainty in Washington state — here’s what it means for tech
Gov. Bob Ferguson shakes hands with Rep. Liz Berry (D-Seattle), sponsor of the bill, after signing House Bill 1155, which bans nearly all non-compete agreements in Washington state. (Washington State Photo / Ian Couch) A new Washington law wiping out nearly all non-compete agreements across the state has startup advocates cheering and employers scrambling to figure out what comes next. The...
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Artemis 2’s trip around the moon enters the home stretch — here’s how to watch the splashdown
A view from a camera mounted on one of the Orion spacecraft’s solar array wings shows Orion’s engines and thrusters in the foreground, and Earth in the background. (NASA via YouTube) The crew of NASA’s round-the-moon test mission crossed the halfway point between the moon and Earth today on their homeward journey — and they’re picking up speed as they zero in on a spot off the coast of...
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Flush with cash: Washington startup lands up to $500M to deploy facilities treating sewage, dairy waste
Dairy cows at the Puyallup Fair, now called the Washington State Fair. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Wastewater treatment startup Sedron Technologies — a Washington company that once served Bill Gates a glass of water purified from sewage — announced it’s being acquired by Ara Partners. The global equity firm is investing up to $500 million in Sedron to facilitate the deployment of its...
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GeekWire Awards: AI Innovation of the Year finalists transform HR, retail, biotech and more
The 2026 GeekWire Awards AI Innovation of the Year finalists, clockwise from top left: Avante CEO Rohan D’Souza; ConverzAI CEO Ashwarya Poddar; Envive AI CEO Aniket Deosthali; Synthesize Bio co-founders Jeff Leek (left) and Robert Bradley; and Spangle AI co-founders Maju Kuruvilla (left) and Fei Wang. The finalists for AI Innovation of the Year at the 2026 GeekWire Awards represent the cutting...
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Microsoft 365 Copilot and the end of the single-model era in enterprise AI
Steve Gustavson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for design and research. (Microsoft Photo) [Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the adoption and impact of AI and agents. See coverage of our related event.] Using an AI model still comes with an unspoken asterisk: Verify before you act. Fact-check it. Google it....
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Opinion: How to read with AI
(Licensed via marketoonist.com) This is a follow-up to my recent piece “AI Coach or AI Ghostwriter? The Choice Is Yours,” which argued that AI can either sharpen your thinking or replace it. That piece was about writing. This one is about the other side of the coin: reading. The practical question is: how do you use AI to become a more productive reader rather than a lazier one? Back in...
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Portal Space Systems raises $50M as it gets set to launch its first orbital vehicle made for rapid maneuvers
An artist’s conception shows Portal’s Starburst spacecraft in the foreground with its Supernova space vehicle and three more Starbursts (plus Earth) in the background. (Portal Space Systems Illustration) Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has raised $50 million in a funding round aimed at speeding up development of the Seattle-area startup’s highly maneuverable space vehicles. The...
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‘Not on a hunch’: Andy Jassy defends Amazon’s $200B spending spree
“It’s hard to overstate my optimism for what’s ahead,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy writes in his new shareholder letter. (GeekWire File Photo) Andy Jassy’s new letter to Amazon shareholders is a data-heavy defense of the tech giant’s biggest bets — from AI and custom chips to satellite internet and 20-minute delivery. In the process, the Amazon CEO discloses that AI revenue for AWS has hit a $15...
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Seattle startups combine: Inflection.io acquires Keyplay, reuniting longtime entrepreneurs
Inflection.io CEO Aaron Bird, left, and new CMO Adam Schoenfeld at the company’s office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. (Inflection.io Photo) Two Seattle startups with intertwined histories are joining forces. Inflection.io, a B2B marketing automation company, announced Wednesday that it has acquired Keyplay, a startup that helps sales teams identify and score target accounts. The deal...
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Microsoft Moves: Longtime exec Julia Liuson to retire; new accessibility chief; and other changes
Julia Liuson presenting at a conference in 2019. (Microsoft Photo) Big tech moves today from Microsoft: Longtime executive Julia Liuson is retiring, Neil Barnett is the company’s new chief accessibility officer, and Nanda Ramachandran has been named chief marketing officer for Windows & Devices. They’re part of a broader wave of executive departures and changes at Microsoft as CEO Satya...
