Articles from 2026

A nuclear first: TerraPower officially starts construction on next-gen Natrium plant in Wyoming

TerraPower is officially moving dirt on its facility in Wyoming, making it the first company in the U.S. to break ground on a next-generation nuclear plant. Read More

Brute-force attack linked Rec Room user phone numbers to online identities

Someone misused Rec Room’s friend-finder feature to match phone numbers to the user names of hundreds of thousands of players on the social gaming platform — assembling a database that connects their online identities directly to their real-world contact information. Read More

Microsoft will offer voluntary retirement to thousands of employees in a first for tech giant

Microsoft is offering a one-time voluntary retirement program for the first time in its 51-year history, giving thousands of long-serving U.S. employees a chance to leave with a financial payout and extended healthcare as it works to control costs amid a massive buildup in AI infrastructure. Read More

Opinion: Which capitalism are we defending?

Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer responds to Chris DeVore’s recent call for Democrats to embrace capitalism, arguing that the real question isn’t whether to support free markets but which version of capitalism America should be building. Read More

Iridius, led by Microsoft and AWS vets, raises $8.6M to crack AI’s regulatory compliance bottleneck

Seattle startup Iridius, founded by former Microsoft and AWS leaders, is building software that embeds regulatory compliance into AI systems as they run. Accenture is both an investor and a strategic partner. Read More

Amazon names AWS exec Prasad Kalyanaraman to S-team, promotes Dave Brown to SVP

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy added AWS infrastructure leader Prasad Kalyanaraman to the company’s S-team and promoted Dave Brown to senior vice president, according to an internal memo viewed by GeekWire. Read More

LinkedIn CEO change: Daniel Shapero takes the helm as Microsoft broadens leadership team

LinkedIn COO Daniel Shapero is the company’s new CEO, reporting to Ryan Roslansky, who oversees LinkedIn and Microsoft Office. Roslansky also named Mohak Shroff as president of platforms and digital work as the company scales its leadership around AI. Read More

Washington state flunks school phone policy rankings

Washington received an “F” for its lack of statewide school cellphone restrictions. While other states move toward “bell-to-bell” bans, it’s opting for more research. Read More

Seattle report says gig worker pay law is working, countering claims by DoorDash and Uber

Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards released its first report analyzing data from the five largest delivery platforms, finding that worker pay increased and order volume grew under the city’s gig worker minimum payment ordinance. DoorDash and outside researchers have reached different conclusions. Read More

From the ‘scurfy’ mouse to the Nobel Prize: How a Seattle biotech pioneer’s long game paid off

From a Bill Gates-backed startup in the mid ’90s to the Nobel stage in 2025, Fred Ramsdell reveals how “patient capital” and a mutation found in a 1940s mouse helped unlock immune system secrets. Read More

Brev raises $3.3M for AI agents that keep companies on track with goals

Brev, a startup with roots in Seattle’s tech scene, has raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding for AI tools that automatically track how companies are performing against their goals. The company’s AI agents join meetings, update goals, flag risks, and track follow-through on action items. Read More

Seattle high schooler’s Google Doodle pays tribute to hair and family history as a superpower

Kameirah Johnson, a senior at Seattle’s Lakeside School, is one of five students nationwide whose artwork will appear on the Google homepage later this month. Read More

Starbucks cuts tech jobs as new CTO reshapes organization

Starbucks is laying off workers in its technology organization as new CTO Anand Varadarajan, who joined from Amazon in January, restructures the team. The cuts come amid a broader turnaround effort under CEO Brian Niccol. Read More

Microsoft’s new Xbox chief makes first major change, cutting Game Pass price, but with a catch

Microsoft is dropping Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, but future Call of Duty games will no longer be available at launch. It’s the first significant move by new gaming CEO Asha Sharma. Read More

Tech Moves: Microsoft quantum lead joins IonQ; Heptio co-founder now CTO at Stacklok; Amazon departure

Longtime Microsoft exec and former quantum lead Jeff Henshaw takes a role at IonQ while Heptio co-founder Joe Beda joins Stacklok. Read More

Former advisor to Steve Jobs says new Apple CEO is exactly what’s needed: an engineer from the inside

Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO, handing the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus. A Seattle tech vet and former advisor to Steve Jobs says the choice signals a return to the company’s product roots at a critical moment. Read More

Fixed-wing drone in the air, seen from below

PowerLight’s laser power beaming system keeps a drone in the air for hours during Pentagon test flights

Wireless technology could keep military drones flying indefinitely, or be adapted as a directed-energy defense system for countering drones. Read More

Amazon doubles down on Anthropic with $25B investment, mirroring its OpenAI cloud deal

Two months after investing $50 billion in OpenAI and striking a $100 billion cloud deal, Amazon announced a similar arrangement with its original AI partner, Anthropic: up to $25 billion in new investment and a $100 billion-plus commitment to AWS over 10 years. Read More

Opinion: You can’t blame data centers in Seattle for our skyrocketing electricity prices

Seattle’s mayor is exploring a moratorium on new data centers, but the city’s real utility challenges — skyrocketing electricity prices, a looming capacity gap, and an eastside water defection — have nothing to do with data centers. Read More

Seattle-area billboard takes a page from Bay Area playbook: ‘Startup energy should be more visible’

Tech company billboards are a big part of the landscape in Silicon Valley. Summation CEO Ian Wong said the Seattle/Bellevue area “has world-class technical talent, but the scene here has always been understated.” Read More

In a first, Blue Origin uses a recycled rocket to send a satellite into orbit — unfortunately, it’s the wrong orbit

After liftoff, New Glenn booster makes its second successful touchdown, but AST SpaceMobile says its satellite will have to be deorbited. Read More

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of April 12, 2026

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of April 12, 2026. Read More

Opinion: Whither Microsoft? A view from the neighborhood

A Sammamish, Wash.-based operations consultant who counts Microsoft employees as neighbors offers an outsider’s diagnosis of the tech giant’s cultural challenges — from internal politics dominating weekend conversations to H-1B anxiety chilling risk-taking. Read More

David Hertzog with Muon g-2 storage ring at Fermilab

Physicists share the glory and the wealth after winning $3M for exploring muon mysteries

Breakthrough Prize goes to University of Washington professor — and hundreds of other researchers — for decades of work on Muon g-2 experiments. Read More

Seattle mayor floats moratorium on new data centers in city limits

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson raised the possibility of a moratorium on new data centers in the city, following a report that four companies have approached Seattle City Light about building five large-scale facilities. Read More

Podcast

The tough new realities for startups, Amazon’s next big strategic bets, and Allbirds’ crazy AI pivot

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: A week of Seattle-area startup news shows how the AI era is reshaping the regional tech scene. Plus: Amazon makes bold bets again, Allbirds pivots to AI infrastructure, and a special trivia challenge looking back at GeekWire 200 history. Read More

Amazon payments to Bezos’ Blue Origin reach $1.8B as shareholders cite conflicts of interest

Amazon paid about $1.8 billion last year to Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by its founder and board chair Jeff Bezos — nearly triple the amount the year before — as shareholders weigh a proposal citing his business interests outside Amazon as potential conflicts of interest. Read More