GEEK News
No dirt, no tractor, no problem: Canopii aims to tuck robotic farms into tennis court-sized urban spaces
Canopii’s team among its robotic system and basil plants. CEO and co-founder David Ashton is tossing greens. (Canopii Photo / Bryan Aulick) A running joke in the agricultural field is the average age of a U.S. farmer is 58 today, but that will tick up by one next year. The trouble is, it’s not so funny when the people who grow our food are aging out with no one to replace them. An Oregon...
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Climate progress at 30,000 feet: Alaska Airlines’ Ryan Spies on the flight path to sustainable aviation
Ryan Spies, Alaska Airlines’ managing director of sustainability. (Photo courtesy of Spies) Ryan Spies, Alaska Airlines’ managing director of sustainability, isn’t a climate perfectionist. Yes, he drives an EV — but he also eats a relatively carbon-intensive cheeseburger now and then. What matters more, he says, is when people work to drive larger-scale change: engaging in collective...
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New tune for Code.org’s Hadi Partovi: CEO of piano education venture with unique method and big ambitions
Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org and new CEO of Payam Music, speaking at a Microsoft event in July 2025. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Hadi Partovi helped kids around the world learn to code. Next on the playlist: piano. The Code.org founder, who earlier this year handed off the CEO role at the nonprofit, announced this weekend that he is the new CEO of Payam Music, a Bothell, Wash.-based...
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Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 17, 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 May 17, 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 Friends and colleagues remembered S. “Soma” Somasegar, the longtime Microsoft developer leader...
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Etzioni on AI: The Virgin Unicorns
Illustration generated by Google Gemini Twelve AI labs have a combined valuation larger than Ford and GM. None of them sell anything. I call them the Virgin Unicorns — valued above a billion dollars, but innocent of product or revenue. OpenAI proved that an AI research lab with the right product could become one of the most valuable companies on earth. A dozen other AI labs are trying to...
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SpaceX IPO filing reveals Starlink’s impact, Bezos sounds off on CNBC, and Gemini owes John a beer
This week on a supersized Memorial Day Weekend edition of the GeekWire Podcast: A massive IPO filing from SpaceX includes new details about Elon Musk’s Starlink business and its satellite factory in Redmond. Jeff Bezos talks about wealth, inequality and eventually tech in an hour-long CNBC appearance. John goes to World Cup ticketing hell and turns to ChatGPT and Gemini when...
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Robot pizza startup runs out of dough: Picnic shuts down, sells assets to mystery buyer
Freshly sliced pepperoni is delivered via conveyer belt onto a pizza being assembled by a Picnic pizza-making robot. (GeekWire File Photo) Picnic, the 10-year-old Seattle food automation startup that set out to revolutionize the production of pizza with robotics, has shut down and liquidated its assets. According to legal documents and an email to creditors and investors, Picnic was unable...
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What’s next for Bungie? Rumored layoffs and end of ‘Destiny 2’ updates raise questions about studio’s future
(Bungie press image) Thursday abruptly became a big news day for fans of Bellevue, Wash.-based video game developer Bungie, which announced that it plans to cease development on its popular online shooter Destiny 2. Eight hours after Bungie’s announcement, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier released a piece that alleges Bungie plans “a significant number of layoffs” once Destiny 2 is brought to a...
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Tech Moves: Xbox names CTO; Smartsheet gets first AI chief; Amazon VP departs for DoorDash
Scott Van Vliet. (LinkedIn Photo) — Microsoft’s Xbox promoted Scott Van Vliet to the role of chief technology officer. Van Vliet, based in the Los Angeles area, has been with the company across two stints totaling more than seven years, with work on Teams and Azure Communication Services. “I’ve been a gamer my whole life and an Xbox fan since day one, so this is a rare opportunity to bring...
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Bellevue teens targeting salmon die-offs and mental health win big at international science fair
Lakshmi Agrawal, left, and Anusha Arora, both of Bellevue, Wash., hold their prizes at the Society for Science’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair earlier this month. (Lisa Fryklund / Licensed by Society for Science) Two teenagers from Bellevue, Wash., took home a combined $125,000 at the world’s largest high school science competition this month — one for a low-cost filter...
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The view from Bellevue: Seattle has the foundation for future growth — if it can fix its taxes
Participants at the Bellevue Chamber’s Seattle-focused luncheon, from left: Joe Nguyen, Seattle Metro Chamber; Tiffini Connell, West Coast Commercial Realty; Jon Scholes, Downtown Seattle Association; and moderator Joe Fain, Bellevue Chamber. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) BELLEVUE, Wash. — The foundational pieces that tee a city up for economic success are well established: an educated...
