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June 05, 2015 - 02:04 PM
Kalshi brings in former U.S. solicitor general as Washington state gambling case escalates

Kalshi brings in former U.S. solicitor general as Washington state gambling case escalates

August 10, 2026

Neal Katyal, a former U.S. acting solicitor general who leads Milbank’s U.S. Supreme Court practice, is representing Kalshi in state cases across the country. (Milbank Photo) Washington state is emerging as a key battleground in the national fight over whether federal commodities oversight...

Washington state is way down the list in another ranking of the best places to live

Washington state is way down the list in another ranking of the best places to live

August 10, 2026

(WalletHub Graphic) Thirty-two states are considered better places to live than Washington, according to a new study that ranks a variety of factors impacting livability. WalletHub’s 2026 “Best States to Live In” list puts Washington at No. 33 with an overall score of 49.70 based on five key...

Self-flying air taxis and drones: Boeing sells key aviation technology businesses to Archer

Self-flying air taxis and drones: Boeing sells key aviation technology businesses to Archer

August 10, 2026

Wisk completed the first flight of its Generation 6 autonomous, all-electric eVTOL last year. Photo via Wisk Archer Aviation is acquiring three Boeing subsidiaries focused on autonomous aircraft, airspace management and unmanned systems, a deal that will significantly expand the electric...

Tech Moves: Amazon VP leaves for Lime; MicroVision and Slalom name execs; Microsoft departures

Tech Moves: Amazon VP leaves for Lime; MicroVision and Slalom name execs; Microsoft departures

August 10, 2026

Hannah McClellan Richards. (LinkedIn Photo) — Hannah McClellan Richards has left Amazon after more than 15 years to become chief operating officer of micromobility company Lime. “Ensuring hundreds of thousands of light electric vehicles are available, fully charged, when and where riders need...

Mark Zuckerberg makes waves again, sparring on a barge and charting a course for the future of AI

Mark Zuckerberg makes waves again, sparring on a barge and charting a course for the future of AI

August 10, 2026

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, right, trains with UFC fighter Merab Dvalishvili aboard a barge on Lake Tahoe. (Image via Instagram) Man vs. machine might be the rallying cry of our future with AI, but for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the fight is here now — in more ways than one. Zuckerberg, who...

Gates Foundation gives $540 million to UW health institute, the largest gift in university history

Gates Foundation gives $540 million to UW health institute, the largest gift in university history

August 10, 2026

Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME’s director, is principal investigator on the grant. He started the Global Burden of Disease study in the early 1990s. (IHME Photo) The Gates Foundation broke its own record at the University of Washington with the largest charitable gift in university history: $540.2...

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 2, 2026

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 2, 2026

August 09, 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 Aug. 2, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...

Elon Musk’s Starlink swagger, SpaceX vs. the cloud giants, and Seattle’s tech universe revisited

Elon Musk’s Starlink swagger, SpaceX vs. the cloud giants, and Seattle’s tech universe revisited

August 08, 2026

John Cook studies the 2009 Puget Sound Tech Universe map while recording this week’s GeekWire Podcast, with WTIA’s 2026 Washington Tech Universe map on the table behind him. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) This week on the GeekWire podcast: SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company,...

Seattle AI Film Festival returns with 200 films that try to change your mind about AI cinema

Seattle AI Film Festival returns with 200 films that try to change your mind about AI cinema

August 07, 2026

A scene from the short film Subway 3 from director David Ahn, which will be shown at the Seattle AI Film Festival later this month. As debates over AI’s role in creative work intensify, the second annual Seattle AI Film Festival (SAIFF) is betting that filmmakers don’t have to choose between...

Jimothy raids the corporate pantry: Amazon adds extra $200K to food bank gift after raccoon art auction

Jimothy raids the corporate pantry: Amazon adds extra $200K to food bank gift after raccoon art auction

August 07, 2026

A painting of Jimothy, the viral raccoon, by Seattle artist Ryan Henry Ward. (@henry_beyond_museums via Instagram) A friendly challenge sparked by a portrait of Jimothy, Seattle’s favorite short-spined raccoon, has now drawn in 11 regional heavyweights — and with a big new donation from Amazon,...

This is way mo’ fun: Baby blue Waymo ‘Ojai’ spotted in Seattle, adding to robotaxi test fleet

This is way mo’ fun: Baby blue Waymo ‘Ojai’ spotted in Seattle, adding to robotaxi test fleet

August 07, 2026

A new Waymo Ojai vehicle spotted in a Fred Meyer parking lot in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood on Friday. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Waymo has added one mo’ type of vehicle to its fleet in the Seattle area, where the company has been testing for the launch of its autonomous taxi service...

