Articles from 2026 – Page 13 of 36

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 17, 2026

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of May 17, 2026. Read More

Etzioni on AI: The Virgin Unicorns

Twelve AI labs have raised more than $29 billion at a combined valuation approaching $130 billion, without shipping anything a customer can buy. Oren Etzioni examines what history says about how this story ends. Read More

Podcast

SpaceX IPO filing reveals Starlink’s impact, Bezos sounds off on CNBC, and Gemini owes John a beer

SpaceX’s IPO filing includes new details about the Starlink satellite factory in Redmond. Jeff Bezos talks wealth, inequality, and AI on CNBC. And John turns to ChatGPT and Gemini when FIFA’s ticketing support falls short. Read More

Robot pizza startup runs out of dough: Picnic shuts down, sells assets to mystery buyer

Picnic, the Seattle startup that raised about $50 million on a vision of robots churning out pizzas in restaurants, stadiums, and other high-volume venues, has shut down and liquidated its assets after it was unable to pay its debts. A buyer has already been found for the company’s assets and intellectual property. Read More

What’s next for Bungie? Rumored layoffs and end of ‘Destiny 2’ updates raise questions about studio’s future

Bungie announced it will end development on Destiny 2 with a final update on June 9. Bloomberg reports the studio plans significant layoffs, raising questions about the future of the Bellevue, Wash.-based studio amid broader cost-cutting by Sony. Read More

Tech Moves: Xbox names CTO; Smartsheet gets first AI chief; Amazon VP departs for DoorDash

Microsoft promoted Scott Van Vliet to Xbox CTO, while Smartsheet elevated Drew Gardner to the newly created role of chief AI officer. Amazon saw some departures and arrivals, including a VP’s exit for DoorDash. Read More

Bellevue teens targeting salmon die-offs and mental health win big at international science fair

Lakshmi Agrawal, a senior at Interlake High School, and Anusha Arora, a sophomore who also attends Interlake, were among more than 1,700 students from roughly 60 countries who competed at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix. Read More

The view from Bellevue: Seattle has the foundation for future growth — if it can fix its taxes

At a Bellevue Chamber panel, regional business leaders warned that Seattle’s aggressive tax policies threaten to undermine its world-class economic foundation. Read More

A ‘final season’ at Microsoft for Yusuf Mehdi: Longtime exec plans to leave after one last year

Yusuf Mehdi, one of Microsoft’s best-known and longest-serving business leaders, whose tenure has spanned 35 years from Windows 3.1 to… Read More

Why this Seattle-area startup is putting its name on the front of an English Premier League soccer team

Temporal, the Bellevue workflow orchestration company valued at $5 billion, announced Thursday that it is becoming the front-of-shirt sponsor of Crystal Palace Football Club beginning with the 2026/27 season. Read More

CEO of Paul Allen’s $3.1B science and tech fund steps down less than a year after launch

Dr. Lynda Stuart is departing as the first CEO of the Fund for Science and Technology, the foundation created under late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s instructions. The change comes amid broader shifts in the Allen philanthropic ecosystem, including the departures of top AI researchers from the Allen Institute for AI. Read More

SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing

SpaceX disclosed in its S-1 filing that its Redmond, Wash., facility produces approximately 70 Starlink satellites per week, putting hard production numbers on the operation for the first time. The filing also reveals Starlink’s financials and names several Pacific Northwest companies as competitors. Read More

UW’s Ed Lazowska adds ‘Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award’ to his long list of honors

The University of Washington professor emeritus is a longtime computer science educator, researcher and fixture in Seattle’s tech community. Read More

Opinion: Washington state’s tax debate is missing half the equation

Washington’s tax debate fixates on regressivity rankings, but overlooks how taxes shape economic behavior — and whether progressive-looking systems actually produce better outcomes for working families. Read More

EV startup Electric Era launches battery systems to tackle data center energy crunch

Seattle EV startup Electric Era is launching the CoPower Platform to bypass utility delays and provide rapid battery storage for power-hungry data centers. Read More

