Articles from 2026 – Page 18 of 45

Etzioni on AI: What the World Cup tells us about the best roles for humans and machines

The 2026 World Cup has added AI and computer vision to the officiating crew — a sensor inside the ball, semi-automated offside calls, and 16 tracking cameras per stadium. Oren Etzioni explains how the systems work, what they deliberately leave to human referees, and what it says about automation more broadly. Read More

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of June 14, 2026

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of June 14, 2026. Read More

Podcast

Anthropic, Amazon, and the Fable shutdown; AI-powered school arrives; World Cup tech

Anthropic took its two newest AI models offline to comply with a U.S. order, with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly among those who raised the concerns behind it. The GeekWire Podcast also digs into agentic AI’s effect on Amazon’s culture, an AI-driven school opening near Seattle, and the sensor-packed World Cup ball. Read More

Worlds collide at Amazon Spheres as pro-Palestinian group protests cloud giant’s Israel contracts

Carrying bullhorns and signs depicting Amazon executives as war criminals, about two dozen people protested outside the Spheres in Seattle on Thursday evening, calling on the company to stop providing technology to Israel for what they described as genocide in Gaza. Read More

Amazon employees file civil rights complaint over company probe into data center testimony

An employee group filed a complaint against Amazon with the City of Seattle, alleging the company is wrongly investigating three engineers for testifying before the City Council in favor of regulating data centers. Amazon says the probe is focused on whether employees followed its procedures for speaking as company representatives. Read More

No billboard needed: This Seattle startup scored World Cup airtime with a scrappy cardboard sign

Seattle’s Yoodli used a cardboard sign to get its name and web address on Fox Sports’ live broadcast of FIFA World Cup festivities from Pier 62 on the waterfront. Read More

This startup wants to move kidney care out of the fax-machine era

Seattle-based Apacendo Health is building AI agents that read incoming faxes and enter patient data into electronic health records for nephrology practices, aiming to cut the administrative work that consumes hours of clinic staff time each day Read More

Tech Moves: Seattle tech exec Brian Hall joins Mistral; Amazon departures; new Dropzone AI leader

After leadership roles at Microsoft, Amazon and Google, Brian Hall joins Mistral; Amazon’s VP of Alexa Domains retires; Dropzone AI names a head of product. Read More

Seattle’s AI2 Incubator rebrands as AI House, and adds key investor as managing director

The incubator was founded in 2014 inside the Allen Institute for AI — the Seattle research institute created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — long before artificial intelligence became a household term. Its mission has been to help founders with the early work of company building. Read More

Gradial raises $65M as startup sees rapid growth around agentic tools for enterprise marketing

Gradial says it’s raised over $110 million in the past 16 months, calling it “a testament to the rapid growth” it’s seen across its business. Read More

Convoy co-founder Dan Lewis exits Microsoft to launch stealth startup aiming to reinvent AI supply chain

Dan Lewis, who led the Seattle freight marketplace Convoy before it shut down in 2023, has left Microsoft to start a stealth company focused on running AI models more efficiently, extending a career spent at the intersection of AI and logistics. Read More

Devplan raises $2.5M to take on the product coordination work that AI coding is leaving behind

Devplan, a Seattle startup building software to coordinate product and engineering work, is emerging from stealth with $2.5 million in seed funding led by AI2 Incubator. Read More

Loss of another Seattle-area billionaire? Valve’s Gabe Newell is reported buyer of Florida estate

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the video game developer is the buyer of a waterfront estate north of Miami. Read More

Seattle biotech heavy-hitters emerge from stealth with $46M for next-gen migraine treatments

Vedana Therapeutics emerged from stealth with a $46M Series A. Led by local biotech veterans, the Seattle startup is developing next-gen, at-home migraine injections. Read More

Amazon unveils new AI agents, trying to thread the needle between autonomy and human control

AWS used its New York Summit to roll out AI agents that act on their own — from fixing security vulnerabilities to triaging email — while trying to keep humans in control of how far they go. Read More

