Articles from 2026 – Page 9 of 45

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg stretching arms out to show Starburst-1 satellite in Bothell lab

Inside the satellite factory: Portal Space Systems gets set for the debut of Starburst and Supernova

Get a sneak peek at the Seattle-area startup’s first Starburst satellite, plus an update on plans for the 2028 launch of its flagship Supernova spacecraft. Read More

North America’s biggest book sorter just opened in the Seattle area

The King County Library System opened a $5.2 million sorting installation in Renton that handles the 25,000 items moving through its 50 libraries each day. Robotic arms destack totes every 15 seconds and route materials into 186 delivery chutes. Read More

Qualtrics cuts jobs in Seattle, Utah and overseas as it absorbs $6.75B acquisition

Qualtrics laid off employees across Seattle, Provo and international offices Wednesday, three months after closing its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. The company declined to disclose how many jobs were cut, but a WARN notice reviewed by GeekWire indicates at least 50 cuts were made at its Seattle headquarters. Read More

Want to know what Jeff Bezos brings to Liverpool FC? Study Amazon’s Leadership Principles

GeekWire co-founder John Cook talks with The Redmen TV about Jeff Bezos’ new ownership stake in Liverpool FC, his first major foray into global sports ownership, and what his business philosophy could mean for one of the world’s most storied soccer clubs. Read More

Internal memo: Eight execs out at Expedia Group in AI-driven shakeup

Expedia Group is parting ways with at least eight vice presidents and senior vice presidents as it reorganizes its product and technology organization around AI, according to an internal memo obtained by GeekWire. The memo from the company’s product and technology chiefs also names five leaders who were promoted. Read More

TikTok cuts 75 jobs in Seattle area, hitting e-commerce teams

TikTok is laying off 75 workers in Bellevue, most of them in TikTok Shop and Global E-Commerce roles, according to a notice filed with Washington state. It’s part of a steady stream of tech layoffs this year in the Seattle region. Read More

Illustration: Firefly Blue Ghost lander on the moon

Zeno Power reserves a spot on Firefly moon lander to demonstrate its atomic space heater

Radioisotope-powered heater will keep components in working order during the chilly lunar night, for a NASA-supported mission that’s set for as early as 2028. Read More

Amazon drone delivery set to expand nationally, reaching nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns this year

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service is finally going national. It’s a milestone nearly 13 years in the making: Jeff Bezos unveiled the program on 60 Minutes in December 2013, to widespread skepticism. Both the technology and the regulations took far longer than expected. Read More

Startup Spotlight: Tech consultant returns to the farm with Reroot, connecting growers with consumers

After two decades consulting for the likes of Microsoft and Boeing, Genevieve Priebe took over her family’s farm, ran the numbers, and found that growing food doesn’t pay. Her bootstrapped startup, Reroot, aims to help solve the problem with features including a marketplace and app for buying food directly from local producers. Read More

BuyWander moves HQ from Spokane to Seattle area as retail-returns startup grows team to 325 people

BuyWander, the Spokane-born retail returns marketplace, has moved its headquarters to the Seattle area and grown to 325 employees as it expands nationally, adding four executives including two former Amazon leaders. Read More

Filings show Amazon’s stake in electric trucking company that just struck a deal for 500 Tesla Semis

Einride’s first earnings report as a public company shows Amazon holding warrants for about 12% of the Swedish electric trucking company, vesting as Amazon buys freight services. Einride also announced a deal to deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers. Read More

Seismic completes Highspot merger, says it will keep Seattle and B.C. sites

Highspot’s merger with Seismic was completed Tuesday, ending the sales software company’s run as an independent business. Seismic has not said what the deal means for Highspot’s roughly 1,000 employees. Read More

How an AirTag planted by a reporter led to a secret Amazon site where old books are cut apart and scanned

404 Media put an Apple AirTag in a rare book and tracked it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, where a team cuts the bindings off books and scans the pages. The reporting method has roots in a Seattle non-profit group. Read More

Adaptive Biotech co-founder raises $15M for new startup to rethink how AI trains on science

Harlan Robins spent years as the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Adaptive Biotechnologies, helping build massive datasets to decode the human immune system. Read More

From engineering to elected office: How a generation of Indian Americans is reshaping civic life

India’s 80th Independence Day drew a governor’s proclamation, declarations from four mayors, and a line around the block. Harini Gokul, who came to the U.S. as an engineer and now serves on the Medina City Council, explains how the same talent pool that filled engineering teams has risen to CEO offices and council seats. Read More

