GEEK News
June 05, 2015 - 01:04 PM
Amazon drones go national, inside Anduril’s Seattle buildup, and AirTag leads to secret book-scanning site
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon’s delivery drones are going national, nearly 13 years after Jeff Bezos unveiled them on 60 Minutes. We listen back and discuss what’s next. Plus: We go inside Anduril’s unmarked Bellevue office as the defense company builds toward 1,000 Seattle-area engineers; a reporter hides an AirTag in a rare book and tracks it to a secret Amazon book-scanning...
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Starbucks cuts another 224 Seattle jobs, including tech roles, as restructuring winds down
A former Starbucks cafe in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Starbucks is eliminating 224 more jobs at its Seattle headquarters, according to a new state filing. The coffee giant says the layoffs don’t represent a new round of cutbacks, but rather the lingering effect of restructuring work announced earlier this year. About 120 of the 224 are employees who were offered roles in...
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Starcloud raises $250M to support the creation of data center satellite network in league with Nvidia
Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip, the Space-1 Vera Rubin Module, is set to be used on Starcloud’s future satellites. (Nvidia Illustration) Starcloud says it has raised $250 million in new funding to support the creation of a constellation of data center satellites powered by Nvidia’s next-generation AI chips. The Series A extension funding round was led by Manhattan West, with participation...
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Tech Moves: AWS data leader jumps to Oracle; Seattle Children’s names new CIO; Zillow’s new legal chief
Mehul Shah. (LinkedIn Photo) — Mehul Shah joined Oracle as group vice president for OCI data and storage services, ending a 14-year run at Amazon and Amazon Web Services. In his last role at AWS, Shah led engineering and product for Amazon RDS for SQL Server, Oracle and Db2, and ran the launch and expansion of Oracle Database@AWS, the partnership that put Oracle’s database inside Amazon’s...
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Inside Anduril’s AI warfighting buildup: Defense giant sees a path to 1,000 Seattle-area engineers
Chad Pfarr, principal design director at Anduril, at left shows GeekWire co-founder John Cook the company’s EagleEye augmented reality system at a testing lab at the company’s Bellevue offices. (Photo via Matt Mostad / Anduril) BELLEVUE, Wash. — There is no prominent signage outside Anduril’s downtown Bellevue office. The name isn’t listed in the building directory, on the suite door, or in...
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Anduril exits Seattle shipyard following canceled Navy program and omission from new warship list
Anduril recently vacated the the old Foss Shipyard on Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Defense technology giant Anduril Industries has quietly vacated its maritime operations along Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal. The exit, confirmed by the company to GeekWire this week, comes after the U.S. Navy canceled the specific autonomous vessel acquisition...
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Seattle keeps No. 2 spot in closely watched tech talent ranking, with warning signs
Seattle remains a beacon for tech talent, ranking No. 2 in CBRE’s annual report. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota) The Seattle region outranked New York, Austin, Boston and other tech hubs, trailing only the Bay Area, in an annual tech talent scorecard from commercial real estate firm CBRE that weighs factors such as tech worker concentration, wages, education levels and real estate...
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Game review: Investigate a haunted (?) ’90s PC in Seattle-made mystery adventure ‘Desktop Explorer’
(Recurring Dream screenshot) For the first hour or so, Desktop Explorer looks like a nostalgia project. The indie adventure game challenges the player to unravel a mystery by sorting through the files and programs on an old desktop computer. Many of its puzzles are solved through clever usage of features and tools that will be immediately familiar to anyone who spent any amount of time with...
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Former Microsoft product manager launches bid to end clock change in Washington state, Congress or not
Scott Thurlow is founder of Last Fall Back Washington. (Photo courtesy of Scott Thurlow) Scott Thurlow isn’t a morning person. So much so, he wants to change state law. In 2019, Washington lawmakers voted to put the state on permanent daylight saving time if Congress ever allows it. Thurlow has a different idea: Stop changing the clocks now, even if that means staying on Pacific Standard...
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Seattle weighs ban on ‘surveillance pricing’ at grocery stores, but will it save shoppers money?
A sale price at a Seattle grocery store. A proposed city ordinance would bar grocers from setting different prices for individual shoppers based on their personal data. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Seattle is in the final stages of becoming the first city in the country to ban so-called “surveillance pricing” in grocery stores. Experts disagree about whether it will actually save consumers...
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We’ve entered Seattle’s Third Act
The Lake Washington Ship Canal, the working waterway connecting Lake Union to Puget Sound, where shipyards, fishing boats and houseboats share the shoreline with the region’s new wave of tech startups. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Opinion: A year ago, GeekWire ran a headline that posed an uncomfortable question to the local startup community: “Seattle is a global AI hub — but where are the...