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A ‘final season’ at Microsoft for Yusuf Mehdi: Longtime exec plans to leave after one last year
Yusuf Mehdi speaks at Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC event in May 2024. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Yusuf Mehdi, one of Microsoft’s best-known and longest-serving business leaders, whose tenure has spanned 35 years from Windows 3.1 to Copilot, plans to leave the company after one more year — his “final season,” as he called it in an interview. Mehdi, 59, is Microsoft’s EVP and consumer chief...
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Why this Seattle-area startup is putting its name on the front of an English Premier League soccer team
Crystal Palace Football Club and Seattle-area open-source software platform Temporal are partnering on a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal. (Crystal Palace Image) A Seattle-area developer tools startup is doing something that no amount of banner ads or conference booths could: it’s putting its name on the chest of an English Premier League football club. Temporal, the Bellevue workflow...
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CEO of Paul Allen’s $3.1B science and tech fund steps down less than a year after launch
Dr. Lynda Stuart’s last day at the Fund for Science and Technology was May 8. (File photo courtesy FFST) The first CEO of the Fund for Science and Technology, the $3.1 billion foundation responsible for giving away a large portion of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s fortune, has stepped down nine months after its public launch. Dr. Lynda Stuart, a physician-scientist who...
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SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing
SpaceX is producing an average of 70 Starlink satellites per week in Redmond, its IPO filing shows. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Redmond, Wash., has been known for decades as the home of Microsoft, to the extent that the city’s name has become synonymous with the software giant. Maybe it’s time to rethink that, because it’s also home to one of the world’s most prolific satellite...
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UW’s Ed Lazowska adds ‘Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award’ to his long list of honors
University of Washington professor emeritus Ed Lazowska. (UW Photo / Mark Stone) Ed Lazowska needs to clear more room in the trophy case. The University of Washington professor emeritus — a longtime computer science educator, researcher and fixture in Seattle’s tech community — has been honored with the 2026 Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award, UW Magazine reported this week. The...
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Opinion: Washington state’s tax debate is missing half the equation
Housing costs, public safety concerns and the local political climate have all contributed to Seattle’s struggles. But tax policy influences business decisions too, particularly at the margin where firms decide where future hiring and expansion will occur. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) [Editor’s note: Alex Murray is a small business owner who has previously written for GeekWire about...
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EV startup Electric Era launches battery systems to tackle data center energy crunch
Artist’s rendering of a CoPower Platform by Electric Era. (Electric Era Image). Seattle EV charging startup Electric Era is applying its battery expertise to energy storage systems for data centers. The company on Thursday announced the CoPower Platform, which pairs large batteries with the software it developed to manage its EV charging stations. Those DC fast-charging systems already...
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Meet the company that won the Microsoft-donated World Cup suite with a $100k bid for a great cause
L-R: Michael Atalla, chief marketing officer at UiPath and Katie Fath, director of community giving at Seattle Children’s Hospital with John Cook, GeekWire co-founder and publisher. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Seattle’s business and tech community just delivered a World Cup-sized assist for a great cause. A premium 2026 World Cup suite experience, donated by Microsoft, raised $100,000...
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AI is not your strategy: Author and business advisor Brian Evergreen explains why vision comes first
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop interviews author and strategist Brian Evergreen for the GeekWire Podcast at an Agents of Transformation dinner presented by Accenture at El Gaucho in Bellevue, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Holly Grambihler) [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...
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Data center resistance comes home to Seattle as council considers a one-year freeze
The rooftop park on Ocean Pavilion offers views of the Seattle skyline and Elliott Bay. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) While tech companies including Microsoft and Amazon call the Seattle area home, residents are voicing opposition to the construction of new data centers that underpin their operations. Seattle City Council is considering a one-year moratorium on the computing...
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‘One of a kind’: Tributes pour in for S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, beloved tech mentor and friend
S. “Soma” Somasegar at AWS re:Invent in 2019. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) The tributes came quickly for S. “Soma” Somasegar, and they came from seemingly everywhere and everyone he touched across the technology and business community. A consistent picture emerged: Somasegar was kind, generous with his time, humble, and a steadying presence. To many, those qualities mattered even...
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Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has a new gig — startup CEO
Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle in October 2022. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong) Bruce Harrell has a new job — with term sheets and customers as opposed to stump speeches and constituents. The former mayor of Seattle is the new CEO of Filium, a Seattle-based sustainable textile company founded in 2015 as Ably. The move puts the longtime Seattle...
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At Tech Alliance annual luncheon, a stark analysis and a call to action
Tech Alliance CEO Laura Ruderman addresses the crowd at State of Technology luncheon in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) It’s a complicated moment in Washington, our home state, where the tech giants are strong, the satellites are abundant, and economic growth may no longer be above average. That was the feeling walking out of the Technology Alliance’s annual State of Technology...
