GEEK News
June 05, 2015 - 01:04 PM
Filings: How Amazon’s $50B OpenAI deal actually works, and what they’re keeping secret
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced a multi-year strategic partnership on Friday that includes a $50 billion investment from Amazon into the AI company. (GeekWire File Photos) Amazon’s OpenAI investment and cloud partnership made big headlines Friday, but the mechanics of the deal — including how the money flows, what triggers the payments, and what happens if...
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Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Feb. 22, 2026
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 Feb. 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 GeekWire The tech giant has occupied the seven-story, 251,000-square-foot space owned by Seattle...
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Seattle startup Carbon Robotics gets another shoutout from RFK Jr. for its weed-zapping robots
Carbon Robotics founder and CEO Paul Mikesell with the company’s LaserWeeder G2. (Carbon Robotics Photo) Carbon Robotics, the Seattle startup that builds robots used by farmers to eliminate weeds without the use of chemicals, got another vote of confidence from the nation’s health policy leader. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services, touted the company’s...
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Microsoft urges major changes to Washington data center regulations as bill nears final vote
A Microsoft Azure data center. (Microsoft Photo) The race to regulate artificial intelligence infrastructure has arrived at a crossroads in Washington state. After weeks on the sidelines, Microsoft publicly declared its opposition to a controversial state bill that aims to rein in the environmental and economic impacts of the massive data centers powering the AI boom. Labeling the...
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Anthropic acquires Vercept, the AI job crisis scenario, and Microsoft’s past Epstein connections
Anthropic acquired Seattle startup Vercept on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about the impact of early exits on the broader Seattle startup ecosystem, and the question of whether AI startups can compete long-term against the giants of the field. We dig into the deal, the public feud between two of the company’s early investors on LinkedIn, and why one co-founder’s prior departure to...
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Washington state is primed to let Rivian and Lucid sell EVs directly to consumers
The Rivian showroom at University Village in Seattle in 2025. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) With the threat of a ballot initiative looming, a slate of auto dealers in Washington have come out in support of EV makers Rivian and Lucid Motors in their pursuit of direct sales to consumers. Electric automakers have fought for years to change the state law that only allows Tesla to directly...
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NASA overhauls Artemis moon program — and Blue Origin’s lander may be given a bigger role
An artist’s conception shows the integrated design for the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. (Blue Origin Illustration) NASA is reworking its Artemis moon program to add a test mission for commercial lunar landers in low Earth orbit next year, with a crewed lunar landing to follow in 2028 at the earliest. The revised plan raises the profile of the Blue Moon lander that’s being built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue...
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City of Seattle CTO Rob Lloyd is resigning to lead a government institute with national reach
Rob Lloyd, chief technology officer for the City of Seattle, announced that he is stepping down from his role in March. (Photo courtesy of Rob Llloyd) Rob Lloyd, Seattle’s chief technology officer, is leaving his post to become executive director of the Center for Digital Government. His last day will be March 27. “Leading IT and our dedicated teams in service to Seattle has been an honor,”...
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Washington state gets federal sign-off for huge broadband buildout
(Photo by Jason Richard on Unsplash) Washington state has received a federal green light for its final plan under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program — the national push to extend high-speed internet to places that still don’t have adequate service. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration signed off on the BEAD proposal, giving the Washington...
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Amazon invests $50B in OpenAI, deepens AWS partnership with expanded $100B cloud deal
Inside Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Amazon is doubling down on OpenAI, announcing a strategic partnership Friday that includes a $50 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker. The companies said Amazon will start with $15 billion, with $35 billion more expected “in the coming months when certain conditions are met.” The investment is part of a broader...
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Seattle fintech startup Confido Legal raises fresh cash
Confido Legal, a Seattle startup that builds financial software for law firms and legal tech companies, raised $9 million across two rounds. The company spun out of Seattle-based Gravity Payments and is led by Emery Wager, a Stanford grad and former Marine who was previously featured in GeekWire’s Tech Vets series. Investors include Aquiline Capital Partners, Context Ventures, and...
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In Seattle protest, workers call on Uber and Lyft to stop adding new drivers to ‘flooded’ market
(BigStock Photo) Uber and Lyft drivers protested in downtown Seattle on Wednesday, calling on the companies to stop adding new drivers to what they call a “flooded” market. The action comes as a new report shows the majority of miles driven by rideshare drivers are without a passenger. The so-called “empty miles” increase traffic congestion and air pollution, while decreasing driver...
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‘Meaningless’ theater? As tech giants pledge ratepayer protections in D.C., others question real-world impact
Inside an Amazon data center. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Data center titans Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, and OpenAI are headed to the White House next week to sign a commitment to fund their own energy infrastructure costs, CNBC reported today. The deal, teased by President Trump during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, arrives as the massive power requirements of...
