Jimmy Kimmel casually referenced Tin Can's screenless phone for kids during his monologue last week, shortly after the startup landed a glowing NYT Wirecutter review. The company has grown to 30 employees and sold hundreds of thousands of phones. Read More
Microsoft reports fiscal Q3 results Wednesday. Here's a preview of the key numbers, storylines, and context heading into the report, including Azure growth expectations, Copilot adoption, capital spending, and the organizational changes reshaping the company. Read More
See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of April 19, 2026. Read More
A freelance gaming journalist's offers tips on ditching Chrome, Office, Gmail, Photoshop, and other AI-infested tools in favor of alternatives that just do the normal stuff. Read More
A new sci-fi thriller from enterprise technology veteran and Ai2 board chair Bill Hilf imagines an AI built on living biology that escapes human control. Underneath the plot: an argument that the industry is thinking about AI the wrong way. Read More
Qualtrics CEO Jason Maynard shook up the company’s senior leadership team on Friday at its dual headquarters in downtown Seattle and Provo, Utah, less than three months after taking the helm of the experience management technology company. Read More
Expedia Group named Derek Andersen as its new CFO; Peter Hamilton left Roku for an upcoming CEO role; and more tech moves. Read More
Facebook parent Meta signed a deal to deploy tens of millions of Amazon's Graviton5 processor cores for agentic AI workloads, the latest major customer win for Amazon's growing custom silicon business. Read More
Mikaela Kiner's "The Reverb Way" draws on 15 years at Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks and a decade running her own firm to offer practical advice for founders and business owners, while being honest about the personal struggles, health challenges, and hard lessons along the way. Read More
A strategic memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Chief Content Officer Matt Booty lays out the division's vision, including a new internal metric, a name change, and plans to reevaluate game exclusivity and AI. Read More
TerraPower is officially moving dirt on its facility in Wyoming, making it the first company in the U.S. to break ground on a next-generation nuclear plant. Read More
Someone misused Rec Room's friend-finder feature to match phone numbers to the user names of hundreds of thousands of players on the social gaming platform — assembling a database that connects their online identities directly to their real-world contact information. Read More
Microsoft is offering a one-time voluntary retirement program for the first time in its 51-year history, giving thousands of long-serving U.S. employees a chance to leave with a financial payout and extended healthcare as it works to control costs amid a massive buildup in AI infrastructure. Read More
Seattle venture capitalist Nick Hanauer responds to Chris DeVore's recent call for Democrats to embrace capitalism, arguing that the real question isn't whether to support free markets but which version of capitalism America should be building. Read More
Seattle startup Iridius, founded by former Microsoft and AWS leaders, is building software that embeds regulatory compliance into AI systems as they run. Accenture is both an investor and a strategic partner. Read More
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy added AWS infrastructure leader Prasad Kalyanaraman to the company's S-team and promoted Dave Brown to senior vice president, according to an internal memo viewed by GeekWire. Read More
LinkedIn COO Daniel Shapero is the company's new CEO, reporting to Ryan Roslansky, who oversees LinkedIn and Microsoft Office. Roslansky also named Mohak Shroff as president of platforms and digital work as the company scales its leadership around AI. Read More
Washington received an "F" for its lack of statewide school cellphone restrictions. While other states move toward "bell-to-bell" bans, it's opting for more research. Read More
Seattle's Office of Labor Standards released its first report analyzing data from the five largest delivery platforms, finding that worker pay increased and order volume grew under the city's gig worker minimum payment ordinance. DoorDash and outside researchers have reached different conclusions. Read More
From a Bill Gates-backed startup in the mid '90s to the Nobel stage in 2025, Fred Ramsdell reveals how "patient capital" and a mutation found in a 1940s mouse helped unlock immune system secrets. Read More
Brev, a startup with roots in Seattle's tech scene, has raised $3.3 million in pre-seed funding for AI tools that automatically track how companies are performing against their goals. The company's AI agents join meetings, update goals, flag risks, and track follow-through on action items. Read More
Kameirah Johnson, a senior at Seattle's Lakeside School, is one of five students nationwide whose artwork will appear on the Google homepage later this month. Read More
Starbucks is laying off workers in its technology organization as new CTO Anand Varadarajan, who joined from Amazon in January, restructures the team. The cuts come amid a broader turnaround effort under CEO Brian Niccol. Read More
Microsoft is dropping Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99 a month, but future Call of Duty games will no longer be available at launch. It's the first significant move by new gaming CEO Asha Sharma. Read More
