Artemis 2 astronauts are using Microsoft Surface Pro computers on board the Orion spacecraft. (GeekWire Illustration) Bound for the Moon, astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis 2 Orion spacecraft experienced a challenge familiar to many of us back here on terra firma: Microsoft Outlook. Commander...
Soma Energy’s co-founders, from left: CEO Ath Caramanolis, Chief Technology Officer Mario Souto and Chief AI Scientist Henrique Hoeltgebaum. (Soma Energy Photos) Soma Energy, a startup founded by former Amazon energy managers, emerged from stealth Thursday with $7 million in funding. The...
Seattle independent radio station KEXP prides itself on being a leader in new music discovery. They may have moved the bar up several notches with a band and video that is going viral on YouTube. The performance by Canadian duo Angine de Poitrine, playing live during the Trans Musicales...
Armoire’s “Outfit Inspiration” feature allows shoppers to cycle through a number of options for pieces to create the right outfit. (Armoire Image) Seattle-based online clothing rental company Armoire is leaning into the AI in fashion with a new feature called “Outfit Inspiration” that allows...
(Company logos) The path from successful startup to industry heavyweight is often marked by the ability to solve massive, complex problems at scale — whether those challenges are on a farm, battlefield or in low-Earth orbit. This GeekWire Award, presented by Baird, takes notice of the next...
A research team determined that the torpedo bat, left, and traditional bat perform equally well in hitting power with only a slight difference in the location of the bat’s sweet spot (WSU Photo / Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture) The New York Yankees just cruised through Seattle...
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota) Microsoft is expanding its roster of in-house AI models, releasing a new speech-to-text system and making two existing models broadly available to developers for the first time. The moves by Microsoft AI (MAI) are...
Emily Power, CEO of Ocean Made, shows the difference in the root structure of tomato plants grown in the startup’s kelp-based pots, on the left, versus plastic pots. (Ocean Made Photo) The University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs has selected the second cohort of startups for its Climate Tech...
NASA’s Space Launch System rises from its Florida launch pad, sending the Artemis 2 crew into orbit. (NASA via YouTube) After years of postponements and close to $100 billion in spending, NASA has launched the first mission to send astronauts around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The...
The downtown Seattle skyline. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Seattle has officially leveled up from a “secondary” tech market to a critical “reinforcer” of the global innovation economy — but the city is running out of room to grow, according to a new report. The latest edition of...
David Pogue’s new book, “Apple: The First 50 Years,”is packed with stories about the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. But one stands out above the rest. In late 2005, Steve Jobs attended the 50th birthday party of a Microsoft engineer, the husband of a friend of his wife, Laurene. Over...
Robinhood isn’t waiting to get sued in Washington state. The financial services company filed a preemptive federal suit against Washington’s attorney general and gambling commission, arguing the state can’t use its gambling laws to shut down prediction market trading that it contends is...
Finalists for GeekWire’s 2026 Sustainable Innovation Award, from left going clockwise: Helion Energy fusion device (Helion Photo), OCOchem team (OCOchem Photo), TerraPower’s mock fuel rods (TerraPower Photo), Ravel team (Ravel Photo), and IUNU’s image capturing system. (IUNU...
A delivery of medical supplies by Project C.U.R.E. (Project C.U.R.E. Photo) [Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire series, underwritten by Accenture, exploring the adoption and impact of AI and agents. See coverage of our related event.] Project C.U.R.E. had the...
Oracle’s Cloud Experience Center in downtown Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Oracle is laying off 491 employees in Washington state, according to a filing Tuesday from the state Employment Security Department. The cuts impact workers at two Seattle offices as well as remote...
Moss: Book II. (Polyarc screenshot) Polyarc, the Seattle-based VR gaming developer behind the award-winning Moss series, announced that it’s had to “significantly reduce the size of the company.” The announcement, via LinkedIn on Monday, notes that the layoffs come after “an unsuccessful...
Meta’s Dexter Station office in Seattle. (Meta Photo) Another round of layoffs at Meta will affect 168 employees in Washington state, according to a filing from the state Employment Security Department. The cuts are part of a broader reduction impacting hundreds of Meta workers around the...
