GEEK News
June 05, 2015 - 02:04 PM
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) 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 publicly Wednesday that Brown will depart at the end of July for an unspecified “new...
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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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Judge denies FTC request to presume Zillow-Redfin deal ‘unlawful’
This story originally appeared on Real Estate News. Illustration by Real Estate News/Shutterstock A federal court has turned down the Federal Trade Commission’s request to declare a rentals deal between Zillow and Redfin “presumptively unlawful” before trial next month. On Wednesday, July 8, Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied...
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Pulse Space wins $40M contract from Space Force to work on space laser power system
An artist’s conception shows a satellite receiving energy from a laser beam. (Credit: Pulse Space via Vimeo) Bellevue, Wash.-based Pulse Space says it has received a $40 million award from the U.S. Space Force to develop technologies for laser-based power beaming and orbital tracking systems. The startup, founded in 2022, is working on a system that would collect energy using solar arrays...
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Echodyne opens $40M radar factory near Seattle to meet booming demand for drone detection
Echodyne CEO Eben Frankenberg, left, gives a tour of the company’s new manufacturing facility in Woodinville, Wash., to U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, center, and Sen. Maria Cantwell on Wednesday. (Echodyne Photo) Echodyne, the Seattle-area radar-platform company, cut the ribbon Wednesday on a new $40 million manufacturing facility designed to meet growing demand for its drone-detection and...
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Despite business angst, Washington climbs in CNBC’s state rankings — but still trails its former standing
Seattle’s skyline, the economic engine of Washington state. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) For much of the past year, the narrative surrounding Washington state’s business climate has taken a decidedly negative turn. Business leaders have criticized a wave of new taxes approved by lawmakers. High-profile companies have announced expansions elsewhere. Entrepreneurs have questioned whether...
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Microsoft’s carbon emissions climb 25% as tech giants grapple with AI’s energy toll
Inside a Microsoft data center. (Microsoft Photo) Microsoft has just four more years to reach its ambitious goal of removing more planet-warming carbon that it produces. But the company’s annual sustainability report, released Thursday, shows it’s moving in the opposite direction, as its 2025 emissions spiked 25% over the previous year. Despite the troubling increase, Microsoft leaders say...
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Supply chain startup Auger, led by ex-Amazon operations chief, raises $50M and lands big customers
Auger co-founders Leigh Anne Clark and Dave Clark at the company’s Bellevue, Wash., office. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) While investors spent much of the spring concerned that frontier AI models from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI would consume the software industry, Dave Clark was closing a funding round for exactly the kind of enterprise software those models are supposedly going to...
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T-Mobile exec Mike Katz exits after 28 years, as carrier reshuffles top ranks and taps ex-AT&T leader
Mike Katz speaks at a T-Mobile event in 2025. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) T-Mobile’s longest-tenured Un-carrier architect just Un-carriered himself. Mike Katz, who started selling VoiceStream phones at Circuit City 28 years ago and rose to help T-Mobile go from an also-ran into the wireless industry’s most formidable competitor, is leaving the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier as part...
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Tech Moves: Seattle tech exec named Dropbox CPO; Xbox VP among layoffs; C-suite changes at T-Mobile
Mike Torres. (LinkedIn Photo) — Mike Torres, a former executive at Amazon, Microsoft and Google, has joined Dropbox as the company’s first chief product officer. “As a product leader, joining a company that helped pioneer product-led growth is energizing…” Torres said on LinkedIn. “In this role, my focus will be simple: help Dropbox ship the right things at the right time for our...
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The drive to make a better golf app: Former pro athlete bets big on ‘Barkie’ and AI as a caddie
Dane Renkert, co-founder and CEO of Barkie, an AI-powered app for golfers. (Barkie Photo) Perhaps the only downside to building a golf-focused startup is that it leaves less time to actually play golf. Dane Renkert will take that tradeoff, for now, as he works on something that he says will change the way people play and interact around the game. Renkert is co-founder and CEO of Barkie,...
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This startup lets companies teach AI about their brands — and the chatbots are listening
Optimly founder and CEO Apurva Luty pitches at the Tech Alliance’s Seattle Investor Summit + Showcase in Redmond. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Seattle startup Optimly, which helps brands manage what AI understands and says about them, went into the Flywheel Investment Conference in Wenatchee, Wash., in May as a last-minute entrant, and walked out with a triple crown. The company won a...
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