Longtime Microsoft exec and former quantum lead Jeff Henshaw takes a role at IonQ while Heptio co-founder Joe Beda joins Stacklok. Read More
Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO, handing the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus. A Seattle tech vet and former advisor to Steve Jobs says the choice signals a return to the company's product roots at a critical moment. Read More
Wireless technology could keep military drones flying indefinitely, or be adapted as a directed-energy defense system for countering drones. Read More
Two months after investing $50 billion in OpenAI and striking a $100 billion cloud deal, Amazon announced a similar arrangement with its original AI partner, Anthropic: up to $25 billion in new investment and a $100 billion-plus commitment to AWS over 10 years. Read More
Seattle's mayor is exploring a moratorium on new data centers, but the city's real utility challenges — skyrocketing electricity prices, a looming capacity gap, and an eastside water defection — have nothing to do with data centers. Read More
Tech company billboards are a big part of the landscape in Silicon Valley. Summation CEO Ian Wong said the Seattle/Bellevue area "has world-class technical talent, but the scene here has always been understated." Read More
After liftoff, New Glenn booster makes its second successful touchdown, but AST SpaceMobile says its satellite will have to be deorbited. Read More
See the technology stories that people were reading on GeekWire for the week of April 12, 2026. Read More
After liftoff, New Glenn booster makes yet another successful touchdown at sea; Blue Origin says it's assessing the satellite situation. Read More
A Sammamish, Wash.-based operations consultant who counts Microsoft employees as neighbors offers an outsider's diagnosis of the tech giant's cultural challenges — from internal politics dominating weekend conversations to H-1B anxiety chilling risk-taking. Read More
Breakthrough Prize goes to University of Washington professor — and hundreds of other researchers — for decades of work on Muon g-2 experiments. Read More
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson raised the possibility of a moratorium on new data centers in the city, following a report that four companies have approached Seattle City Light about building five large-scale facilities. Read More
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: A week of Seattle-area startup news shows how the AI era is reshaping the regional tech scene. Plus: Amazon makes bold bets again, Allbirds pivots to AI infrastructure, and a special trivia challenge looking back at GeekWire 200 history. Read More
Amazon paid about $1.8 billion last year to Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by its founder and board chair Jeff Bezos — nearly triple the amount the year before — as shareholders weigh a proposal citing his business interests outside Amazon as potential conflicts of interest. Read More
Meet the Oregon-based startup founder using agentic AI to launch a delivery startup that supports the sale of secondhand goods. Read More
Before he was trying to bottle the sun in Everett, Wash., David Kirtley was building rockets. Now, he’s adapting those space-based technologies in the race for fusion energy. Read More
Anoop Gupta is stepping down as CEO of SeekOut, the Bellevue-based recruiting startup he co-founded in 2017, handing the reins to enterprise software veteran Sean Thompson. Co-founder Aravind Bala will remain as CTO. Read More
Now in its 18th year, the GeekWire Awards is the premier event recognizing the top leaders, companies and breakthroughs in Pacific Northwest tech. Read More
The finalists are: mpathic, ElastixAI, Dropzone AI, Dopl Technologies, and Loopr AI. Read More
Just as with business workflows, the tools are changing how teams operate on and off the field. One big benefit of AI, Microsoft says, is speed: getting the right information to the right person fast enough to shape the next play call or adjustment. Read More
Snap filed a WARN Act notice showing 95 employees affected across its Bellevue, Seattle, and Vancouver, Wash., offices as part of a restructuring that will cut about 1,000 jobs companywide. Read More
The Seattle area ranked seventh in the U.S. by venture capital invested but 10th by deal count in the first quarter of 2026, as funding concentrated into fewer, larger rounds, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. Read More
Microsoft says its Recall app — which captures and stores screenshots every few seconds — is safe. One year after its launch on Copilot+ PCs, security researchers keep finding vulnerabilities in the tool that promises to give Windows users a "photographic memory" of everything they do on their computer. Read More
The finalists in this category, presented by Prime Team Partners, are: Emily Choi-Greene (Clearly AI); Caleb John (Pioneer Square Labs); Kavian Mojabe (MediScan AI); Charles Wu (Orchard Robotics); and Zheqing (Bill) Zhu (Pokee AI). Read More
Customers can access the app by enabling it inside ChatGPT's app directory. Start a conversation prompt with "@starbucks" to customize orders and choose a location to order from. Read More
Ryan Holmes returns to Hootsuite as interim CEO; Scowtt adds a CFO; and Edifecs' Venkat Kavarthapu takes new CEO role. Read More