Tech - GeekWire

Oct 7, 2026, 9:38 AM

Walmart prepares to take off in Amazon’s backyard with Seattle-area drone delivery in 2027

The move is part of a broader nationwide push by Walmart and drone operator Wing — a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet — to scale across nearly 20 U.S. metropolitan areas. Read More

Oct 2, 2026, 7:42 AM

Seattle software engineer turned general contractor built an AI guide to the patchwork of permit rules

The site, kolmo.io/permits, serves as an un-gated database designed to answer the questions that usually send homeowners into a spiral of municipal PDFs. The AI-powered tool covers 457 verified rules across 80 jurisdictions in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, linking each rule directly to specific city source pages and exact wording rather than forcing users to rely on rough guesses and Google searches. Read More

Sep 30, 2026, 9:01 AM

Spending management company Fraxion acquires Yellow Dog Software

Seattle-based spending management platform Fraxion has acquired Yellow Dog Software, an inventory tracking provider for hospitality, sports and retail businesses. Fraxion serves as a digital gatekeeper for business expenses by tracking, controlling and approving business expenses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read More

Sep 30, 2026, 8:02 AM

Meet the X-BAT: Full specs on the new AI-piloted fighter jet to be built in Washington state

X-BAT at a Glance: Measuring 26 feet long with a 1,000-nautical-mile combat radius, Shield AI’s autonomous strike fighter is designed to launch vertically from highways or naval decks—bypassing traditional runways entirely. Here is a detailed look at the aircraft’s specs, timeline, and capabilities as production sets to begin in Des Moines, Wash. Read More

Sep 30, 2026, 8:00 AM

Shield AI selects Seattle area to build X-BAT autonomous fighter jet, plans to add 4,000 jobs by early 2030s

Defense tech upstart Shield AI has selected the Puget Sound region as the manufacturing hub for X-BAT, bringing AI-piloted fighter production to the region and promising 4,000 jobs by the early 2030s. Read More

Sep 30, 2026, 5:00 AM

Pay-i rebrands as Ascerta and raises $18M to help enterprises track AI business value

The fresh capital brings total funding to $22.9 million for the Bellevue startup, which launched in May 2025 with a $4.9 million seed round. Read More

Sep 28, 2026, 10:14 AM

Seattle outranks major global cities to land at No. 4 in report that cites economy, quality of life, and more

The Emerald City landed at No. 4 overall in the newly released Oxford Economics Global Cities Index 2026, which scored 1,000 major urban centers across economics, human capital, quality of life, environment, and governance. Read More

Sep 25, 2026, 10:38 AM

‘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

Sep 22, 2026, 4:00 PM

Expedia Group laying off 58 employees in Washington state in latest cuts at travel giant

Impacted positions span across technology, product, and corporate roles — including data scientists, software engineers, finance managers, and senior leadership. Read More

Sep 22, 2026, 7:13 AM

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

Sep 21, 2026, 10:11 AM

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

Sep 20, 2026, 11:05 PM

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

Sep 16, 2026, 1:00 PM

Oracle cuts 359 Washington jobs in latest AI-driven layoffs; Seattle offices ‘not closing’

The cuts are part of broader nationwide layoffs at the enterprise software giant and heavily impact technical engineering and management roles. Read More

Sep 15, 2026, 12:35 PM

Uncommon Thinkers 2026: Last call for nominations for Seattle’s boldest innovators

Nominations for GeekWire’s 2026 Uncommon Thinkers Awards close Friday. Nominate a Seattle-area innovator who is challenging convention, pushing boundaries and shaping what’s next. Read More

Sep 15, 2026, 8:28 AM

Goldman Sachs plants flag in Bellevue, opening hub for more than 125 AI and cloud engineers

Goldman Sachs is expanding its Seattle-area technology footprint with a new Bellevue engineering hub that will house more than 125 employees focused on AI and cloud transformation. Read More

Sep 9, 2026, 2:01 PM

General Motors to open downtown Seattle office to bring together remote technical talent

The 43,000-square-foot space at West8 in the Denny Triangle neighborhood will bring together employees across digital products, AV, IT, HR, marketing, and other teams. Read More

Sep 9, 2026, 1:17 PM

NLM Photonics adds key investors in quest to reduce the power needed to move data between chips

The Seattle startup’s materials sit on top of silicon chips and imprint data onto a beam of light using less power. Mitsubishi Chemical’s venture arm and Pangaea Ventures joined a $13 million round. Read More

Sep 4, 2026, 7:05 AM

Etzioni on AI: What kids tell chatbots, but not you

Millions of kids head back to school this week with a tool in their pocket that will do their homework, answer the questions they’re too embarrassed to ask an adult, and never tell anyone they asked. Read More

