GEEK News

(Uber Photo) After a controversial minimum wage law for food delivery drivers in Seattle went into effect in January, tech giants including Uber and DoorDash made it clear they weren’t happy. They immediately added substantial new delivery fees for consumers, which caused demand to drop. They...

Amazon announced a series of new features for its AWS Bedrock service. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon Web Services is releasing new capabilities for its Bedrock artificial intelligence service, including the ability for customers to import their own custom AI models to run alongside...

(Outpost Photo) Outpost, an Austin, Texas-based trucking parking facility operator that has an engineering center in Seattle, announced a $12.5 million Series A investment round. The company was founded two years ago under the name Semi-Stow. It operates 18 properties and 8,000 parking...

(Amazon Photo) Amazon Prime members in more than 3,500 U.S. cities can now get free unlimited grocery delivery for orders over $35 — if they pay $9.99 per month. The service initially rolled out to select cities in December, and is now widely available. Prime members — who already pay...

Artwork shows two views of the Bifröst orbital transfer spacecraft. (New Frontier Aerospace Illustration) Two Washington state aerospace companies — Tukwila-based New Frontier Aerospace and Spanaway-based HyBird Space Systems — are among 95 ventures that have won project development funding from...

People use the newly opened Redmond Technology Station Bridge spanning SR 520 between Microsoft’s east and west campuses on Monday in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) People on foot, riding bicycles, and even those cruising on electric skateboards crisscrossed over a busy highway...

Jason Taylor. (LinkedIn Photo) Jason Taylor, the former vice president of infrastructure at Meta, joined Microsoft as corporate vice president and deputy CTO for the company’s AI supercomputing efforts. Taylor spent more than 13 years at Meta, where he led various infrastructure projects....

Fishing buoys line the community bar at the WeWork co-working space in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. (WeWork Photo) WeWork is looking to hold onto another location in Seattle, negotiating new terms with its landlord and filing a court motion Monday to remain in the 15th and Market building in...

Amazon says its next-generation MK30 drone will start making deliveries later this year. (Amazon Photo) Amazon says it’s gearing up to add a community in Arizona to its list of Prime Air drone delivery zones. Later this year, customers in the West Valley region of the Phoenix metro area will...

Melissa Hutchins, co-founder and CEO of Certifi AI. (Certifi AI Photo) In January, pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift were viewed by millions of people on X and other social media platforms before the sites took action. No one has been identified and prosecuted for using artificial...

Atomo’s new coffee roastery in Seattle. (Atomo Photo) Atomo, the Seattle-based beanless coffee maker, is marking Earth Day with the grand opening of a new roastery in its hometown that will produce the company’s grounds for coffee shops around the country. The 33,547 square-foot facility...

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 April 14, 2024. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...

This week on the show, we offer a sneak preview of the GeekWire Awards, at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle on Thursday, May 9. We look back at the past winners of the Next Tech Titan title in the awards, and consider the event’s track record in predicting major companies to emerge from Seattle...

The BWB Drumline performs before speakers take the stage at an event focused on artificial intelligence at the Museum of History and Industry on Thursday in Seattle. Performers include, from left: Saire Williams-Bullen; 9 Coleman-Harvey; Tahlia Price; and RaNiyah Cooper. (GeekWire Photos / Taylor...

The 13 Seattle-area students awarded “Amazon Future Engineer” scholarships by the company this week during an event at a Prime Air drone facility in Seattle. (Amazon Photo) The future is bright — and partially paid for — for 13 students from across the Seattle region after Amazon surprised them...

AI and Biotech panel at Life Science Innovation Northwest 2024. From left: Danielle Greenawalt, Lynda Stuart, Sean McClain, Jonathan Cohen and moderator Joseph Sirosh. (GeekWire Photo / Charlotte Schubert) The culture of collaboration in the Pacific Northwest, the impact of AI on biopharma, and...

Dr. Burkhard Englert. (Seattle University Photo) Seattle University named Dr. Burkhard Englert as the new Department Chair and Amazon Endowed Chair of Computer Science. Englert is currently the computer science department chair at Norfolk State University in Virginia. He previously held the...

Attendees at a hackathon presented by AI Tinkerers in Seattle last summer. (Photo courtesy of Joe Heitzeberg) Seattle tech veteran Joe Heitzeberg remembers seeing a random, AI-related tweet in September 2022. “Still not enough tinkering happening, for whatever reason,” former GitHub CEO Nat...

