Articles from 2026

‘The Odyssey’ isn’t on IMAX 70mm in Seattle — is it worth a journey for the summer’s biggest film?

Want to see “The Odyssey” as director Christopher Nolan intended? Here is how formats and theaters compare across 70mm, IMAX, and digital — and why a road trip may be needed. Read More

Defense tech giant Anduril eyes new funding at $100B valuation as Seattle expansion draws protests

Defense tech giant Anduril is reportedly seeking a new funding round that would value the company at about $100 billion, underscoring its meteoric rise as it rapidly expands its engineering and maritime operations in the Seattle region. Read More

Earth first, Mars later: Inside AIM’s grand vision for physical AI and autonomous bulldozers

From a Redmond, Wash., headquarters space formerly occupied by SpaceX, AIM Intelligent Machines founder and CEO Adam Sadilek and his growing team are building the systems to retrofit heavy construction and mining equipment for a self-driving future. Read More

Tech Moves: Agility Robotics gets CFO; Microsoft security departure; Zap’s legal officer; new KEXP CPTO

Agility Robotics names a CFO ahead of its plans to go public, moving its current CFO/COO into an operations-focused role. Microsoft loses another security leader while Zap Energy gets a chief legal officer. Read More

BioLife Solutions to be acquired by Repligen in $1.5B cell therapy deal

BioLife Solutions, a Bothell, Wash.-based company developing tools for cell and gene therapy, is being acquired for $1.5 billion by the life sciences corporation Repligen. Read More

Amazon puts Luna gaming service inside its Prime Video app, hoping people finally notice

Amazon’s cloud gaming service will now be available in a tab inside the Prime Video app for Fire TV users in the U.S. and U.K. The company’s gaming chief says one of Luna’s biggest challenges is that Prime members don’t know it’s included with their membership. Read More

Microsoft 2.5: New security business chief Hayete Gallot on the company’s push into the agentic era

Hayete Gallot, who rejoined Microsoft in February to lead its security business, is pushing the company toward “agentic security” — systems that spot threats and act on them without waiting for a human. She’s doing it while building a new leadership team in a division where several VPs have exited in recent months. Read More

Startup Spotlight: MediaPact wants to reinvent digital ads for the AI era

As AI reshapes online search and advertising, Seattle startup MediaPact is building a marketplace to help brands and publishers strike direct sponsorship deals. Founder Lacie Thompson discusses launching the company, using AI to build without coding experience, and spotting a new opportunity in a rapidly changing digital media landscape. Read More

Amazon cuts jobs in AGI group as it puts more focus on customer-facing AI

Amazon confirmed layoffs in its artificial general intelligence organization, the group behind its Nova models, as the company sharpens its AI focus toward tools for business customers. The cuts follow a year of leadership turnover in the group and a broader run of reductions since January. Read More

Game developer Harebrained Schemes kicks off its new indie era with survival-horror RPG ‘GRAFT’

The latest game from Seattle-based developer Harebrained Schemes, and its first since its return to independence in 2023, is a dark sci-fi/horror adventure where the player must constantly change and enhance their body in order to survive. Read More

Microsoft 2.5: A new series on the people shaping the company’s future

Mary Jo Foley is launching a GeekWire series profiling the people and priorities behind Microsoft’s evolution. It’s a look at what she calls the “Microsoft 2.5” era, where cloud and AI dominate but the company still can’t walk away from Windows, Office, and enterprise customers whose products weren’t built around AI. Read More

Microsoft commits $60M to ‘Genesis Mission’ to help power Dept. of Energy’s AI-for-science push

The commitment includes Azure compute credits and a new internal program office, called SPARK, to coordinate the company’s work with DOE’s 17 national laboratories. Read More

New Markdown rival: Open-source DGML format aims to turn docs into data that AI (and humans) can trust

Docugami, the Kirkland, Wash., startup led by XML co-creator Jean Paoli, is open-sourcing DGML, a format that turns business documents into structured, verifiable data for AI. The company is releasing it under an open-source license and partnering with Inveniam and Mantra to anchor the data on a blockchain. Read More

The greenest goodbye: Human composting and the science of becoming soil

In 2020, Recompose was the first U.S. company to develop the technology needed for the commercial composting of human bodies, disrupting a funeral industry that had been largely unchanged for decades. Now 14 states have legalized the climate-friendly practice and more than a dozen others are considering it. Additional startups have launched to offer a greener goodbye and all are looking to scale. Read More

Two astronauts walking in the Utah desert with habitat buildings in the background

Mars Society and South Seattle College strike a deal to build a simulated space habitat

Partnership would give the Pacific Northwest a role in research missions aimed at blazing a trail to the moon and Mars. Read More

Interlune engineers working on apparatus for extracting helium-3 from industrial-grade helium

Interlune extracts helium-3 from ordinary helium, demonstrating a process it plans to use on the moon

Seattle startup uses cryogenic distillation to produce helium-3 for quantum computing and other applications — initially on Earth, and eventually on the lunar surface. Read More

Seattle judge deals blow to Kalshi, rejects prediction market’s federal defense

A King County Superior Court judge granted Washington state a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, ruling the prediction market platform is likely running illegal online gambling. The judge rejected Kalshi’s argument that federal oversight by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission preempts state gambling laws. Read More

Grammy-winning artist and entrepreneur Diplo invests in Seattle startup Copper

Seattle startup Copper is getting a high-profile boost from Grammy-winning artist and entrepreneur Diplo, who has invested in the company as it expands its consumer rewards platform. Copper, which says it has more than 4 million members, helps users earn money through shopping, mobile games and everyday digital activities. Read More

The little chips that could: How Impinj has survived 26 years in a market that’s ‘just getting going’

More than a quarter-century after Impinj was founded, CEO Chris Diorio and team rang the Nasdaq opening bell Tuesday to mark the Seattle RFID chipmaker’s 10th anniversary as a public company. GeekWire chronicles the company’s ups and downs, and what’s next. Read More

U.S. map with sites of wildfires, earthquakes and other natural phenomena pinpointed

TerraByte AI expands its ‘Earth Search Engine’ with satellite imagery partnership and interactive features

Startup upgrades ‘Earth Search Engine’ to open new paths to high-resolution satellite imagery and data-driven insights. Read More

Seattle’s Clarify acquires S.F. startup Seam AI, joining forces to challenge CRM stalwarts

Clarify, the Seattle-based AI startup that has raised more than $22 million to take on Salesforce and other CRM incumbents,… Read More

Next-gen battery startup Sila raises $300M to expand manufacturing plant in Washington state

Sila, a startup producing next-generation battery materials, on Tuesday announced $300 million from investors, which will help fund the expansion of its Moses Lake, Wash., manufacturing plant. The company is seeing increased demand from AI-driven applications such as drones, space technologies and wearable devices. Read More

Jimothy keeps on giving: Amazon and others match winning bid for raccoon art, to benefit food bank

A painting of the short-spined raccoon by prolific Seattle artist Ryan Henry Ward attracted a winning bid of $6,543.21 in an informal Instagram auction this weekend, with all proceeds directed to the Ballard Food Bank. Read More

Protesters confront Microsoft CSO over carbon goals and AI, disrupting climate event

A fireside chat with Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa, moderated by GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler at a PNW Climate Week closing event, was derailed by protesters raising concerns about data center energy impacts. Read More

Veteran Microsoft security executive joins AWS amid broader reshuffle in Redmond

Rudra “Rudy” Mitra, who led Microsoft’s Purview data-security business, is joining Amazon Web Services as vice president of security services. His move is part of a broader reshuffling of Microsoft’s security leadership this year under new chief Hayete Gallot. Read More