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June 05, 2015 - 03:04 PM
Amazon’s fight with Meta: Who owns the customer relationship when an agent does the buying?

Amazon’s fight with Meta: Who owns the customer relationship when an agent does the buying?

September 22, 2026

Amazon and Meta are at odds over AI agents that shop on customers’ behalf. (GeekWire Illustration / GPT 5.6 Sol) Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse AI agent from its store Sunday night, and leaders across the tech industry have spent the past two days debating the bigger questions raised by the...

Solo founder uses AI as backing band to build a music licensing platform for small businesses

Solo founder uses AI as backing band to build a music licensing platform for small businesses

September 22, 2026

John Boyle, founder of Music for Business Finder, and a screenshot of notifications on his phone from the autonomous AI agent helping to run his startup. (Images courtesy of John Boyle) For small business owners playing Spotify over their shop speakers, the threat of hefty copyright fines is...

Microsoft cuts hundreds more jobs, shifts next ‘Halo’ game to Activision in Xbox overhaul

Microsoft cuts hundreds more jobs, shifts next ‘Halo’ game to Activision in Xbox overhaul

September 22, 2026

Microsoft cut hundreds of additional jobs Tuesday, including 268 across its Xbox game studios. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) Microsoft is making hundreds of additional layoffs on Tuesday morning, continuing the Xbox restructuring announced in July but also extending beyond it with job cuts...

Bungie apologizes to fans, unseals ‘Destiny’ content vault, tries to convince the world it’s still Bungie

Bungie apologizes to fans, unseals ‘Destiny’ content vault, tries to convince the world it’s still Bungie

September 21, 2026

(Bungie press image) Bungie, the Bellevue, Wash.-based video game studio behind Destiny and Marathon, began its week with an apology from its new studio head, as it tries to win back its audience after several recent missteps. On Monday morning, in a blog post and video entitled “The Next...

Former Seattle City Council president launches AI-powered site to track and report on City Hall

Former Seattle City Council president launches AI-powered site to track and report on City Hall

September 21, 2026

Sara Nelson launched the CivicTide website Monday. (Sara Nelson Campaign Photo) Sara Nelson, the former Seattle City Council president, is making her debut as a publisher and commentator, with an eye toward boosting civic engagement, and a little help from AI agents. CivicTide, which Nelson...

Ex-Zillow VP’s startup Truelist acquired by Mainstay in $18M expansion of real estate AI

Ex-Zillow VP’s startup Truelist acquired by Mainstay in $18M expansion of real estate AI

September 21, 2026

Truelist founder and CEO Carey Armstrong. (LinkedIn Photo) Seattle-based real estate tech startup Truelist has been acquired by San Francisco-based Mainstay as part of an $18 million growth funding round aimed at expanding AI-powered tools across the residential property market. Founded in...

Seattle startups DexCare and Mila Health combine to expand AI patient scheduling

Seattle startups DexCare and Mila Health combine to expand AI patient scheduling

September 21, 2026

Matt Blosl, left, CEO of DexCare, and Shailu Verma, co-founder and CEO of Mila Health. (LinkedIn Photos) Seattle health-tech startup DexCare today announced it’s acquiring Mila Health, a fellow Seattle-area company that has built AI agents to call and text patients seeking medical...

Plug and Play Seattle picks 11 startups for 4th cohort, from space robotics to biotech

Plug and Play Seattle picks 11 startups for 4th cohort, from space robotics to biotech

September 21, 2026

Startup founders who pitched for Plug and Play’s batch four cohort take part in a selection day at UW’s CoMotion Labs. (Plug and Play Photo) Plug and Play Seattle selected 11 startups for the fourth batch of its accelerator program, bringing together a group of founders building everything from...

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping

September 21, 2026

Meta’s promotional images show Muse comparing strollers and asking for approval before placing an order. (Meta Images) Amazon says it has cut off Meta’s new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com on behalf of customers, after attempting unsuccessfully to get the Facebook parent...

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Sept. 13, 2026

Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Sept. 13, 2026

September 20, 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 Sept. 13, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...

AI meets real estate: Zillow engineering SVP Toby Roberts on the future of buying and selling homes

AI meets real estate: Zillow engineering SVP Toby Roberts on the future of buying and selling homes

September 19, 2026

Scenes from the live GeekWire Podcast recording at Atmosphere Seattle, with Zillow Senior Vice President of Engineering Toby Roberts, Real Estate At Work host Leka Devatha, and GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop. (GeekWire Photos / Curt Milton) Zillow launched 20...