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Seattle, we’ve got an image problem
The cover of Newsweek magazine, May 20, 1996 — exactly 30 years ago today. Take a breath, close your eyes, and think about the words that define Seattle. Innovative. Outdoorsy. Global. Inventive. Smart. Progressive. Independent. A little reserved. A little weird. Thirty years ago today, Newsweek magazine published a cover story featuring political journalist Michael Kinsley titled:...
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Lab of UW Nobel winner cracks challenge of creating roomier protein cages to deliver genetic medicines
A computer-designed protein that forms a cage-like structure of pentagons and hexagons. (UW Institute for Protein Design Illustration) Medical experts use gene therapies for a variety of ailments — treating hemophilia with a clotting-factor gene or dosing a cancer patient with therapeutic DNA or RNA. But doctors need a means of delivering that curative gene to a target in a patient’s body....
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Starfish Space shifts its sights to Australian satellite for orbital docking demonstration
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration) Eleven months after launch, Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite is finally kicking its test mission into high gear, closing in for a rendezvous with a newly designated target. If all goes according to plan, Otter Pup 2 will dock with Australia-based Gilmour Space’s ElaraSat...
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Jeff Bezos describes his $38B startup Prometheus for the first time: ‘Nothing to do with robotics’
Jeff Bezos during a CNBC Squawk Box interview at Blue Origin’s Rocket Park in Merritt Island, Fla., on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. When CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin described Jeff Bezos’ startup Project Prometheus as being “really about AI robotics” in an interview on Wednesday, the Amazon founder interrupted with a correction. “It’s a little premature for me to talk about it, but we are not — we...
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Amazon Leo’s leaders provide an inside look at the satellite broadband network’s past and future
Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Amazon Leo, discusses Amazon’s plans for satellite broadband services while Chris Weber, Amazon Leo’s vice president of business and product, looks on during the Technology Alliance’s State of Technology Luncheon in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Brian M. Westbrook) Amazon Leo is still months away from the commercial launch of its satellite broadband network, but...
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S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, 1966-2026: Microsoft and Madrona leader was a champion of developers and startups
S. “Soma” Somasegar at Microsoft in 2014, giving a tour of the revamped Developer Division offices. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) S. “Soma” Somasegar, a fixture in the Seattle tech community who led Microsoft’s Developer Division as part of his 27-year tenure at the company before supporting a generation of cloud and AI startups as an investor, board member and advisor, has passed...
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Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption
From left: Expedia Group chairman Barry Diller, CEO Ariane Gorin, former CEO and current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and founder Rich Barton at Expedia’s Explore partner conference in Las Vegas this week. (Expedia Group Photo) From her office overlooking the atrium at Expedia Group’s sunlit headquarters campus on the Seattle waterfront, CEO Ariane Gorin puts the online travel giant’s 30-year...
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Mistakes new startup founders should avoid — according to those who made them
Tin Can co-founder and CEO Chet Kittleson, right, speaks with Pioneer Square Labs Managing Director Greg Gottesman at Seattle Flow Startup Day at Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle on May 15. (Dan DeLong Photo) This past Christmas, Chet Kittleson was in the back of a minivan watching his startup die in real time. His company, Tin Can — a reimagined home phone designed for kids — had...
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Student rocketry team soars in U.S. competition despite losing their motor in the mail
The Washington Youth Aerospace team, from left: Nikhil Sirivara, Daniel Tadesse, Mikhail Antipin, Bao-Ky Tran, Antoine Vigneron and Anay Mediwala, pose with the rocket supplies vendor who found the motor the kids needed for a successful launch in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy of Sudheer Sirivara) A slow-moving delivery nearly grounded the hopes of some high-flying rocketry students from...
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TerraByte raises the curtain on its campaign to use AI to unleash the power of geospatial data
A screenshot of TerraByte’s software platform pinpoints cargo ships, warehouses, solar farms, mining sites and areas of deforestation. One complex query generated more than 2,000 results that can be further filtered. Click on the image for a larger version. (Credit: TerraByte AI) A stealthy Seattle startup called TerraByte AI is unveiling a software platform that uses artificial intelligence...
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StitcherAI emerges from stealth with $3M and a different take on the AI spending problem
StitcherAI co-founders Varun Mittal (left) and Udam Dewaraja. (StitcherAI Photo) StitcherAI, backed by $3 million in pre-seed funding, launched today with an unusual approach to help companies get a handle on AI and cloud spending before the bills get out of control. Founded by a pair of Seattle enterprise tech veterans, the startup is avoiding the traditional FinOps dashboard, instead...
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