Articles about OpenAI

Seattle Tech Week notebook: AI, startups, and the best insights and takeaways we heard

GeekWire’s Todd Bishop reports from Seattle Tech Week 2026, where more than 250 events made artificial intelligence the dominant topic. Insights and quotes from executives at OpenAI, Mistral AI, PitchBook, Madrona, Ascend and others. Read More

New map traces Washington state’s tech ‘universe’ to a few key hubs, and shows what’s at risk

The Washington Technology Industry Association’s new “Tech Universe Map” charts the founder lineage of 625 companies, showing that Microsoft and the University of Washington account for the largest share. A WTIA executive says the hubs forming next are mostly out-of-state companies with engineering centers here. Read More

VC is changing dramatically — what’s a founder to do?

Seattle investor and founder Nikesh Parekh argues that venture capital has split in two: record money flowing to a narrow band of AI companies while most founders find it harder than ever to raise. He lays out what founders should do about it, from raising VC to angel funding, venture debt, revenue-based financing, and bootstrapping to profitability. Read More

Amazon earnings preview: Wall Street looks for more cloud growth as AI spending hits a record

Amazon reports second-quarter results Thursday afternoon, with AWS growth expected to accelerate and capital spending on pace for a record $200 billion this year. The big question: How much patience do investors have left for the company’s bet on AI? Read More

Microsoft escalates the AI security race with ‘Project Perception’ and a new in-house model

Microsoft on Monday unveiled Project Perception, an AI cybersecurity system built to defend against AI-driven attacks, aiming to keep pace with both hackers and its technology rivals. It’s part of a broader escalation across the industry. Read More

Microsoft earnings preview: AI spending, cloud margins, and why the stock keeps falling

Microsoft reports fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year results Wednesday. A look at the key numbers to watch, including capital spending, Azure growth, cloud margins, Copilot adoption and the company’s first capital spending forecast for fiscal 2027. Read More

What to know about Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley legend whose family is buying the Seahawks

He’s obsessive about talent, fiercely loyal to the leaders he picks, and relentless when told no. Here’s what Vinod Khosla’s four decades in tech and investing tell us about how the venture capitalist and his family are likely to approach owning the Seahawks. Read More

Steamboats to software: Microsoft’s Brad Smith mines America’s founding for tech insights

Microsoft is releasing a six-part video series, hosted by President Brad Smith, that uses moments in American history — beginning with patents in Philadelphia and privacy in Boston — to reflect on technology and innovation questions facing the country as it turns 250. Read More

Microsoft unveils $2.5B ‘Frontier Company’ to embed AI engineers inside customers

“Microsoft Frontier Company” is a $2.5 billion initiative that will embed engineers inside customer organizations to build and run their AI systems. The move follows similar efforts by Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic, and expands work Microsoft was already doing through its consulting arm and partners. Read More

Mary Jo Foley: What’s a consumer-focused outsider doing at the helm of Microsoft’s AI push?

Jacob Andreou, a former Snap and Greylock executive, is leading Microsoft’s effort to turn Copilot into a ‘Super App’ that bridges consumer and enterprise AI. But Microsoft hasn’t had much luck with that kind of unification before. Read More

Prime Day shows how AI is changing shopping, testing Amazon’s bet against ChatGPT and others

Adobe found that shoppers who reached retail sites through AI chatbots were 40% more likely to buy during Prime Day than those from search, email or social media — the first time AI-referred traffic converted best. Amazon has blocked rival shopping agents from its store while building its own assistant. Read More

Amazon and Microsoft join new nonprofit’s push to help American workers navigate the AI economy

RAISE US aims to partner with governors, employers, and training organizations to retrain and redeploy workers displaced or affected by AI, with a goal of raising $1 billion in multi-year commitments — more than half of which has already been secured. Read More

Amazon MGM Studios drops film about Sam Altman months after tech giant’s $50B OpenAI deal

Amazon MGM Studios has backed away from “Artificial,” a nearly finished film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The studio said last week that the film would “be better served if it were released by a different studio.” 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

Event Calendar

Foundation Models Go Vertical | Ascend (Seattle Tech Week)