Selling sunshine from Seattle: Solius raises $23M to launch new at-home light-therapy device

Founded in 2013, Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based Solius Labs received FDA clearance for its $2,995 Solius Pro, a device which calculates and delivers a personalized dose of UVB light. Read More

Not just for coders: UW’s upcoming AI minor will reach beyond the computer science school

The University of Washington is developing an interdisciplinary AI minor, open to students across all majors and co-led by an anthropologist and a computer scientist. Set to launch in spring 2027, it’s part of a broader push to expand AI education across the university. Read More

Why startup vet Robbie Cape chose insurance — a tough VC, a trillion-dollar market and the money

The Seattle tech entrepreneur revealed on Tuesday that he’s building a new startup to reimagine the insurance industry, launching The Instrument with backing from Pioneer Square Labs. Read More

Egypt and Belgium tied, but drones grab a World Cup win over Seattle with lighted scoreboard

Visit Seattle calls the lighted display the first-ever drone scoreboard, and the destination marketing organization plans the activation for five more matches that will be played in Seattle. Read More

Next-gen nuclear company TerraPower plants flag in UK

TerraPower, the Bellevue, Wash.-based nuclear energy company, announced the opening of a subsidiary office in the UK as it pursues its first international deployment. Read More

SpaceX leapfrogs Amazon and briefly tops Microsoft in market value on Cursor acquisition news

Shares of SpaceX surged Tuesday, pushing the Elon Musk-led company above Amazon and into a neck-and-neck race with Microsoft for the title of the world’s fourth-most valuable public company less than a week after its blockbuster $75 billion IPO. Read More

Helion secures world’s first regulatory licenses for fusion power plant being built in Washington

Helion Energy announced Tuesday that it’s the first company in the world to receive regulatory licenses for a fusion power… Read More

Two pizzas and a prototype: How agentic AI is rewiring Amazon’s teams and upending its traditions

Swami Sivasubramanian runs dozens of small teams building agentic AI tools and products inside Amazon Web Services. They’ve been using the tools themselves to quietly change how they work — starting with one of Amazon’s most sacred processes. Read More

Startup led by Microsoft veterans debuts the first real-time carbon tracker for AI workloads

A new tool from Seattle-based startup Neuralwatt calculates the exact AI carbon footprint tracker metrics for individual prompts in real time to curb data center emissions. Read More

David Dawson and Nodira Khoussainova being presented their awards by Dan Grossman and Magdalena Balazinska (UW Photo / Matt Hagen)

UW Allen School honors Ridwell and Focused Space co-founders with 2026 alumni awards

Two University of Washington alumni who built companies out of everyday frustrations — hard-to-recycle household waste and the struggle to focus while working alone — have been recognized with the Allen School’s 2026 Alumni Impact Awards. Read More

Five years in, new analysis links Seattle’s ‘JumpStart’ tax to downtown decline

A new Downtown Seattle Association report says the city’s JumpStart payroll tax has helped drive jobs and office value out of downtown over its first five years, pointing to booming Bellevue as the contrast. Supporters, including Mayor Katie Wilson, call the tax a success. Read More

Amazon CEO reportedly raised Anthropic Fable concerns prior to U.S. order forcing models offline

Andy Jassy was reportedly among the tech leaders who flagged security risks in Anthropic’s newest AI models to senior Trump administration officials — an awkward turn for Amazon, which has invested billions in the AI lab. Read More

Report: Seattle using AI to route certain 911 calls — without caller knowledge or public review

Denmark-based Corti’s AI has been listening to all Seattle 911 medical calls and prompting dispatchers to route certain patients to a nurse-staffed Texas call center rather than send an ambulance, the Times found. Read More

Coffee town meets its matcha: Robots help power ex-Axon leader’s Seattle beverage startup Vale

Luke Larson is buzzing about matcha and his plans to build Vale into a Seattle-born beverage empire — think Starbucks, but make it matcha — scaling from a handful of local cafes and mobile bars to a nationwide network of thousands of automated machines. Read More

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of June 7, 2026

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of June 7, 2026. Read More