GitHub outage disrupts developers worldwide in latest setback for Microsoft coding platform

GitHub was down for more than three hours Monday morning, breaking the website, code review tools, automated build systems and Copilot. It’s the latest reliability problem for a platform whose capacity planning has been outrun by AI coding tools. Read More

Protesters dressed as rogue AI agents target OpenAI in Bellevue with balloons and hot pink vests

A national campaign against AI expansion made its Seattle-area stop Friday at OpenAI’s Bellevue office, where demonstrators in hot pink “AI agent” vests entered the lobby with balloons and a chorus of “Happy Rogue Day to OpenAI.” The protest drew national attention. Read More

Go inside Endurance Energy, the Seattle startup tapping underwater volcanoes for geothermal power

Endurance Energy is running full-tilt in its cavernous new Seattle facility as it prepares to deploy a 100-kilowatt generator to an oceanic volcano off the coast of Oregon. The company is betting that the technology can one day electrify entire cities. We got a look inside. Read More

Etzioni on AI: Become a power user

Oren Etzioni lays out 20 habits and settings that separate AI power users from everyone else, from letting AI interview you before it starts, to deciding once what it may never do on your behalf. Read More

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 9, 2026

See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 9, 2026. Read More

Podcast

Bezos and Liverpool FC, a Meta vet’s AI startup, Auger’s Dallas move, and the demise of Microsoft’s AI blob

This week on the Geekwire Podcast: We break down Jeff Bezos joins the consortium taking a minority stake in Liverpool FC, discuss a former Meta AI research director’s stealth startup, and convene the GeekWire Editorial Board, to decide whether Dave Clark’s Auger stays on the GeekWire 200 after moving its headquarters to Dallas. Read More

Amazon’s Twitch is using livestreams to train its generative AI, and nobody’s happy with it

Amazon indicated for the first time this week that any video broadcast via its livestreaming platform Twitch could be used to train generative AI, unless users take steps to avoid it, which has caused a significant backlash from both audiences and content creators. Read More

Closed Pfizer biopharma facility in Everett gets a new owner and a mystery tenant

A biomanufacturing facility in Everett that Pfizer decided to shut down before it opened is getting a new lease on life, with a new owner and a 21-year lease to an unnamed global biopharmaceutical company. Read More

Tech Moves: AWS government tech VP departs; Funko, Coinme and DAT Freight add to C-suite

Dave Levy, VP of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, left Amazon for a reported role at Google; Funko, Coinme and DAT Freight added to their C-suites; Membrion names VP; and more personnel changes. Read More

Worth a Reid: Friends launch website and guerrilla campaign to land Seattle tech worker a date

Looking for love in Seattle took an unexpected turn when Reid Miller, a 26-year-old Amazon software engineer, decided to bypass dating apps. Instead of swiping, his friends swooped in. Read More

InduPro raises $77M, begins first human trial of cancer drug

Seattle biotech InduPro has raised $77 million and dosed its first patient in a Phase 1 trial of an experimental cancer drug, as the company advances its novel approach to targeting tumor cells. Read More

Startup Spotlight: ScopeSys gives drugmakers a closer look inside genomic medicines

Developing the next generation of RNA- and DNA-based medicines requires a level of precision that many existing research tools can’t provide. Vancouver, B.C.-based startup ScopeSys aims to change that. Read More

Kalshi ordered to shut down sports and election prediction markets in Washington state by Sept. 2

A Seattle judge ordered Kalshi to geofence Washington users out of its sports, elections and entertainment markets by Sept. 2, and threatened the prediction market platform with $120,000-a-day penalties for missing the deadline. Kalshi’s motion to pause the order while it appeals was denied at both the trial court and the Washington Court of Appeals. Read More

Bulb-shaped radio antenna dome with ocean in the far background

Blue Origin unveils its Quartz network of ground stations, with RBC Signals serving as a partner

By the end of the year, nine sites around the globe will support Blue Origin space missions in low Earth orbit and beyond. Read More

Etzioni on AI: Claude is marking its text — Caveat Promptor!

Claude models launched on or after Aug. 2 embed an invisible mark in everything they write. It’s woven into the text itself, so it travels when you copy and paste. You didn’t opt in, you can’t see it, and you can’t turn it off. Here’s how it works, and what it means. Read More