Articles by Todd Bishop

The biggest unresolved question in AI right now, and more takeaways from Madrona’s IA40 Summit

Executives from Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic and Stripe described AI agents stepping between companies and their customers, without settling who keeps the customer relationship or the data that comes from it. Also: why most companies are far behind Anthropic’s own gains from AI, and a split over relying on a single AI provider. Read More

Amazon pledges $1B to data center communities, warns that local opposition threatens U.S. AI lead

Amazon says it will spend more than $1 billion over five years on community college, job training and other programs in the U.S. communities that host its data centers. The move responds to a growing backlash that AWS CEO Matt Garman says threatens the country’s lead in AI. Read More

New JPMorganChase Seattle tech leader: How AI is changing what the bank looks for in engineers

Ture Armas, the new leader of JPMorganChase’s Seattle Tech Center, says AI is pushing engineers to work more closely with the business, changing how the bank hires. The center has more than 400 people and about 50 openings in AI, cloud and cybersecurity. Read More

Kindle gets a clicker: Amazon unveils $35 page-turning remote and refreshes its e-reader lineup

Amazon unveiled the Kindle Click, a $34.99 Bluetooth remote for turning pages, alongside a redesigned lineup of Kindle e-readers with flush screens, optional aluminum housings and user-replaceable batteries. Read More

‘Agents are very harsh customers’: Microsoft exec warns many apps will lose pricing leverage

Microsoft’s Charles Lamanna says most business software will end up running behind AI agents rather than in front of users, leaving apps with less pricing power and customer loyalty. His comments come as Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse agent from shopping on its site. Read More

There’s a new No. 1 on the GeekWire 200 as AI and hardware reshape our Pacific Northwest startup index

Temporal, whose software keeps AI agents running reliably, is the new No. 1 on the GeekWire 200. Companies building AI software and advanced machinery for space, energy and defense lead the Fall 2026 update of our ranking of the Pacific Northwest’s top privately held tech startups. Read More

‘I’m not sure we’d make the same decision’: A rocket maker’s reality check for the Seattle region

Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa, whose company is building a fully reusable rocket, told a Seattle audience he isn’t sure he’d start the company in Washington state today. Read More

Seattle-based sales tech company Outreach to move HQ to Adobe’s campus in Fremont neighborhood

Sales technology company Outreach confirmed plans to move its headquarters from Interbay to Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood early next year, joining a campus that Adobe has anchored since the late 1990s. Read More

Podcast

Live show: Amazon, Meta and the fight over the future of AI; Plus, is Seattle still the place to build?

Amazon’s move to block Meta’s Muse AI assistant is an early sign of a much bigger fight over whether AI agents can use websites and apps on people’s behalf. Plus, veteran startup leader Mike Fridgen joins us to talk about whether Seattle is still the place to build. Read More

‘Seattle’s answer to YC Demo Day’: 25 startups pitch investors from across the country at AI House

AI House brought investors from Boston, New York, Colorado, the Bay Area and other cities to Seattle for a demo day where 25 early-stage startups pitched, many of them from outside the incubator’s own portfolio. The goal was to bring more outside capital to local founders. Read More

Tech Moves: Microsoft AI exec joins Niantic Spatial; Allen fund names first investment chief; Zillow AI leader heads to Stripe

Niantic Spatial hired Microsoft AI product leader Dave Citron as chief product officer, the late Paul Allen’s Fund for Science and Technology named Brown University’s Jane Dietze its first chief investment officer, and Zillow AI product leader Nicholas Stevens joined Stripe. Plus, moves at Scowtt, ThriftBooks, Jack in the Box, Fortive, the American Astronomical Society and Yoodli. Read More

Microsoft unveils all-in-one Copilot app, taking on Anthropic and OpenAI in new push to boost adoption

Microsoft’s revamped Copilot app adds AI coding, always-on agents and full versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint as the company competes with OpenAI and Anthropic and shifts more of its AI pricing to usage-based billing. Read More

Artists, game designers and producers hit hard as Microsoft cuts 277 jobs in Washington state