(Rec Room Image) The despair among Rec Room players is real. Users of the popular social gaming platform expressed their disbelief and sadness over the demise of the Seattle-based company, which announced Monday that it is shutting down on June 1, and that some of its assets are being...
A Seattle startup founded by former Google and Microsoft engineers is betting that companies will increasingly want to build and own smaller, specialized AI models rather than relying on general-purpose alternatives from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Oumi, which launched its...
Lindsay-Rae McIntyre. (Alaska Airlines Photo) Lindsay-Rae McIntyre is the new chief people officer at Seattle-based Alaska Airlines. She joins the airline from Microsoft, where she most recently served as chief diversity officer and corporate VP of Talent and Learning. “There is a vast,...
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Brent Urke, program manager for L3Harris’ facility in Redmond, Wash., check out a model of the Orion spaceship that’s due to take four astronauts around the moon as early as this week. Cantwell is pointing to the model’s set of eight R-4D thrusters. An actual R-4D...
Amazon Leo and Delta Air Lines announced a deal Tuesday for satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2028. (Amazon Photo) Amazon Leo has landed its highest-profile customer yet, reaching a deal with Delta Air Lines to provide satellite-powered Wi-Fi on 500 aircraft starting in 2028. The...
Satya Nadella in November 2016, in his honeymoon period as Microsoft CEO. (GeekWire File Photo) [Editor’s Note: We’re excited to welcome Mary Jo Foley as a GeekWire contributor. Mary Jo has been one of the sharpest watchers of Microsoft for many years, currently as Editor in Chief at Directions...
Rec Room, the social gaming platform that reached more than 150 million players, is shutting down on June 1. (Rec Room Image) Snap Inc. confirmed late Monday that it has acquired select assets from Rec Room Inc., following the news that the Seattle-based company plans to shut down its longtime...
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sends Portal Space Systems’ “Mini-Nova” technology demonstration payload and more than 100 other payloads into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. (SpaceX Photo) Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has made its first foray into Earth orbit, in the...
Rec Room, the Seattle-based social gaming company once valued at $3.5 billion, is shutting down its platform on June 1, leaving the future of the company and its employees unclear. The company made the announcement Monday afternoon, saying it couldn’t find a path to profitability even...
AI video generator PixVerse is opening an office in Bellevue, Wash., and released its latest model, which it says “delivers complex scenes with coherent motion and consistent detail.” (PixVerse Image) PixVerse, the Singapore-based AI video generator, is establishing its first U.S. office in...
(Image via Claude) You are using AI to write and so is your boss, your intern, and virtually everyone else. That ship has sailed so arguing whether to board is a waste of breath. The real question is: how do you use AI? AI is a fork in the road disguised as a shortcut. Down one path, it’s...
Inside an Amazon data center. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Amazon has purchased 1,300 acres of undeveloped land on the Oregon side of the Columbia River that could one day become a massive computing campus with up to 20 data center buildings, the Oregonian reports. The Seattle-based tech...
Sound Transit’s Link light rail crossing Lake Washington’s floating bridge. (Sound Transit Photo) Amazon and Microsoft are on board with the Crosslake Connection. With this weekend’s grand opening of Sound Transit’s Link light rail service over Lake Washington between Seattle and the...
Microsoft is using Anthropic’s Claude to review work by OpenAI’s GPT inside Copilot’s Researcher agent. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) A new feature from Microsoft uses Anthropic’s Claude to assess and correct the work of OpenAI’s GPT, blending the tech giant’s new and old AI partnerships in the...
Image of a Starcloud deployment of its space-based data center. (Starcloud Photo) Starcloud, a startup building solar-powered data centers that operate in space, announced $170 million in new funding Monday, vaulting it to unicorn status with a $1.1 billion valuation. The Redmond, Wash.-based...
Ravi Vedula holds a photograph of himself and his childhood friends from their housing colony in Panjagutta, Hyderabad, taken more than 40 years ago. The boys went on to become leaders at Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Rivian, and other companies. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) One of Ravi Vedula‘s...
Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of March 22, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
OpenAI CTO of Applications Vijaye Raji, left, and GeekWire’s Todd Bishop on stage at the GeekWire AI summit, Agents of Transformation, in Seattle on March 24. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Fresh off the big GeekWire AI summit, we unpack what they heard from...