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Madrona’s annual IA40 list shows an AI industry splitting in two

Madrona’s sixth annual Intelligent Applications 40 names 45 private AI companies that have raised $410 billion combined, with Anthropic, OpenAI and Databricks accounting for 92% of that total. Rising round sizes forced the firm to raise its own funding thresholds for what counts as an early-stage company. Read More

Seattle’s AI weed wars: One startup maps them, another zaps them

Two Seattle-area startups are taking different approaches to an age-old farming problem: using AI to find weeds — and then eliminate them. TerraClear is mapping individual weeds across entire fields, while Carbon Robotics is using AI-powered lasers to zap them. Now, increasingly sophisticated AI models are giving both approaches a bigger opportunity: teaching machines to understand the farm itself. Read More

We’ve entered Seattle’s Third Act

A year after GeekWire asked where Seattle’s superstar AI startups were, two local venture capitalists offer an answer: they’re here, but they build rockets, geothermal plants and autonomous off-road vehicles rather than software. A guest opinion from Ascend’s Nate Bek and Plug and Play’s Ben Eisinger. Read More