A new state filing lists all 277 positions Microsoft eliminated in the Seattle region, one job title at a time. Art, game production, game design, technical art and audio design account for 77 of them, with software engineering the largest single category at 60. Read More

Internal memos: Microsoft shakes up communications as Nadella makes a push to build in public

Microsoft is moving communications out of its marketing group and under Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, as CEO Satya Nadella calls for a fundamentally new approach that makes employees a bigger part of how the company tells its story. Read More

Amazon will let sellers manage Walmart, eBay, Shopify and TikTok sales from their Amazon dashboards

Amazon is introducing tools to let independent sellers manage their sales on four of its biggest rivals — eBay, Shopify,… Read More

Amazon opens its seller tools to outside AI agents, starting with Anthropic’s Claude

Amazon announced new AI tools for its independent sellers, led by a plugin that lets them run their Amazon businesses from Anthropic’s Claude or Amazon’s own Quick assistant. Read More

Former Amazon and Opendoor leaders raise $3M to give every key business metric its own AI agent

Augmeta assigns an AI agent to each of a company’s key business metrics, watching the numbers around the clock and investigating when they move. The startup, whose anchor customer is Tractor Supply, raised $3 million in a seed round led by Depth Ventures. Read More

Amazon’s fight with Meta: Who owns the customer relationship when an agent does the buying?

Amazon’s decision to block Meta’s Muse AI agent from shopping on its site raises questions about whether the big platforms will agree on rules for agents, how money will change hands, and whether shoppers want agents in the first place. Read More

Microsoft cuts hundreds more jobs, shifts next ‘Halo’ game to Activision in Xbox overhaul

The cuts total about 600 globally, including about 300 in Washington state, and 268 worldwide in Xbox Game Studios. The restructuring folds some existing studios under Activision, Bethesda and King, and leaves Ninja Theory, the studio behind the Hellblade series, facing a potential closure. Read More

Former Seattle City Council president launches AI-powered site to track and report on City Hall

Former Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson has launched CivicTide, a website that tracks City Council legislation, publishes policy briefs and opinion pieces, and gives readers tools to contact councilmembers. The site runs on a custom AI-powered system built by Seattle tech communications executive Viet Nguyen. Read More

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping

Amazon says it has cut off Meta’s new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com, citing data security and other concerns. It’s part of a larger industry fight over who controls the shopping experience and customer relationship in agentic commerce. Read More

Podcast

AI meets real estate: Zillow engineering SVP Toby Roberts on the future of buying and selling homes

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Zillow’s Toby Roberts says AI agents will assist real estate agents rather than replace them, and explains how the company’s ChatGPT app works. Recorded live in Seattle this week in partnership with meetup group Real Estate At Work. Read More

Tech Moves: Ascend promotes Nate Bek; Microsoft Word ‘Agent Mode’ architect exits; TAF names new exec

Ascend promoted Nate Bek to principal, and the technical lead for “Agent Mode” in Microsoft Word left to start his own AI company. Also in this week’s roundup: new leaders at Technology Access Foundation, Zillow Group, VanillaSoft, A Place for Mom, the Gates Foundation and Juno Industries, and board seats for Joy Chik and Mike Katz. Read More

Inside Temporal’s journey to a $12.55B valuation, and its bet on building a backbone for AI agents

One of the hottest infrastructure companies in AI today traces its roots to work its founders were doing before the cloud was even a thing. Fresh off a big funding round, Temporal co-founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev explain the decades of work behind their solution, and why AI agents make it even more relevant. Read More

Terry Myerson retires as Truveta CEO, with co-founders stepping in to lead $1B health data startup

Truveta co-founders Jay Nanduri and Ryan Ahern will serve as interim co-CEOs of the health data company, which Myerson helped build from a pandemic-era idea into a business with 500 employees and 30 member health systems. Read More

America’s machinists are retiring, and two startup founders in their 20s want to salvage what they know

Neuramill is building software that captures how experienced machinists decide to make a part, then applies that knowledge to new jobs at aerospace and defense machine shops. The company was founded last year by two engineers in their 20s who started their careers in Seattle. Read More

Agility’s new Digit 5 robot lifts 50 pounds, works 20+ hours a day and operates alongside people