A Seattle Tech Week panel on the future of enterprise AI and what happens as foundation models go vertical. Speakers… Read More

Podcast

Microsoft Build decoded: Solara, Scout, AI models, GitHub’s woes and more with Mary Jo Foley

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we break down the news from Microsoft Build from Project Solara and the Scout agentic assistant to Microsoft’s push to rely less on OpenAI and Anthropic, and the mounting pressure on GitHub. Read More

The big AI labs are eating the startup playbook — here’s where founders can still compete

Startup founders used to worry that tech giants would make their product obsolete. Now it’s even trickier: AI labs are not only encroaching on startup turf, they’re also offering tools for customers to attempt DIY solutions of their own. But there are approaches that work, and niches to be found, according to speakers and panelists at the Tech Alliance Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase this week. Read More

Tech Moves: Salesforce names president; Microsoft execs coming and going; Amazon departures

A pair of Microsoft security executives are on the move — one headed to Salesforce, one returning to fill the vacancy. Meanwhile, two Amazon veterans are calling it quits at the company. Read More

Microsoft unveils seven homegrown AI models in new bid for ‘long term self-sufficiency’

Microsoft used its Build conference to unveil seven in-house AI models, including a reasoning model it says draws even with Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6 — part of a push to depend less on the AI partners it has invested billions in. Read More

Tech Moves: Amazon’s healthcare business gets new leader; Scott McFarlane leaves helm of Avalara

Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Services, is leaving his post after five years — capping a 15-year tenure at the tech giant as Dr. Roy Schoenberg steps into the role. Scott McFarlane, who co-founded Avalara 22 years ago on Bainbridge Island, Wash., is resigning as CEO and moving to an advisory role. Read More

Podcast

How ‘Lean Startup’ author Eric Ries redefines profit in his new book

“Lean Startup” author Eric Ries discusses his new book “Incorruptible” and his new definition of profit on this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded behind the scenes at Seattle Flow Startup Day. Read More

Snowflake commits $6B to Amazon Web Services over 5 years in latest AI infrastructure deal

Snowflake committed to spend $6 billion on AWS over five years, including the use of Amazon’s custom Graviton processors. The deal adds to a growing list of large-scale AI infrastructure commitments on AWS from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta. Read More

Amazon offers its AI shopping tech to outside retailers in new phase of agentic commerce race

AWS is releasing the Agentic Shopping Assistant, a tool that lets retailers build AI shopping experiences using the same technology behind Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping, which drove nearly $12 billion in incremental sales last year. Read More

Etzioni on AI: The Virgin Unicorns

Twelve AI labs have raised more than $29 billion at a combined valuation approaching $130 billion, without shipping anything a customer can buy. Oren Etzioni examines what history says about how this story ends. Read More

SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing

SpaceX disclosed in its S-1 filing that its Redmond, Wash., facility produces approximately 70 Starlink satellites per week, putting hard production numbers on the operation for the first time. The filing also reveals Starlink’s financials and names several Pacific Northwest companies as competitors. Read More

Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption

Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin, founder Rich Barton, chairman Barry Diller, and former CEO Dara Khosrowshahi tell the story of Expedia’s 30-year evolution from a small project inside Microsoft to a global travel conglomerate navigating the age of AI agents. Read More

AWS veteran Matt Wood returns to cloud giant in new role: chief AI and technology officer

Matt Wood, who spent more than 14 years helping to lead Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives… Read More

Etzioni on AI: Don’t let the OpenAI soap opera hide the precedent

Computer scientist and AI industry veteran Oren Etzioni argues that OpenAI’s nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion sets a dangerous precedent for American charity law, and that the real reckoning will have to come from Washington, not the Oakland courtroom. Read More

Podcast

What we learned about Microsoft in the OpenAI trial, and is Seattle squandering its edge?

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: As the Musk v. OpenAI trial heads to the jury, we dig into what… Read More

Microsoft’s multi-agent AI system tops Anthropic’s Mythos on cybersecurity benchmark

Microsoft’s new vulnerability-scanning system, codenamed MDASH, scored 88.45% on the CyberGym benchmark, surpassing single-model systems from Anthropic and OpenAI by using more than 100 specialized AI agents across multiple models. Read More