Travis Rush, co-founder and CEO of Reperio Health. (Reperio Photo) Travis Rush grew up in the tiny seaside town of Gold Beach in Southern Oregon. With a population of only 1,576 — as was proudly proclaimed on the sign coming into town — healthcare resources there were limited. The nearest...

Charging stations at Seattle’s Shilshole Bay Marina. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Washington is leaning into the fight against climate change. Seattle-area tech giants Microsoft and Amazon have set ambitious carbon reduction targets and invested millions to meet those goals. The state...

Cynthia Williams, soon to be former president of Wizards of the Coast. (Wizards of the Coast image) A new SEC filing reveals that Cynthia Williams plans to step down as president at Hasbro-owned game company Wizards of the Coast. No specific reason has been publicly offered for Williams’...

NanoString’s GeoMX Digital Spatial Profiler was at the heart of a patent lawsuit filed by 10x Genomics. (NanoString Image) NanoString announced Wednesday that it will be acquired by Bruker, ending the company’s restructuring process that included a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan. Bruker, a...

Shein, the fast-fashion e-commerce retailer that recently announced plans to open an office in Bellevue, Wash., is hosting a pop-up experience in Seattle next week. The event will take place April 26-29 at the O’Shea Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle....

Plants line the living wall at Climate Pledge Arena. Amazon bought naming rights to the arena, helping tout its commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) More than 100 companies, tribal groups, union organizations, environmental nonprofits and political...

Sarah Bird. (LinkedIn Photo) Sarah Bird, the Seattle tech veteran who led SEO software startup Moz for seven years, is the new CEO of Canvas, a software company that builds technology for remodeling, architecture and interior design. A former lawyer who started at Moz as chief operating...

Validated, a Seattle startup that uses AI to help companies figure out what product features and messaging resonates with customers, raised more investment and released a new product. The company this week launched Taglines, which ingests info about a business and generates ads. The product...

Dilip Kumar, VP of AWS applications, at an Amazon event in 2022. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Amazon’s grocery technology has been in the news a lot over the past couple of weeks, following layoffs in the Amazon Web Services group responsible for the company’s physical store checkout and...

Gurdeep Singh Pall. Technology leader Gurdeep Singh Pall, a longtime Microsoft executive, is joining experience management technology company Qualtrics as its first president of artificial intelligence strategy. Pall left Microsoft last fall after a 33-year career that spanned from Windows NT...

Kristen Forecki. (WTIA Photo) The Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) named longtime Seattle tech leader Kristen Forecki as the new chair of its board of directors. Forecki is currently a senior director of experiences and device strategy at Microsoft. She previously worked at...

Tech workers from Google and Amazon alongside activists protested the tech giants’ cloud contract with Israel at a demonstration outside of Google offices in Seattle on April 16, 2024. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Google and Amazon workers held protests on Tuesday in Seattle and other tech...

Jeff Bezos spoke in New York City on Sept. 20, 2021 to announce $1 billion in grants from the Bezos Earth Fund. (Bezos Earth Fund Photo) The Bezos Earth Fund on Tuesday announced the creation of a $100 million grand challenge that’s seeking artificial intelligence-powered solutions for climate...

Ross Tennenbaum. (Avalara Photo) — Seattle-based tax software company Avalara named Ross Tennenbaum as its new president. Tennenbaum joined Avalara in 2019 and became its CFO a year later. He will continue to serve as CFO while taking on more responsibilities overseeing the company’s main...

There was a packed house at the Ignite 25+5 Awards in Spokane in February, including longtime members of the tech community and newcomers. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) SPOKANE, Wash. — The “great migration” got a head start here. Long before the rise of remote work spurred many tech workers...

Cyan’s headquarters on the outskirts of Spokane. (Photo courtesy of Rand Miller) SPOKANE, Wash. — “The House that Myst Built” could have been built anywhere. The home of Cyan Worlds, on the northern outskirts of Spokane, was made possible by the success of the company’s iconic adventure video...

Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Microsoft is making another big AI-related investment, this time pouring $1.5 billion into G42, a AI holding company based in the United Arab Emirates. The deal marks Microsoft’s latest strategic move in the AI race and...