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Avalanche Energy lands share of $5.2M DOD award to develop long-lasting ‘nuclear batteries’
An early prototype of Avalanche Energy’s radiovoltaic converter for the DARPA Rads to Watts program is exposed to high-energy ion-beam irradiation. (Avalanche Photo) Seattle fusion startup Avalanche Energy was awarded a share of a $5.2 million contract announced Wednesday from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop compact nuclear batteries. The award comes from the DARPA Rads to Watts...
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Defense giant Anduril is quietly building autonomous warships on Seattle’s historic ship canal
The old Foss Shipyard on Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal, where defense giant Anduril Industries is building a new class of autonomous warships. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) There was no noticeable activity at the old Foss Shipyard in Seattle when I visited last week. No signs, and no visible presence of any workers. Behind the barbed-wire fencing, it looked like a ghost shipyard:...
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Humanly raises $25M to put AI to work for job seekers, not just the companies hiring them
Humanly’s job seeker-facing product offers AI-powered coaching on interview preparation, resume writing, salary negotiation and more. (Humanly Image) The market for recruiting software — tools that help companies find and screen candidates — is worth $14 billion. The market for actually placing people in jobs is worth $500 billion. Humanly just raised $25 million to chase the bigger...
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Opinion: Everyone is asking AI better questions — nobody is asking themselves better ones
(BigStock Illustration) Alonda Williams is the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound. Last year, a peer CEO told me she’d been using AI for eight months and still couldn’t explain to her board how she benefitted beyond saving time writing. She wasn’t an outlier. Surveys suggest that while many organizations are now using AI in some form, only a small fraction describe their use as...
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Golf star Bryson DeChambeau leads acquisition of Seattle-area startup Sportsbox AI
Bryson DeChambeau swings while the Sportsbox AI app captures his motion on a smartphone. (Sportsbox AI Photo) First Bryson DeChambeau used Sportsbox AI to win a major. Then he invested in the Bellevue, Wash.-based startup. Now he’s taking a swing at the entire company. DeChambeau, the two-time U.S. Open champion and one of golf’s most tech-obsessed players, is leading a group of investors...
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Amazon revamps S3 cloud storage for the AI era, removing a key barrier for apps and agents
Amazon Web Services is making it possible to access data stored in its S3 cloud storage service as a traditional file system, bridging a divide between two types of storage that has frustrated developers and data scientists for nearly two decades. The new capability, called Amazon S3 Files, lets applications running on AWS access an S3 storage bucket as if it were a local file system,...
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Earthset and eclipse, oh my! NASA releases magnificent images from Artemis mission’s moon flyby
A crescent Earth sinks behind the moon’s disk in a wide-angle version of the Artemis 2 crew’s “Earthset” picture. (NASA Photo) A day after the Artemis 2 mission’s historic lunar flyby, NASA has released a stunning set of high-resolution images documenting Earthset and Earthrise, a solar eclipse that set the moon aglow, and other views of the lunar far side and the astronauts who took the...
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From Pokémon GO to physical AI: Niantic Spatial unveils its global 3D mapping platform
Niantic Spatial’s Scaniverse app captures physical spaces, reconstructs them as 3D models and enables precise localization within them. (Niantic Spatial Images) Niantic Spatial, the company spun out of Pokémon GO maker Niantic, is launching a revamped version of its Scaniverse platform for businesses and a new global visual positioning system (VPS), in its biggest release since becoming an...
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Tech Moves: Microsoft leader jumps to Anthropic; Tagboard gets new CEO; Expedia names tech VP
Eric Boyd. (LinkedIn Photo) — Longtime Microsoft leader Eric Boyd announced today that he has joined Anthropic to lead its infrastructure team. “I’ve been privileged to have a front row seat to the explosion of LLMs, and the team at Anthropic is truly special,” Boyd said on LinkedIn. “The combination of the absolute leading models with a culture that is committed to their mission is...
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Former Tableau product chief launches Golden Analytics, using AI to challenge the BI old guard
Francois Ajenstat, Golden Analytics founder and CEO. Francois Ajenstat has been in business intelligence long enough to see two generational shifts, from the early days at Cognos to the self-service revolution at Tableau, ultimately serving as chief product officer at the Seattle-based data visualization company. Now he’s launching Golden Analytics, a Seattle-based startup built on the...