Tech Moves: Ascend promotes Nate Bek; Microsoft Word ‘Agent Mode’ architect exits; TAF names new exec

Tech Moves: Ascend promotes Nate Bek; Microsoft Word ‘Agent Mode’ architect exits; TAF names new exec

September 18, 2026

Nate Bek, left, with Ascend founding general partner Kirby Winfield at the firm’s Founders Bash event Thursday night. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook) — Seattle-based venture capital firm Ascend promoted Nate Bek to principal. Bek joined the firm as an associate in January 2024 and was most recently...

Space hardware startup plans $125M stock offering and Nasdaq listing through shell company merger

Space hardware startup plans $125M stock offering and Nasdaq listing through shell company merger

September 18, 2026

An artist’s conception shows Gravitics’ Diamondback orbital carrier, which is due to make its debut as early as 2027. (Gravitics Illustration) Marysville, Wash.-based Gravitics, which is developing orbital carriers for government and commercial customers, is getting ready for a reverse takeover...

Twin tech founders who left Seattle for Alaska bet on an AI agent named ‘Walter’ to cover local news

Twin tech founders who left Seattle for Alaska bet on an AI agent named ‘Walter’ to cover local news

September 18, 2026

Twin brothers Lucas and Lee Brown co-founded Seattle’s HasOffers in 2009 and rebranded to Tune in 2014. (Instagram / Geeks in the Woods) Several years after leaving Seattle’s startup scene to build a “tech outpost” in the Alaskan wilderness, serial entrepreneurs and twin brothers Lee and Lucas...

From elections to board games: Washington’s secretary of state does double duty as a tabletop trade envoy

From elections to board games: Washington’s secretary of state does double duty as a tabletop trade envoy

September 18, 2026

Steve Hobbs, secretary of state for Washington, poses at his booth during the 2026 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo/Thomas Wilde) If you explore the main expo hall during the Penny Arcade Expo, you can often find some interesting booths around the edges of the room. These can offer...

Fewer lab animals, better drugs: This startup wants to fix how experiments get designed

Fewer lab animals, better drugs: This startup wants to fix how experiments get designed

September 18, 2026

ModernVivo co-founders Colin Small (left) and Ian Levine (right). Seattle-based ModernVivo is using AI to help scientists design preclinical studies for drug discovery. The goal: better experiments that are also faster, cheaper and less reliant on animals. “You’d be shocked at the way...

Inside Temporal’s journey to a $12.55B valuation, and its bet on building a backbone for AI agents

Inside Temporal’s journey to a $12.55B valuation, and its bet on building a backbone for AI agents

September 18, 2026

Temporal co-founders Maxim Fateev, CTO (left), and Samar Abbas, CEO. (Temporal Photo) One of the hottest infrastructure companies in AI today is a startup established nearly seven years ago, tracing its roots to work its founders were doing before the cloud was a thing. Temporal, based in...

Seattle’s KEXP eyes a second physical home — in San Francisco’s historic Haight-Ashbury

Seattle’s KEXP eyes a second physical home — in San Francisco’s historic Haight-Ashbury

September 17, 2026

The Doolan-Larson House and Storefronts in San Francisco, a potential future KEXP location. (SF Heritage Photo / Alvis E. Hendley) Seattle independent radio station KEXP is exploring the possibility of building out a second physical home — far from its beloved base at Seattle Center — in San...

Startup Ravel raises $8.2M to help solve clothing recycling’s spandex problem

Startup Ravel raises $8.2M to help solve clothing recycling’s spandex problem

September 17, 2026

The Ravel team at its Seattle pilot facility in March 2025, from left: Forest Davis, process development scientist; John Goods, co-founder and chief technologist; Zahlen Titcomb, co-founder and CEO; Zack Wolford, research engineer; and Kristen Albrecht, chief sustainability officer and vice...

Startup Spotlight: Local Crew uses video and AI to cut out in-person home repair estimates

Startup Spotlight: Local Crew uses video and AI to cut out in-person home repair estimates

September 17, 2026

Saad Nadeem, co-founder of Seattle startup Local Crew. (Photo courtesy of Saad Nadeem) Saad Nadeem doesn’t have any professional background in home improvement. But like any self-respecting weekend warrior, his experiences as a homeowner have taught him some valuable lessons. The biggest...

Portland startup Antfly raises $2M to streamline data infrastructure for AI agents

Portland startup Antfly raises $2M to streamline data infrastructure for AI agents

September 17, 2026

Antfly co-founders James McDermott, left, and AJ Roetker. (Photos courtesy of Antfly) Antfly, a Portland startup building software to streamline how artificial intelligence systems access corporate data, announced Thursday that it has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led...

Oracle cuts 359 Washington jobs in latest AI-driven layoffs; Seattle offices ‘not closing’

Oracle cuts 359 Washington jobs in latest AI-driven layoffs; Seattle offices ‘not closing’

September 16, 2026

Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk. (Oracle Photo) Oracle is laying off 359 employees in Washington state — its second significant job cuts this year — according to a filing Wednesday with the state Employment Security Department. The cuts affect remote employees across Washington state as well as...