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Inside the satellite factory: Portal Space Systems gets set for the debut of Starburst and Supernova
Portal Space Systems’ co-founder and CEO, Jeff Thornburg, shows off the Starburst-1 satellite in the company’s Bothell lab. (Portal Space Systems Photo) BOTHELL, Wash. — Portal Space Systems is getting ready to send its first Starburst spacecraft to Florida for a milestone launch, and at the same time is fleshing out its plans for launching an even more capable spacecraft known as...
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North America’s biggest book sorter just opened in the Seattle area
The new sorting facility in Renton, Wash., where materials from 50 libraries are routed to 186 delivery chutes. (Photo: Ken Yeung) Washington is home to Mount Rainier, the Space Needle, and the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. It’s also now home to what the King County Library System says is North America’s largest library materials sorter — a $5.2 million installation in Renton that...
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Qualtrics cuts jobs in Seattle, Utah and overseas as it absorbs $6.75B acquisition
GeekWire Graphic / Qualtrics logo Three months after closing its $6.75 billion purchase of Press Ganey Forsta, Qualtrics is cutting jobs across the combined company — a reduction that the experience-management technology company says reflects duplication between two organizations that were built independently. The cuts are global, including the company’s dual headquarters in Seattle and...
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Want to know what Jeff Bezos brings to Liverpool FC? Study Amazon’s Leadership Principles
GeekWire co-founder John Cook talks with Dan Clubbe of The Redmen TV about Jeff Bezos’ investment in Liverpool FC. (The Redmen TV Video) What does Jeff Bezos’ new ownership stake in English Premier League powerhouse Liverpool FC mean for the storied soccer club? I was invited by Dan Clubbe of the Liverpool fan site The Redmen TV to talk about the Amazon founder’s recent investment, Bezos’...
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Internal memo: Eight execs out at Expedia Group in AI-driven shakeup
The Expedia Group logo at the company’s headquarters campus on the Seattle waterfront. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Expedia Group is parting ways with at least eight vice presidents and senior vice presidents in a major reorganization designed to reorient its product and technology groups around AI. In an internal memo Tuesday, obtained by GeekWire, the Seattle-based online travel giant’s...
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TikTok cuts 75 jobs in Seattle area, hitting e-commerce teams
GeekWire Illustration / TikTok Logo TikTok is laying off 75 workers in the Seattle region, focused largely on the company’s e-commerce business, according to a notice filed Tuesday with Washington state. Job titles listed in the notice are almost entirely TikTok Shop and Global E-Commerce roles in Bellevue, Wash., including anti-fraud and governance program managers, seller and creator...
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Zeno Power reserves a spot on Firefly moon lander to demonstrate its atomic space heater
An artist’s conception shows Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander on the moon’s surface during the lunar night, with Zeno Power Systems’ radioisotope heater unit highlighted with a blue glow on the left side of the lander’s top deck. (Firefly Aerospace Illustration) A nuclear-powered heater built by Zeno Power Systems is slated to fly to the moon aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander for a...
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Amazon drone delivery set to expand nationally, reaching nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns this year
An Amazon Prime Air delivery drone flies over a suburban neighborhood in Arizona. (Amazon Photo) Amazon’s drones are finally going national. The company’s autonomous aerial vehicles are set to deliver packages to nearly 500 cities and towns across the country by the end of this year, zipping items through the air to drop them in backyards and driveways as quickly as 30 minutes after...
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Startup Spotlight: Tech consultant returns to the farm with Reroot, connecting growers with consumers
Reroot founder Genevieve Priebe, a fourth-generation member of a Montana farm family. (Photos courtesy of Genevieve Priebe) Genevieve Priebe took a business meeting this summer while bottle-feeding baby goats. A couple of years ago, she was advising executives at some of Seattle’s largest tech companies. “Best decision I’ve ever made,” she said of her career change. Priebe is the solo...
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BuyWander moves HQ from Spokane to Seattle area as retail-returns startup grows team to 325 people
Members of the BuyWander team, including co-founders Brock Kowalchuk and Jordan Allen, celebrate with the company’s 10,000th customer in Spokane, Wash. in 2025. (BuyWander Photo) BuyWander, the Spokane, Wash.-born startup building an auction marketplace for returned and overstocked retail goods, has moved its headquarters to the Seattle area and grown to 325 employees as it expands its...
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Filings show Amazon’s stake in electric trucking company that just struck a deal for 500 Tesla Semis
Einride plans to deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers. (Tesla Photo) Amazon is quietly accumulating a stake in Einride, the Swedish electric trucking company that said Tuesday it will deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers. Einride’s SEC filings show Amazon holding warrants for 25.2 million shares — about 12% of the company — that vest as Amazon buys freight...
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Seismic completes Highspot merger, says it will keep Seattle and B.C. sites
The new Highspot by Seismic branding, which replaced the company’s standalone logo Tuesday. (Highspot by Seismic Image) Highspot’s merger with Seismic was completed Tuesday morning, ending the Seattle-based sales software company’s run as an independent business and folding one of the region’s biggest enterprise technology players into a San Diego-based rival. The combined company is now...