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Amazon sued by YouTubers for allegedly scraping their content to train AI video tool
Amazon’s headquarters campus in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) A trio of YouTube producers filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon alleging the tech giant illegally used content from the video platform to train and improve its Nova Reel generative AI model. The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, describes how Amazon...
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GeekWire Awards: CEO of the Year finalists innovating across fintech, climate, real estate and more
The 2026 GeekWire Award CEO of the Year finalists, clockwise from top left: Tony Huang, Possible Finance; Sheila Stafford, TeamSense; Karen Huh, Zucca; Luis Poggi, HouseWhisper; Aina Abiodun, VertueLab. The finalists for CEO of the Year at the 2026 GeekWire Awards are leading startups and organizations across a diverse cross-section of the innovation economy, touching upon fintech, climate...
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Seattle startup Glacis brings longtime Microsoft leader aboard to target AI’s biggest blind spot
Rohit Tatachar, CTO and co-founder of Glacis. As a veteran engineer and product leader inside Microsoft Azure, Rohit Tatachar saw that many companies were building AI systems they couldn’t fully monitor or control in production. In his new role at a Seattle startup, he’s doing something about it. Tatachar is now co-founder and CTO of Glacis, which builds tamper-proof records of AI...
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Starfish Space raises $110M to scale up its satellite servicing missions
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter satellite servicing vehicle in geostationary Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration) Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space says it has raised about $110 million in a funding round that will help the company execute its first satellite servicing missions and scale up operations for more business. The Series B round was led by Point72...
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‘Moon joy!’ Artemis 2’s crew sets a distance record, documents lunar far side and heads back toward Earth
NASA’s Artemis 2 crew captured an iconic “Earthset” picture, showing Earth dipping beneath the lunar horizon. (NASA Photo) Four astronauts today became the first humans to make a trip around the moon since the Apollo era — and added new pages to history books for the Artemis era. The Artemis 2 crew reached a maximum distance of 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the distance record for...
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Plot twist in downtown Seattle: Barnes & Noble bookstore opening soon in Amazon’s backyard
Browsing in another new Barnes & Noble bookstore, in Bellevue, Wash. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) A new retail storyline is close to beginning in downtown Seattle with the opening this month of a Barnes & Noble bookstore — six years after the chain closed its longtime downtown location. The new store at 520 Pike St. is about four blocks from Pike Place Market and another four from...
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Seattle entrepreneur Robbie Cape’s lengthy job search takes unexpected turn with launch of new startup
Robbie Cape is a tech veteran and serial entrepreneur. (File Photo via 98point6) Robbie Cape, the Seattle tech entrepreneur who has dabbled in healthcare and fried chicken in recent years, has another new venture. In a post on LinkedIn on Monday, Cape said his nine-month search for a new job led somewhere he didn’t expect — and he’s starting a company. “We’re in stealth for now — the...
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Butter or sand in the gears? The question every founder must ask before choosing SF or Seattle
Yifan Zhang, AI2 Incubator co-managing director and AI House founder, speaks at the 2026 Seattle AI Startup Summit. (Ken Yeung Photo) The City by the Bay may be considered the center of AI and technology, but that doesn’t mean every founder should flock there to set up shop, right? That’s the argument put forth by Yifan Zhang, AI2 Incubator’s co-managing director and creator of the AI...
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Tech Moves: Microsoft names corporate VP; Amazon exec departs for Google; Zoom names CPO
Nadim Abdo. (Microsoft Photo) — After more than 26 years with Microsoft, Nadim Abdo is now the tech giant’s corporate vice president of Identity & Network Access (IDNA). The team’s services authenticate more than 1 billion users daily, and its Microsoft Entra technology is used by more than 95% of Fortune 500 companies, Abdo noted on LinkedIn. “As the next wave of AI reshapes how people,...
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Data visualization all-stars unveil Ridge AI with $2.6M to fix the analytics problem for SaaS apps
Ridge AI co-founders Jeffrey Heer and Ellie Fields. (Ridge AI Photo) Ellie Fields and Jeffrey Heer know data visualization from the inside: Fields spent more than 12 years as a product and marketing leader at Tableau, and Heer is the University of Washington professor whose open-source tools are widely used for web-based visualization. But even as they and their colleagues pushed the field...
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