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Bill Gates won’t be following Paul Allen’s lead, says he’s not interested in buying Seattle Seahawks
Paul Allen and Bill Gates in 1980. The Microsoft co-founders shared a love for computer software, but pro sports was Allen’s thing. (Photo courtesy of Microsoft Archives) Cross Bill Gates off the list of super rich potential buyers for the Seattle Seahawks. Gates said he has no interest in owning the NFL franchise that Paul Allen, his late Microsoft co-founder, purchased in 1997 and which...
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Read AI rolls out ‘Digital Twin’ that can respond to work emails and schedule meetings
(Read AI Image) Seattle startup Read AI launched a new “Digital Twin” product that works through email and can help schedule meetings, answer questions, and keep conversations moving. The AI bot, branded as “Ada,” builds on the company’s existing meeting and productivity tools. Read AI says it’s the largest deployment of a digital twin product to date. Digital Twin enters a crowded...
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Reviving the ‘Mosquito Fleet’: Washington eyes passenger ferries to scale maritime transit and tech
A high-speed passenger-only ferry crossing Washington’s Puget Sound. (Kitsap Transit Agency Photo) Five days a week for more than three decades, Greg Nance‘s dad commuted by ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle where he worked as a public defender. “That’s how he put food on the table. That’s how he was able to send three kids to college,” Nance said. “With all of the delays and...
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Valve Software sued by New York AG, accused of promoting illegal gambling via video game loot boxes
(Valve Software Image) A new suit filed by the New York attorney general seeks to stop Valve Software’s use of “loot box” mechanics in its popular PC games, accusing the Bellevue, Wash.-based company of making billions of dollars by luring children and teenagers into gambling on rare Counter-Strike skins. The lawsuit alleges that Valve’s first-party games are essentially an illegal gambling...
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Rubin Observatory sends out thousands of data alerts with an assist from Seattle astronomers
Each night, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory issues thousands of alerts about changes in the night sky. (NOIRLab / NSF / DOE-SC Illustration) An astronomical alert system developed at the University of Washington started off with a bang this week, sending out 800,000 notifications about moving asteroids, exploding stars and other celestial changes detected by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in...
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Tech Moves: Zillow names CPO; AWS leader retires; Microsoft hires AI expert from Apple
Zillow Group’s new senior leadership team members, from left: Christopher Roberts, Jon Lim and Marissa Brooks. (Zillow Photos) Zillow Group announced three promotions to its senior leadership team. After nearly two decades with Zillow, Christopher Roberts is now chief product officer. Roberts helped build Zillow Rentals, which the company touts as the No. 1 platform among renters. His...
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Anthropic acquires Vercept in early exit for one of Seattle’s standout AI startups
Vercept’s Ross Girshick (left), Kiana Ehsani, and Luca Weihs. Ehsani shared this on LinkedIn with the news that Vercept is joining Anthropic, noting, “Vercept is much bigger than the founders and there are many amazing team members that made this happen, but I love this ‘thinking’ photo of us :D” Anthropic is acquiring Vercept, a Seattle startup founded by alumni of the Allen Institute for AI,...
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Seattle-area startup Union.ai raises $19M to fuel AI workflow platform
The Union.ai team. (Union.ai Photo) Bellevue, Wash.-based startup Union.ai announced that it closed a $38.1 million Series A round, led by NEA, with participation from Nava Ventures and new investor Mozilla Ventures. The total includes a previously announced $19.1 million portion raised in 2023. Union is the company behind Flyte, an open-source orchestration tool used to run...
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Bill Gates addresses Epstein fallout at foundation as new Microsoft revelations emerge
Bill Gates, pictured here in 2020, apologized to Gates Foundation staff over his past interactions with Jeffrey Epstein in an internal town hall on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Bill Gates apologized to Gates Foundation staff on Tuesday for his past interactions with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, acknowledging in an internal...
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The rooftop solar reset: Seattle startup launches platform to streamline financing and installation
Solar panels on a Seattle house. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) The pitch for rooftop solar has never been easier to make: energy costs are up, the strain on the electrical grid is real, and the sun shines for free. But the math has gotten harder, as federal tax credits evaporate and utility incentives dry up. Enter loanTERRA, a Seattle startup that thinks transparent financing and...
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Pick Alexa’s personality: Amazon lets users choose ‘Brief,’ ‘Chill,’ or ‘Sweet’ conversation styles
Alexa responds with “All systems operational” in the new Brief personality mode on an Echo Show. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Tired of Alexa’s constant chatter? Wish Amazon’s voice assistant would just get to the point without all the extra stuff? Maybe I’m just speaking for myself? Anyway, relief is finally here. Amazon is rolling out a new option to keep Alexa’s responses blessedly...
