Articles about startups

Startup Spotlight: Zeacon aims to turn website visitors into buyers with AI-powered video

Zeacon uses AI to personalize website content, analyze visitor behavior and identify bot traffic, helping businesses understand what turns website visits into sales. Read More

Satellite radar tech startup Kapta Space raises $24M from Bill Gates-backed fund and defense investors

Seattle space startup Kapta Space landed $24M in Series A funding to scale production of its low-cost metamaterial radar payloads for defense satellites. Founded by former Echodyne engineers Milton Perque and Adam Bily, the spinout uses proprietary software-defined radar to track dynamic targets across air, sea, and land—adding fuel to the Pacific Northwest’s booming commercial space ecosystem. Read More

Your digital photos and posts are scattered everywhere: This startup ties them all together

Seattle startup Eluum wants to rebuild social media around something more lasting than the next post or feed: your life story. Its app uses AI to pull scattered photos, videos and posts into one evolving record, a feature it calls MyLifeStory. Read More

Kanu AI emerges from stealth with $11.7M to turn employee workflows into custom software

Founded by Y Combinator alum and former machine learning engineer Karan Grover, Seattle-based Kanu AI has raised $11.7 million to solve a persistent enterprise problem: valuable operational knowledge getting trapped in employees’ heads and spreadsheets. Led by Trilogy Equity Partners, the new funding will help scale Kanu’s platform, which automatically converts day-to-day employee workflows into permanent, production-grade software deployed directly within a company’s cloud. Read More

Startup Spotlight: Marketing vets launch Kompeld to measure if a company’s story is actually working

Kompeld analyzes how companies describe themselves and scores their messaging. It looks at websites, sales materials and other company communications to identify what’s clear, what’s not, and where the message could be stronger. Read More

Spotlight: Startup vet launches Latch to liberate humanity ‘from doing work that owns us’

Serial founder Stefan Kalb has launched Latch, an $8M FUSE-backed enterprise AI startup built alongside a PSL alum to map real-world workflows and liberate employees from the routine tasks that hold them back. Read More

Pro.com co-founders reunite to launch OnTrade, an AI startup for the wealth management industry

OnTrade deploys AI agents to handle analytical work for wealth management firms, connecting their fragmented software systems into a single interface. The Seattle startup has been building in stealth for two years with backing from General Catalyst and Madrona. 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

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

This former Amazon exec is moving his startup’s HQ to Texas, and he has a few notes for Seattle

Auger will keep and grow its 115-person engineering office in Bellevue, but co-founder and CEO Dave Clark has relocated the supply chain startup’s headquarters to North Dallas. He explains the decision, and assesses the business climate in the region he’s leaving. Read More

As Washington state’s AI task force winds down, the debate over how much to regulate is far from settled

Washington’s AI task force wrapped up two years of work with the state’s first AI laws on the books and its broader recommendations stalled in the Legislature. At a panel marking the end of the effort, consumer and labor advocates pushed for stronger rules while AI startups warned about the cost of complying. Read More

Startup Spotlight: HitchPiggy wants to turn empty car seats into a new rideshare marketplace

Portland startup HitchPiggy is building a marketplace that connects drivers already traveling between cities with passengers headed the same way, using AI-powered development to tackle affordable regional ridesharing across the Pacific Northwest. Read More

The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years

Jeff Dean, who earned his computer science Ph.D. at the University of Washington, is leaving Google after 27 years and taking three of the company’s top AI researchers with him. Their startup, Discovery Loop, aims to automate the scientific method itself, and Google is helping fund it. Read More

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

Watch: A venture capitalist’s passionate speech — a rallying cry, really — about Seattle

AI House co-founder and managing director Jacob Colker may be Seattle’s number one cheerleader. In posts on LinkedIn, panel discussions and recent news stories, Colker is reminding Seattleites that this is a pretty special place. 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

Seattle lands another $1B startup: Here’s the latest arrival in the industrial AI boom

Los Angeles-based Nominal, whose software helps engineers build, test and validate complex hardware systems, is establishing a permanent Seattle office as it ramps up hiring and looks for a larger home in the region. Read More

What are you building? Talking with founders and business leaders at the Seattle Tech Week kickoff event

Founders, investors and operators at the Seattle Tech Week kickoff describe what they’re building, from an AI system that runs a professional cricket team’s logistics to voice AI for counting bottles behind a bar. Read More

Defense tech giant Anduril eyes new funding at $100B valuation as Seattle expansion draws protests

Defense tech giant Anduril is reportedly seeking a new funding round that would value the company at about $100 billion, underscoring its meteoric rise as it rapidly expands its engineering and maritime operations in the Seattle region. Read More

Startup Spotlight: MediaPact wants to reinvent digital ads for the AI era

As AI reshapes online search and advertising, Seattle startup MediaPact is building a marketplace to help brands and publishers strike direct sponsorship deals. Founder Lacie Thompson discusses launching the company, using AI to build without coding experience, and spotting a new opportunity in a rapidly changing digital media landscape. 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.
Read More

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