Meet the company that won the Microsoft-donated World Cup suite with a $100k bid for a great cause

UiPath, the AI automation giant expanding in Bellevue, submitted the winning $100k bid for a premium World Cup suite experience donated by Microsoft, raising money for Seattle Children’s Hospital through an auction organized by GeekWire. Read More

AI is not your strategy: Author and business advisor Brian Evergreen explains why vision comes first

Brian Evergreen, a former Microsoft AI leader and author of Autonomous Transformation, argues that most companies are approaching AI backward — starting with the technology instead of a vision for what they want to create. In a live GeekWire Podcast recording, he explains how leaders can adjust their approach. Read More

Data center resistance comes home to Seattle as council considers a one-year freeze

As Amazon and Microsoft pour billions into AI, Seattle residents push back against new data centers over worries about rising energy costs and environmental impacts. Read More

‘One of a kind’: Tributes pour in for S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, beloved tech mentor and friend

A consistent picture emerged: Somasegar was kind, generous with his time, humble, and a steadying presence. To many, those qualities mattered even more than the investments and decisions he made. Read More

Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has a new gig — startup CEO

Seattle-based Filium was started by apparel industry veterans Raj Shah and Akhil Shah in 2015, and makes technology that allows natural fabrics to repel odors, stains and liquids. Read More

At Tech Alliance annual luncheon, a stark analysis and a call to action

A McKinsey analysis presented at the Technology Alliance’s State of Technology luncheon warns that Washington’s nation-leading economic growth is projected to slow to the national average, driven by negative domestic migration, rising costs, and heavy reliance on a handful of giant employers. Read More

Seattle, we’ve got an image problem

GeekWire co-founder John Cook argues that Seattle’s increasingly anti-business national image threatens the city’s standing as an innovation hub, exactly 30 years after Newsweek celebrated it as one of America’s great boomtowns. Read More

Lab of UW Nobel winner cracks challenge of creating roomier protein cages to deliver genetic medicines

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design have engineered larger, virus-like protein cages to one day deliver larger genetic payloads. Read More

Illustration: Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit

Starfish Space shifts its sights to Australian satellite for orbital docking demonstration

Seattle-area startup maneuvers its Otter Pup 2 spacecraft into position almost a year after its launch. Read More

Jeff Bezos describes his $38B startup Prometheus for the first time: ‘Nothing to do with robotics’

In a CNBC interview, Jeff Bezos offered the most detailed public description yet of Project Prometheus, calling the secretive startup an “artificial general engineer” building next-generation design tools for physical objects. Read More

Amazon Leo's Rajeev Badyal and Chris Weber onstage during luncheon

Amazon Leo’s leaders provide an inside look at the satellite broadband network’s past and future

Find out how Jeff Bezos got the ball rolling in the competition with SpaceX’s Starlink for space-based connectivity — and how Project Kuiper became Amazon Leo. Read More

S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, 1966-2026: Microsoft and Madrona leader was a champion of developers and startups

Friends and colleagues remembered S. “Soma” Somasegar, the longtime Microsoft developer leader and Madrona managing director, as a generous mentor to developers and founders, and a fixture of Seattle’s tech community. Read More

Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption

Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin, founder Rich Barton, chairman Barry Diller, and former CEO Dara Khosrowshahi tell the story of Expedia’s 30-year evolution from a small project inside Microsoft to a global travel conglomerate navigating the age of AI agents. Read More

Mistakes new startup founders should avoid — according to those who made them

At Seattle Flow Startup Day, founders shared lessons learned from the tough times. Their advice: build something you’d run into a burning building for, stay emotionally steady, hire high‑agency people, fundraise with discipline, question whether you need VC at all, and think about acquisition from day one. Read More

Student rocketry team soars in U.S. competition despite losing their motor in the mail

Washington Youth Aerospace, a team made up of six ninth graders from Bellevue’s Interlake High School, finished second in the annual competition. The finals featured 100 teams from a record pool of 1,107 teams that competed in the overall challenge. Read More