Sep 3, 2026, 3:00 AM

AI learns nature’s code: Allen Institute, UW and Fred Hutch launch $95M open science initiative

Three of Seattle’s top scientific institutions are launching a nearly $95 million research initiative that will generate data and train AI models to design proteins and genes that don’t exist in nature — sharing the results freely to help others develop new medicines and materials. Read More

Sep 2, 2026, 9:00 PM

Qualtrics cut 117 jobs tied to Seattle headquarters, new filing shows

A new state filing shows Qualtrics is cutting 117 jobs tied to its Seattle headquarters, the first public figure showing the regional impact of layoffs the experience management software company made globally two weeks ago. Read More

Sep 2, 2026, 8:07 AM

Seismic CEO on the Highspot merger: revenue, job cuts, Seattle, AI, and the Salesforce question

Two weeks after Seismic completed its merger with Highspot, CEO Rob Tarkoff disclosed the combined company’s revenue for the first time and addressed questions about job cuts, the future of Highspot’s Seattle offices, and how AI is reshaping the competition with Salesforce. Read More

Aug 28, 2026, 9:52 AM

UW AI researcher wins top Marconi award and aims to put ‘superhuman hearing’ in billions of devices

Ph.D. student Malek Itani, who co-founded the AI-powered sound enhancement startup Hearvana, was recognized for developing on-device AI algorithms that enable real-time target speech extraction, “sound bubbles,” and semantic hearing on low-power hearables like earbuds and hearing aids. Read More

Aug 26, 2026, 12:34 PM

T-Mobile to cut 77 jobs in Washington state, impacting corporate and retail positions

The workforce reductions span frontline, regional, and corporate roles, eliminating positions ranging from retail mobile experts and account care specialists to principal systems architects and senior directors at the wireless carrier. Read More

Aug 26, 2026, 12:27 AM

‘I am very concerned’: Bill Gates says the world needs a plan to deal with AI, and he has three ideas to start

Bill Gates says the “turbulent AI era” has arrived, and the AI industry is crossing safety lines it once promised to respect. In a new essay and an interview with GeekWire, he lays out three ideas for managing what’s coming: new national and global institutions, a category of jobs reserved for humans, and a tax on AI and robots. Read More

Aug 25, 2026, 9:02 AM

Airline security in the cloud: PNNL tech analyzes checked bags during flight to skip layover lines

In a move designed to eliminate one of the more frustrating friction points of international travel, Richland, Wash.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has co-developed a mid-flight luggage scanning system to streamline arrivals for inbound U.S. travelers. Read More

Aug 23, 2026, 12:44 PM

Etzioni on AI: An Opinionated Glossary of AI

Everyone in tech says things like LLM, open weights, RAG and agent; far fewer could define precisely what they all mean. Oren Etzioni sorts out about 30 AI terms in plain English, with a blunt verdict on each and one novel phrase he believes isn’t used enough. Read More

Aug 21, 2026, 1:02 PM

Starbucks lays off 224 workers tied to Seattle HQ, including tech roles, as restructuring winds down

A new state filing shows Starbucks is cutting 224 more jobs tied to its Seattle headquarters, including technology positions and roles in the group that designs and builds its coffeehouses. The company says the layoffs complete restructuring work announced earlier this year rather than starting a new round of cuts. Read More

Aug 21, 2026, 7:51 AM

Inside Anduril’s AI warfighting buildup: Defense giant sees a path to 1,000 Seattle-area engineers

GeekWire toured Anduril’s unmarked Bellevue office, where the defense company is building augmented reality glasses, digital night vision and edge computing hardware for the U.S. military. Senior vice president Tom Keane says the regional engineering workforce could easily grow from 560 people to 1,000 in the not-too-distant future. Read More

Aug 21, 2026, 7:49 AM

Anduril exits Seattle shipyard following canceled Navy program and omission from new warship list

After the U.S. Navy abruptly canceled a key unmanned warship program, defense giant Anduril quietly vacated its shipyard site on Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal—even as its broader regional footprint continues to surge toward 1,000 local engineers. Read More

Aug 20, 2026, 5:41 PM

Seattle keeps No. 2 spot in closely watched tech talent ranking, with warning signs

The region held onto the No. 2 spot in CBRE’s annual tech talent scorecard, behind only the Bay Area. The report also flagged Seattle’s office vacancy rate, the highest of the 50 markets ranked, and a population of 20-somethings that shrank between 2019 and 2024, raising questions about the pipeline. Read More