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Amazon to move out of longtime office building near its main Seattle headquarters
The front lobby of Kumo, an Amazon office building at 1915 Terry Ave. in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Amazon plans to exit an office building near its Seattle headquarters, 12 years after taking over the space during the height of its growth in the city. Amazon is not renewing its lease at 1915 Terry Ave. in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle, the company confirmed to...
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As AI reshapes work, Microsoft and UW expand partnership for training, research — and a looming jobs gap
Jared Nakahara (left), co-founder of life sciences startup Levity and a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington, demonstrates an acoustic limitation system designed to manipulate small liquid droplets using sound waves as Microsoft President Brad Smith looks on. (GeekWire Photos / Taylor Soper) The University of Washington and Microsoft are deepening their partnership with a new...
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Head of Amazon’s AGI lab is leaving in latest exit from high-profile Adept startup deal
David Luan led the team responsible for Amazon’s Nova Act agentic technology. (Amazon Photo) David Luan, who led Amazon’s San Francisco-based AGI Lab and oversaw one of its most important agentic AI initiatives, is leaving less than two years after joining the tech giant through an acqui-hire deal involving him and other leaders from AI startup Adept. Luan announced his exit Tuesday in a...
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Sophia Space raises $10M to accelerate creation of orbital computing systems
An artist’s conception shows the Sophia 40 TILE satellite, with each tile powered by its own solar panel. (Sophia Space Illustration) Sophia Space says it has closed a $10 million seed financing round to accelerate the development of orbital computing systems that could serve as the foundation for space-based data processing. The startup’s tabletop-sized satellite modules, known as tiles,...
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San Francisco AI startup Nooks makes engineering push in Seattle
Nooks CTO and co-founder Nikhil Cheerla. (Nooks Photo) Nooks is nestling into Seattle. The San Francisco-based startup, which builds AI software for sales teams, is expanding its engineering footprint in Seattle — growing from zero to six engineers recently and hiring for more platform and product engineering roles. The company plans to open a Seattle office and has been working out of...
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Column: Public trust is becoming AI’s real bottleneck
Jesse Collins. The two towers near Aberdeen weren’t supposed to be monuments. They were supposed to be engines. Drive west from Olympia and you’ll see the unfinished nuclear plant rising from the evergreen canopy. The project promised clean energy, jobs, and technological prestige. Instead, it became a cautionary tale of cost overruns and evaporating public confidence. Nuclear...
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Group alleges fake sign-ins used to pad apparent opposition to Washington state ‘millionaires tax’
Washington state Sen. Victoria Hunt, a co-sponsor of SB 6346, speaks during a virtual news conference on Monday about how she learned that her name had been fraudulently signed in as “con” over the weekend on a public comment page ahead of a House Committee on Finance hearing on the millionaires tax. (Screen grab via Invest in Washington Now) Invest in Washington Now, a Washington state-based...
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Water, power, and transparency: Amazon’s $12B data center deal signals a new era of accountability
Inside an Amazon data center. (Amazon Photo / Noah Berger) Amazon on Monday announced a $12 billion data center project in Louisiana in which the company vowed to pay its own way for energy and other infrastructure. The deal highlights the unwritten expectations now placed on tech giants to cover upfront power costs and other impacts. Such pledges have become commonplace as leaders at the...
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Seattle startup Elevāt raises $12M to help industrial companies speed up equipment repairs
Elevat CEO Adam Livesay. (Elevat Photo) Seattle startup Elevāt has raised $12 million as part of a Series A round to fuel growth of its software aimed at helping industrial companies and equipment makers streamline repairs and reduce downtime. Elevāt CEO Adam Livesay confirmed the new funding but did not provide details on investors. The company is positioning itself as an answer to a...
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Temporal CEO Samar Abbas on the ‘massive platform shift’ in AI fueling the startup’s $5B valuation
Temporal co-founders Maxim Fateev, CTO (left), and Samar Abbas, CEO. (Temporal Photo) Temporal co-founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev have been tackling the same distributed systems problem since their days at Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber. But the AI boom has put the problem “on steroids” as agents move to production, according to Abbas — and investors have taken notice. Temporal last week...
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Nominate the best in Pacific NW tech and help set the stage for the 2026 GeekWire Awards
The scene inside the 2025 GeekWire Awards at Showbox SoDo in Seattle on Wednesday. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong) Time is running out to get your nominations in for the 2026 GeekWire Awards. If you want to help us recognize the outstanding tech entrepreneurs, innovators, deal makers and nonprofit leaders across the Pacific Northwest, submit a nomination today! Community nominations will...
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