Agility Robotics, which is preparing to go public through a SPAC merger, unveiled Digit 5, a humanoid robot it says can work safely alongside people in warehouses and factories. The company says the new robot can lift 50 pounds, reach shelves 7.2 feet high and work more than 20 hours a day. Read More

Gates Foundation bets $1B on AI to boost global health, agriculture and education

The Gates Foundation is committing at least $1 billion over the next two years to AI tools for health workers, farmers and teachers. CEO Mark Suzman told GeekWire he expects the figure to grow, but said AI efficiencies cannot make up for the billions governments have cut from global health. Read More

‘The warning signs are flashing’: New regional partnership calls for cohesive Seattle-area tech strategy

Regional leaders from four counties launched the Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound, a 20-point plan responding to the loss of nearly 7,000 jobs last year. The group’s report says the Seattle area’s technology industry has no coordinated strategy of its own. Read More

Microsoft floats rules for AI models as industry weighs slowdown

Microsoft published a draft code of conduct for its in-house AI models, barring them from resisting shutdown or hiding their reasoning — as Anthropic, OpenAI and Elon Musk call for slowing AI development. Read More

Articles by Todd Bishop

Top Stories from Todd Bishop

‘The warning signs are flashing’: New regional partnership calls for cohesive Seattle-area tech strategy

Latest from Todd Bishop

The biggest unresolved question in AI right now, and more takeaways from Madrona’s IA40 Summit

Amazon pledges $1B to data center communities, warns that local opposition threatens U.S. AI lead

New JPMorganChase Seattle tech leader: How AI is changing what the bank looks for in engineers

Kindle gets a clicker: Amazon unveils $35 page-turning remote and refreshes its e-reader lineup

‘Agents are very harsh customers’: Microsoft exec warns many apps will lose pricing leverage

There’s a new No. 1 on the GeekWire 200 as AI and hardware reshape our Pacific Northwest startup index

‘I’m not sure we’d make the same decision’: A rocket maker’s reality check for the Seattle region

Seattle-based sales tech company Outreach to move HQ to Adobe’s campus in Fremont neighborhood

Live show: Amazon, Meta and the fight over the future of AI; Plus, is Seattle still the place to build?

‘Seattle’s answer to YC Demo Day’: 25 startups pitch investors from across the country at AI House

Tech Moves: Microsoft AI exec joins Niantic Spatial; Allen fund names first investment chief; Zillow AI leader heads to Stripe

Microsoft unveils all-in-one Copilot app, taking on Anthropic and OpenAI in new push to boost adoption

Artists, game designers and producers hit hard as Microsoft cuts 277 jobs in Washington state

Internal memos: Microsoft shakes up communications as Nadella makes a push to build in public

Amazon will let sellers manage Walmart, eBay, Shopify and TikTok sales from their Amazon dashboards

Amazon opens its seller tools to outside AI agents, starting with Anthropic’s Claude

Former Amazon and Opendoor leaders raise $3M to give every key business metric its own AI agent

Amazon’s fight with Meta: Who owns the customer relationship when an agent does the buying?

Microsoft cuts hundreds more jobs, shifts next ‘Halo’ game to Activision in Xbox overhaul

Former Seattle City Council president launches AI-powered site to track and report on City Hall

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping

AI meets real estate: Zillow engineering SVP Toby Roberts on the future of buying and selling homes

Tech Moves: Ascend promotes Nate Bek; Microsoft Word ‘Agent Mode’ architect exits; TAF names new exec

Inside Temporal’s journey to a $12.55B valuation, and its bet on building a backbone for AI agents

Terry Myerson retires as Truveta CEO, with co-founders stepping in to lead $1B health data startup

America’s machinists are retiring, and two startup founders in their 20s want to salvage what they know

Agility’s new Digit 5 robot lifts 50 pounds, works 20+ hours a day and operates alongside people

Gates Foundation bets $1B on AI to boost global health, agriculture and education

‘The warning signs are flashing’: New regional partnership calls for cohesive Seattle-area tech strategy

Microsoft floats rules for AI models as industry weighs slowdown