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How an AirTag planted by a reporter led to a secret Amazon site where old books are cut apart and scanned
The reporting tool in question. (BigStock Photo / hadrian) Amazon is reportedly cutting the spines off old books and scanning the pages at a Las Vegas facility, presumably to train AI models on text that exists almost nowhere else. The company won’t confirm that’s the reason. It gave us the same statement it provided to 404 Media, which broke the story: it “purchases books through...
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Adaptive Biotech co-founder raises $15M for new startup to rethink how AI trains on science
Harlan Robins (Photo via Harell Data) Harlan Robins spent years as the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Adaptive Biotechnologies, helping build massive datasets to decode the human immune system. But as artificial intelligence exploded across life sciences, he recognized a growing divide: the groups spending immense resources to generate high-quality research data rarely receive...
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From engineering to elected office: How a generation of Indian Americans is reshaping civic life
Consul General Prakash Gupta, left of the flagpole, joins elected officials, tech leaders and guests at the flag-raising for India’s 80th Independence Day in downtown Seattle on Aug. 15. (Consulate General of India Photo) Note: Former Microsoft and AWS exec Harini Gokul serves on the Medina (Wash.) City Council. Guest Opinion: Saturday, Aug. 15, was India’s 80th Independence Day. I marked...
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GitHub outage disrupts developers worldwide in latest setback for Microsoft coding platform
GitHub was hit by a widespread outage Monday. (GitHub Logo / GeekWire Illustration) GitHub, the Microsoft-owned code-sharing platform with 225 million users, was down for more than three hours Monday morning, disrupting software development work around the world. The issue started at 6:40 a.m. Pacific. Within an hour and a half, nearly every part of the service was broken or slowed,...
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Protesters dressed as rogue AI agents target OpenAI in Bellevue with balloons and hot pink vests
Scenes from Friday’s demonstration at City Center Plaza in Bellevue, which houses OpenAI’s offices. (Images via Troublemakers Community) Five months after OpenAI cut the ribbon on its office in Bellevue, Wash., the building has become the target of a national campaign against AI expansion, which made its Seattle-area stop on Friday with balloons, whistles and rogue “AI agents” in hot pink...
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Go inside Endurance Energy, the Seattle startup tapping underwater volcanoes for geothermal power
Andrew Redd, CEO and founder of Endurance Energy, with company puppy Maple as the startup preps to launch its next prototype system for geothermal energy production. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) Next month, Endurance Energy will send Adélie — a 100-kilowatt geothermal generator named for a penguin — to an undersea volcano off the Oregon coast, tapping hydrothermal fluids that can reach 750...
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Etzioni on AI: Become a power user
Some of the habits and settings that separate AI power users from everyone else. (Illustration by GPT-5.6 Sol) Your first step toward becoming an AI Power User is to adopt a few hacks, most of which only take a minute to implement. My favorites are below. There’s a lot here, so you can pick and choose. Or you can embrace my meta-hack: I told Claude to help me deploy all of them. Let’s...
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Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 9, 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 Aug. 9, 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 WalletHub’s 2026 “Best States to Live In” list puts Washington at No. … Read More Auger will...
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Bezos and Liverpool FC, a Meta vet’s AI startup, Auger’s Dallas move, and the demise of Microsoft’s AI blob
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: What should Liverpool FC fans expect from Jeff Bezos as a member of the storied English Premier League club’s new minority ownership group? We consult the Amazon leadership principles for the answer. Plus, a tip and an SEC filing lead to a scoop on a former Meta AI director’s new startup, the GeekWire Editorial Board convenes to decide whether Dave...
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Amazon’s Twitch is using livestreams to train its generative AI, and nobody’s happy with it
(GeekWire File Photo) Amazon indicated for the first time this week that any video broadcast via its livestreaming platform Twitch could be used to train generative AI, unless users take steps to avoid it, which has caused a significant backlash from both audiences and content creators. The story began with a post on the official Twitch Support account on X (formerly Twitter) which informed...
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Closed Pfizer biopharma facility in Everett gets a new owner and a mystery tenant
An undisclosed pharma company signed a 21-year lease for the former Seagen property in Everett. Photo via Breakthrough Properties. A bio-manufacturing facility in Everett, Wash., which was built by Seattle biotech giant Seagen but never opened under its Pfizer ownership, is getting a new lease on life. Breakthrough Properties, a life sciences real estate company, said Friday that it has...
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Tech Moves: AWS government tech VP departs; Funko, Coinme and DAT Freight add to C-suite
Dave Levy. (LinkedIn Photo) — Dave Levy, vice president of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, has left Amazon for a role at Google, according to Nextgov/FCW. An AWS spokesperson confirmed his departure; Google did not respond to a request for comment. Levy, who is based in Arlington, Va., was with AWS for more than nine years. He was previously head of U.S. government sales at Apple for 12...
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