Elon Musk celebrates the SpaceX IPO last week. (Nasdaq Photo) Shares of SpaceX surged Tuesday morning, pushing the Elon Musk-led company above Amazon and into a neck-and-neck race with Microsoft for the title of the world’s fourth-most valuable public company, less than a week after its...
An aerial view of Orion, Helion Energy’s planned fusion plant being built in Malaga, Wash. (Helion Photo) Helion Energy announced Tuesday that it’s the first company in the world to receive regulatory licenses for a fusion power facility. The Everett, Wash.-based startup broke ground last year...
Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS VP of agentic AI, on stage at AWS re:Invent in December. (Amazon Photo / Noah Berger) [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...
Neuralwatt’s co-founders: CEO Chad Gibson, left, and Scott Chamberlin, chief technology officer. (LinkedIn Photos) Neuralwatt, a Seattle-based startup launched by two Microsoft veterans, has released what appears to be the first tool for calculating, in real time, the carbon emissions of...
From left: Allen School Director Magdalena Balazinska, alumni award recipients David Dawson and Nodira Khoussainova, and Allen School Vice Director Dan Grossman. (UW Photo / Matt Hagen) Two University of Washington alumni who built companies out of everyday frustrations — hard-to-recycle...
Amazon’s headquarters and neighboring towers in downtown Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Updated with comments from Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson. A new Downtown Seattle Association report asserts that Seattle’s signature tax on big employers is backfiring, five years after it went...
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy at an Amazon conference in 2025 in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was reportedly among the tech leaders who communicated with senior Trump administration officials about security risks in Anthropic’s most advanced AI models, before a...
A Seattle Fire Department truck during an emergency response. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The Seattle Fire Department has been quietly using artificial intelligence to help triage and divert 911 medical calls for more than two years — without telling the public — The Seattle Times...
Luke Larson, founder and CEO of Vale, with one of the company’s automated matcha dispenser units in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Luke Larson used to get a charge out of working on Tasers and body-worn cameras for law enforcement at Axon. Now he’s...
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 June 7, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
(Illustration generated by Google Gemini) Wikipedia’s volunteer editors have recently banned the use of large language models to generate or rewrite articles. Gartner reported that 53% of U.S. consumers distrust AI-powered search results, and 61% want to turn the summaries off. Add the “Made by...
Researchers say the mechanics of having sex in space would be easier to manage than the biology of pregnancy and fetal development in a reduced-gravity environment. (Credit: ID 309694213 © Anna Ivanova | Dreamstime.com) Sex in space is the perfect subject for levity and double entendres, and the...
Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and a UW alum, addresses Allen School graduates Friday at Alaska Airlines Arena. (UW Photo / Matt Hagen) Jeff Dean was a University of Washington graduate student in the 1990s, optimizing software compilers for object-oriented programming languages in a...
Scenes from GeekWire’s visit to Cleveland, where John Cook and Charles Fitzgerald spent several days reporting on the city’s comeback, including a stop at the abandoned Westinghouse light bulb factory where they recorded this week’s podcast. (Charles Fitzgerald and John Cook Photos) John Cook...
Microsoft has spent years subsidizing Xbox rather than profiting from it, CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged this week, as he addressed the gaming division’s need for a new approach. His comments came during a Wednesday evening taping of The New York Times’ “Hard Fork” podcast, released...
Marcus Fontoura, Microsoft technical fellow and CTO for Azure Core, with his new book, A Platform Mindset, during a recent conversation at the company’s Redmond campus. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) — Microsoft technical fellow Marcus Fontoura is leaving the company after serving as Azure...
One of ZincFive’s stacked battery units. (ZincFive Photo) ZincFive, an Oregon company providing nickel-zinc batteries for data centers, announced Thursday that it’s partnering with SparkLabs Group to go public through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company). The deal is valued at $600...
Mary E. Brunkow, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and the UW’s 2026 commencement speaker. (Institute for Systems Biology Photo) This year’s University of Washington commencement speaker has decades of experience in a field that increasingly benefits from AI and machine learning — but unlike some of...
Elon Musk rings the opening bell for the SpaceX IPO on Friday morning. Imagine missing the Tesla IPO. I understand the pull to invest in SpaceX (SPCX). But SpaceX at a $1.75 trillion valuation is a different ball game. Tesla went public at a valuation a thousand times smaller. And the Musk...
