Articles about startups

Event Calendar

Seattle Biggest Business, Tech & Entrepreneur Networking Soiree

Progressive Entrepreneur hosts one of Seattle’s largest networking mixers for entrepreneurs, startups and business professionals. An evening of creativity, inspiration… Read More

The code AI forgot: logcat.ai raises $2.55M to put agents to work on device operating systems

Seattle startup logcat.ai has raised $2.55 million in pre-seed funding to build AI agents for debugging and developing device operating systems. Founded by two former Esper engineers, the company is going after the low-level Android and Linux software inside phones, vehicles, and other connected devices. Read More

Apptio co-founders reunite to launch enterprise AI startup Thira with $21M in funding led by Madrona

Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer launched Thira, a Bellevue-based enterprise AI startup, with $21 million in seed funding led by Madrona. Thira is building AI agents to autonomously handle IT support tickets and other back-office work at large companies. Read More

Venture funding drops in Seattle area as AI boom reshapes startup world

Seattle-area startups raised $2.7 billion in the first half of 2026, down 40% from a year ago, even as U.S. venture funding hit a record $412.7 billion. The disconnect: AI mega-rounds are driving the national boom, and Seattle’s biggest deals were in fusion, space, and cybersecurity. Read More

Podcast

Microsoft’s reset, a new era for Seattle startups, and how AI is changing everything for founders

On this week’s show, we’re on the GeekWire deck for our annual founder open house, where we dig into Microsoft’s latest round of layoffs — including a major Xbox shakeup — and the surprising rise of hardware companies on the GeekWire 200. Read More

Despite business angst, Washington climbs in CNBC’s state rankings — but still trails its former standing

Washington climbed three spots to No. 11 in CNBC’s annual America’s Top States for Business rankings, up from No. 14 last year, suggesting that many of the state’s underlying competitive strengths remain intact even as debate over its business climate has intensified. Read More

This startup lets companies teach AI about their brands — and the chatbots are listening

Optimly swept three awards at the Flywheel Investment Conference in Wenatchee and has closed an $800,000 pre-seed round backed by AI House, the Seattle startup studio formerly known as AI2 Incubator. The company builds a public index where brands can correct what AI chatbots say about them. Read More

An agent in the empty chair: Amazon vets launch Primitive Labs, using AI to model customer behavior

Founded by former Amazon AGI and AWS colleagues and backed by a16z Speedrun, Primitive Labs is building AI agents that stand in for a company’s customers, letting product teams see how people will react to a new feature or design before it ships.
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Geek on the Street in Seattle: ‘SF beats us because they invest off of vibes’

Seattle’s startup scene has the talent and the capabilities. What it’s short on is a culture of risk-taking and the… Read More

After hiring AWS exec and raising $107M seed round, Virginia startup plants flag in Seattle area

Virginia-based AI startup Trase is expanding its presence in the Seattle region, with plans to grow from about 20 employees… Read More

GeekWire 200 update: New unicorns and a hardware surge remake our list of top Pacific NW startups

The latest GeekWire 200, our quarterly ranking of the top Pacific Northwest startups, reflects a shift toward companies building physical products — rockets, fusion reactors, robots and space-based data centers. Starcloud was the biggest mover, two new unicorns joined the list, and Helion held the No. 1 spot. Read More

Event Calendar

New Tech Seattle August 2026 Meetup

New Tech Seattle returns for its monthly meetup at The Collective. New Tech is the Northwest’s largest tech community, with… Read More

Convoy co-founder Dan Lewis exits Microsoft to launch stealth startup aiming to reinvent AI supply chain

Dan Lewis, who led the Seattle freight marketplace Convoy before it shut down in 2023, has left Microsoft to start a stealth company focused on running AI models more efficiently, extending a career spent at the intersection of AI and logistics. Read More

Devplan raises $2.5M to take on the product coordination work that AI coding is leaving behind

Devplan, a Seattle startup building software to coordinate product and engineering work, is emerging from stealth with $2.5 million in seed funding led by AI2 Incubator. Read More

Event Calendar

AI Tools to Build Your Business Idea Without Code

Want to learn more about AI tools? This will be a crash course in learning lots of possibilities. You will… Read More

Golden Analytics lands $14M seed extension and opens AI platform to public beta

The Bellevue startup founded by former Tableau product chief Francois Ajenstat raised a $14 million seed extension led by Insight Partners, bringing its total seed funding to $21 million, and opened its AI analytics platform to public beta two months after coming out of stealth. Read More

Meet ArchAstro: Ex-Stripe, Microsoft and Meta vets assemble powerhouse team for cross-company AI agents

ArchAstro just emerged from stealth with an artificial intelligence network designed to automate complex, cross-company software deployments and integrations. 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

Etzioni on AI: Ten Commandments for AI Startups

AI researcher, entrepreneur, and investor Oren Etzioni lays out 10 commandments for AI startups — covering business models, distribution, inference costs, and avoiding dependence on any single frontier model — preceded by 10 classics that apply to startups in general. Read More

Innovega’s smart glasses aim to improve sight for people with visual impairments

Innovega, a company known for its augmented-reality contact lens technology, has turned its focus to a different product for now: smart glasses for people who are visually impaired. Read More

Find it, fix it: Seattle startup Emphere raises $2.1M to automate software vulnerability patching

Emphere, a Seattle startup that emerged from the AI2 Incubator, raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding to automatically fix vulnerabilities found in popular open-source distributions, catering to software companies that sell to regulated industries. Read More

Rec Room’s final day: Fans say goodbye as social gaming platform comes to an end

The Seattle social gaming platform, once valued at $3.5 billion, shuts down at noon Pacific today after a decade and 150 million players. Fans are marking the end with tribute videos, yearbook-style goodbyes, and final virtual gatherings. 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

EV startup Electric Era launches battery systems to tackle data center energy crunch

Seattle EV startup Electric Era is launching the CoPower Platform to bypass utility delays and provide rapid battery storage for power-hungry data centers. Read More

StitcherAI emerges from stealth with $3M and a different take on the AI spending problem

StitcherAI, founded by a pair of Seattle enterprise tech veterans, launched Tuesday with $3 million in pre-seed funding and a platform that pushes cost data into the tools where spending decisions are made, rather than relying on traditional dashboards. Read More

‘Lean Startup’ author reveals one regret about his bestselling book — and how his new one fixes it

“Lean Startup” author Eric Ries previewed his new book “Incorruptible” at Seattle Flow Startup Day, challenging founders to rethink how they define profit and structure their companies. Read More

UW DubHacks Next startup incubator produces 20 new student ventures in latest batch

University of Washington students pitched 20 startups at Demo Day for DubHacks Next, a 16-week incubator that has produced 68 startups since 2022. Projects range from a manufacturing design automation tool already live in three plants to an AI audio plugin builder and a web accessibility suite. Read More

2026 GeekWire Awards revealed: Big winners — and big love for Seattle — at annual tech celebration

More than 300 members of the Pacific Northwest tech scene packed the Showbox SoDo to honor the year’s top startups, founders, leaders and deal makers across a dozen awards categories. Read More

PSL’s T.A. McCann is running a startup again, as the CEO of Lev — an ‘AI co-founder’ for startups

After eight years as managing director at Pioneer Square Labs, serial entrepreneur T.A. McCann is becoming CEO of Lev, an AI-powered co-founder platform for early-stage founders. PSL is spinning out Lev as a standalone company with McCann at the helm. 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