As Washington state’s AI task force winds down, the debate over how much to regulate is far from settled

As Washington state’s AI task force winds down, the debate over how much to regulate is far from settled

August 07, 2026

From left: Ryan Burns of Responsible AI Washington, Amy Harris of the Washington Technology Industry Association, Yuki Ishizuka of the Washington Attorney General’s Office, and Katy Ruckle of Washington Technology Solutions, at Wednesday’s panel on the state AI task force’s final report. (GeekWire...

Etzioni on AI: Murphy’s Law of AI

Etzioni on AI: Murphy’s Law of AI

August 07, 2026

When you give AI a goal, it will pursue it, whether or not you like the implications. (Created with GPT-5.6 Thinking) Between July 21 and August 6, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta each disclosed that AI under evaluation had broken into other companies, and the UK’s AI Security Institute disclosed...

Startup Spotlight: HitchPiggy wants to turn empty car seats into a new rideshare marketplace

Startup Spotlight: HitchPiggy wants to turn empty car seats into a new rideshare marketplace

August 06, 2026

HItchPiggy founder Skylar Windham, left, on a trip to Florida with his friend and former graduate school professor Alexis Cancemi. Planning a trip to a college campus, concert or Northwest landmark? Portland startup HitchPiggy is betting the ride you need may already be headed out on the...

Salesforce cutting 59 jobs across Seattle and Bellevue offices

Salesforce cutting 59 jobs across Seattle and Bellevue offices

August 06, 2026

Salesforce offices in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Salesforce is cutting 59 jobs in Washington state, impacting a wide variety of tech roles at offices in Seattle and Bellevue, according to a new state filing. The layoffs at the San Francisco-based...

Microsoft 2.5: How EVP Charles Lamanna is helping turn Microsoft into the ‘Copilot company’

Microsoft 2.5: How EVP Charles Lamanna is helping turn Microsoft into the ‘Copilot company’

August 06, 2026

Charles Lamanna, EVP of Copilot, Agents and Platform at Microsoft, at a GeekWire event in March 2026. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) GeekWire is profiling over the next few weeks some of the people and teams that are shaping the evolution of Microsoft in what we’re calling its “Microsoft 2.5”...

This startup just raised $6M for an AI tutor that helps kids figure it out themselves

This startup just raised $6M for an AI tutor that helps kids figure it out themselves

August 06, 2026

A Wild Zebra math problem framed around baking, one of the interests the student selected. After the student works out that each section is 1/12 of the cookie, the AI confirms the step and asks the next question rather than finishing the problem. (Wild Zebra images, click to...

Zillow revenue climbs 18% but layoff costs push company to a loss, amid executive changes

Zillow revenue climbs 18% but layoff costs push company to a loss, amid executive changes

August 05, 2026

Zillow Group’s revenue rose 18% to $772 million in the second quarter, beating its own forecast, but a $36 million restructuring charge from severance and other costs stemming from this week’s layoffs pushed it to a $4 million net loss. The Seattle-based online real estate company, which on...

Disaster hits home: How Amazon and other companies are responding to Washington state wildfires

Disaster hits home: How Amazon and other companies are responding to Washington state wildfires

August 05, 2026

Amazon has 12 Disaster Relief hubs around the world — including this one in California handling wildfire relief supplies — designed to respond quickly to natural disasters with delivery of emergency materials. (Amazon Photo) Amazon’s Disaster Relief team responds with emergency supplies to...

Google to cut 52 employees in Washington state

Google to cut 52 employees in Washington state

August 05, 2026

Google’s Kirkland Urban campus in Kirkland, Wash. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Google is laying off 52 employees in Washington state, according to a state filing released Wednesday. The job cuts include software engineers, engineering and product managers, mechatronics engineers,...

The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years

The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years

August 05, 2026

Google veterans leaving to launch Discovery Loop, from left: Oriol Vinyals, Sanjay Ghemawat, Jeff Dean, and Quoc Le. (Discovery Loop Photo) Speaking in June at the University of Washington Allen School commencement, AI pioneer Jeff Dean told computer science graduates how he “got the itch to...

Washington state’s next-gen ferry era kicks off with 3 new hybrid boats in $1.15B deal

Washington state’s next-gen ferry era kicks off with 3 new hybrid boats in $1.15B deal

August 05, 2026

Older ferries like this vessel sailing across Washington’s Puget Sound are scheduled to be upgraded or replaced with electric-hybrid ferries to cut greenhouse emissions. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The sun is setting on Washington state’s aging diesel-powered ferry fleet as work begins on...

Live dating show reveals Seattle’s relationship with tech is still complicated

Live dating show reveals Seattle’s relationship with tech is still complicated

August 05, 2026

Comedian and “Love Isn’t Blind” host Allison Goldberg, center in pink, during the touring live show. (Photo via Love Isn’t Blind) Can’t a tech bro catch a break? A live dating show that has made stops in Seattle sheds a little bit of light on how tech workers in the city are received,...