Some of the Cleveland leaders who shared their advice during GeekWire’s visit to northeast Ohio. (GeekWire Photos / John Cook) CLEVELAND, Ohio — A century ago, this city was booming. By 1920, it was the fifth-largest metropolis in the United States, fueled by manufacturing, immigration,...
A geothermal energy demo device built by Seattle startup Endurance being tested in the Mariana Islands. (Endurance photo via LinkedIn) Endurance Energy, a Seattle-based startup developing technology to extract energy from the heat beneath the ocean floor, has raised $54 million. The team —...
Amperity co-founders and co-CEOs Kabir Shahani (left) and Derek Slager. (Amperity photo). Amperity is putting its founders back in charge. The Seattle-based customer data startup announced this week that co-founders Derek Slager and Kabir Shahani will serve as co-CEOs, taking over leadership...
Prometheus co-CEOs Vik Bajaj and Jeff Bezos speak with CNBC’s David Faber in San Francisco on Thursday, June 11, 2026. Jeff Bezos has bankrolled his Blue Origin space venture on his own, selling shares of Amazon stock to get the company to orbit and beyond, but others are chipping in for his...
Rows of Lime’s new LimeBike electric bicycles are ready to be deployed in Seattle from the company’s warehouse in Georgetown on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) As Seattle is set to welcome the world this month for FIFA World Cup matches, the city’s sole micromobility operator is...
Adam Selipsky is now CEO of Helix Digital Infrastructure. (GeekWire photo) Former Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky is returning to the world of cloud infrastructure as co-founder and CEO of Helix Digital Infrastructure, a newly-launched company backed by more than $10 billion. The...
Pipes carrying reclaimed water for cooling at an Amazon Web Services data center. (AWS Photo) Amazon Web Services on Thursday announced that efforts to curb water use at its data centers have made it seven times more water-efficient than the industry average. The company says it’s 75% of the...
SpaceX’s Seattle connection dates back to 2015, when CEO Elon Musk announced at Seattle Center that the company’s satellite operation would be based in the region. “What this represents is the official opening of SpaceX Seattle,” he said at the time. (GeekWire File Photo) SpaceX’s initial public...
Microsoft’s restyled Xbox logo. (Microsoft Image) Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, roughly 100 days into her tenure, delivered a blunt assessment of Microsoft’s gaming business in a memo to employees Wednesday, saying that heavy spending with thin profit margins and declining revenue “cannot continue.”...
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla speaks in Seattle in 2025. (GeekWire File Photo) The list of potential buyers for the Seattle Seahawks is starting to look like an NFL Pro Bowl roster of billionaires, venture capitalists and global business leaders. Billionaire financier Todd Boehly is the...
Alpha School has leased space in this building in Kirkland for its first Seattle-area school. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Alpha School, an AI-driven private school chain that promises to teach kids core academics in two hours a day, plans to open a Seattle-area location in Kirkland this fall...
The beverage tumblers from MiiR, left, and Tesla that are being compared in a lawsuit. (MiiR, Tesla Images, GeekWire Composite Image) MiiR, the Seattle-based maker of drinkware and other accessories, is suing Tesla, alleging the Elon Musk-led company copied its tumbler lid design and...
Bill Gates appeared voluntarily behind closed doors before House Oversight Committee investigators on Wednesday to answer questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, part of a larger turn in his image that has been rippling through the Seattle-area institutions he built and funds. In a...
Brad Smith speaks at a Microsoft Elevate event at Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry in 2025. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) The interests of Microsoft and graduates rebelling against AI are actually aligned. That was one takeaway for Brad Smith, Microsoft president and vice chair,...
Rivvun co-founders Anand Veerkar, Niranjan Umarane, and Patrick Linton. Photos via Rivvun, composite image by GeekWire Two former executives from enterprise software giant Icertis have teamed up to launch a new Seattle startup aimed at a multi-trillion-dollar corporate headache. Rivvun AI,...
Supporters of a permanent data center ban, including members of Kshama Sawant’s congressional campaign, hold signs reading “Stop the Data Centers & AI Layoffs” during public comment at Tuesday’s Seattle City Council meeting. (Screenshot via Seattle Channel) The city that gave the world cloud...