Zillow layoffs hit 91 jobs in Washington state, with senior roles bearing the brunt

Zillow layoffs hit 91 jobs in Washington state, with senior roles bearing the brunt

August 05, 2026

Zillow Group’s headquarters at 1301 Second Ave. in downtown Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo) Zillow Group’s layoffs will eliminate 91 jobs in Washington state, landing heavily on senior staff, according to a notice the company filed with the state Employment Security Department. The filing...

He, it, but rarely she: When AI models write kids’ stories about animals, female characters vanish

He, it, but rarely she: When AI models write kids’ stories about animals, female characters vanish

August 05, 2026

Prompted by GeekWire to create three separate children’s stories about animals — a bear, a bird and a cat — Google Gemini Storybook rendered three male characters. A new UW study dives much deeper into AI models’ gendering of animal characters. (Google Gemini Images) A bear is almost certainly a...

What’s working in climate tech (and what’s not): 4 big ideas from a rooftop full of investors and founders

What’s working in climate tech (and what’s not): 4 big ideas from a rooftop full of investors and founders

August 05, 2026

Investors and innovators at the kickoff happy hour at 2026 Pacific Northwest Climate Week. (GeekWire Photos / Laura Scott) Subscribe to Positive Charge: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, All Episodes Most climate news these days is grim. But at a rooftop happy hour...

SpaceX earnings: Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver most of the world’s internet within a decade

SpaceX earnings: Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver most of the world’s internet within a decade

August 04, 2026

A Falcon 9 rocket arcs into the night sky during a February 2023 launch. Most of SpaceX’s launches carry Starlink satellites built at the company’s factory in Redmond, Wash. (SpaceX Photo, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0) The satellites rolling off the line in Redmond, Wash., are paying for Elon...

Zillow cuts more than 500 jobs in its largest layoff of the year

Zillow cuts more than 500 jobs in its largest layoff of the year

August 04, 2026

GeekWire Illustration Seattle-based online real estate company Zillow Group laid off more than 500 employees Tuesday, about 7% of its global workforce, its second and largest round of cuts this year. The layoffs are about “ensuring we have a disciplined cost structure and getting more...

Tech Moves: Salesforce/Tableau exec departs; startups AIM and Gravitics add to C-suite

Tech Moves: Salesforce/Tableau exec departs; startups AIM and Gravitics add to C-suite

August 04, 2026

Teri Hatfield. (LinkedIn Photo) — Teri Hatfield was named chief revenue officer for Iterable, a customer engagement platform. The Seattle-area tech executive most recently served as executive vice president of sales and solutions at Salesforce and CRO of Tableau, which Salesforce acquired in...

‘Some things are better without AI’: How KEXP’s new tech chief will amplify human connection

‘Some things are better without AI’: How KEXP’s new tech chief will amplify human connection

August 04, 2026

Jyoti Shukla, chief product and technology officer at KEXP, inside the live room at the Seattle radio station. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Seattle indie radio powerhouse KEXP has hired tech veteran Jyoti Shukla as its first chief product and technology officer, with an unusual mandate in...

Amazon tops $3 trillion and Microsoft surges as Wall Street sets aside AI spending fears, for now

Amazon tops $3 trillion and Microsoft surges as Wall Street sets aside AI spending fears, for now

August 03, 2026

GeekWire Illustration Microsoft and Amazon both saw their stocks surge again Monday, riding a post-earnings tech wave across the stock market that pushed Amazon past $3 trillion in value for the first time. The gains follow earnings reports last week in which both companies’ cloud platforms...

UW’s Allen School names Dan Grossman interim director as Magdalena Balazinska shifts gears

UW’s Allen School names Dan Grossman interim director as Magdalena Balazinska shifts gears

August 03, 2026

Magdalena Balazinska, left, outgoing director of the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and Dan Grossman, the school’s vice director and newly named interim director. (UW Photos) Top leadership is shifting at the University of Washington’s Paul G....

This civic activist used AI to assess how state Supreme Court candidates might rule on the millionaires’ tax

This civic activist used AI to assess how state Supreme Court candidates might rule on the millionaires’ tax

August 03, 2026

Viet Nguyen in his Seattle home office, with two of the civic sites he built using AI: Culliton2026.org on the monitor and a dashboard on the King County homelessness authority on the laptop. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) The tradition of using new technology to shape political discourse goes...

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of July 26, 2026

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of July 26, 2026

August 02, 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 26, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...

Amazon’s next big business, Satya Nadella’s DIY app, and a VC’s rallying cry for Seattle tech

Amazon’s next big business, Satya Nadella’s DIY app, and a VC’s rallying cry for Seattle tech

August 01, 2026

This week on the GeekWire podcast: Microsoft and Amazon both reported quarterly numbers, and both stocks rose on cloud results that beat expectations. Is all that AI spending paying off? And in related news, Microsoft sees a rare annual headcount decline, hitting product R&D hardest. Plus:...

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