How UW’s solar vehicle team harnessed the sun and hard work to shine on the national stage

How UW’s solar vehicle team harnessed the sun and hard work to shine on the national stage

September 16, 2026

Elijah Yan, left, and Rudy Heredia-Jantz, members of the Solar Vehicle Team at UW, with Sakura, the solar-powered vehicle the student-led team constructed in their shop at the University of Washington. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) In a cramped corner workspace in a mechanical engineering...

UW, Microsoft and E8 back climate tech incubator targeting data centers as AI energy concerns surge

UW, Microsoft and E8 back climate tech incubator targeting data centers as AI energy concerns surge

September 16, 2026

Taylor Brugh, Microsoft sustainability markets partnerships & ops lead, at Tuesday’s CoMotion Labs Climate Tech Incubator Demo Day, where the data center-focused program was announced. (CoMotion Photo) As public concern grows about the environmental impact of AI data centers, the University of...

From school nuggets to insect kibble: How the next generation of faux meats aims to win over skeptics

From school nuggets to insect kibble: How the next generation of faux meats aims to win over skeptics

September 16, 2026

Taoran Wang, senior food scientist at Rebellyous Foods, displays a tray of experimental chicken patties. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) Subscribe to Positive Charge: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, All Episodes More than 40 years ago, the first commercial veggie...

Interlune raises $5M for initiatives that go beyond mining the moon

Interlune raises $5M for initiatives that go beyond mining the moon

September 16, 2026

An artist’s conception shows a mining operation on the moon, including harvesters and a solar power plant. (Interlune Illustration) Seattle-based Interlune has raised $5 million in fresh funding to support a business plan that involves building space infrastructure as well as mining the moon for...

Helion funding round grows to $500M amid uncertainty over fusion startup’s Microsoft timeline

Helion funding round grows to $500M amid uncertainty over fusion startup’s Microsoft timeline

September 15, 2026

An aerial view of Orion, Helion Energy’s planned fusion plant being built in Malaga, Wash. (Helion Photo) Helion Energy on Tuesday said that it added $35 million to a funding round initially announced in June. The Everett, Wash.-based fusion company originally shared news of a $465 million...

Terry Myerson retires as Truveta CEO, with co-founders stepping in to lead $1B health data startup

Terry Myerson retires as Truveta CEO, with co-founders stepping in to lead $1B health data startup

September 15, 2026

Terry Myerson, Truveta’s co-founder and CEO, will retire at the end of September. (Truveta Photo) Terry Myerson, the former Microsoft executive who co-founded Truveta during the pandemic, growing it to 500 employees and a valuation of more than $1 billion, is retiring as CEO of the Bellevue,...

Uncommon Thinkers 2026: Last call for nominations for Seattle’s boldest innovators

Uncommon Thinkers 2026: Last call for nominations for Seattle’s boldest innovators

September 15, 2026

The 2025 “Uncommon Thinkers” award winners, from left: Anindya Roy, co-founder of Lila Biologics; Kiana Ehsani, co-founder of Vercept; Max Blumen of Tin Can representing winner Chet Kittleson, co-founder of Tin Can; Jeff Thornburg, co-founder of Portal Space Systems; Jay Graber of Bluesky; and...

Sen. Maria Cantwell warns of autonomous AI ‘swarms’ as she calls for federal guardrails

Sen. Maria Cantwell warns of autonomous AI ‘swarms’ as she calls for federal guardrails

September 15, 2026

Pointing to recent security incidents where networked AI agents spontaneously formed “swarms” to hack computer systems, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) took to the Senate floor Monday to demand urgent federal guardrails and mandatory independent safety testing for frontier AI models before...

Goldman Sachs plants flag in Bellevue, opening hub for more than 125 AI and cloud engineers

Goldman Sachs plants flag in Bellevue, opening hub for more than 125 AI and cloud engineers

September 15, 2026

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon Goldman Sachs is expanding its technology presence in the Seattle region, opening a new Bellevue engineering center that will accommodate more than 125 employees focused on artificial intelligence and cloud transformation. The New York-based financial giant...

Seattle’s Nuance Labs raises $50M to give AI models human expression and nuance

Seattle’s Nuance Labs raises $50M to give AI models human expression and nuance

September 15, 2026

Nuance Labs co-founders, from left, Fangchang Ma, Edward Zhang, and Karren Yang. (Nuance Photo) Nuance Labs, a Seattle-based artificial intelligence startup developing a foundational AI model designed to perceive and respond to real-time human expression, raised $50 million in Series A...

Providence to receive $1.1B from Nike co-founder to build women’s health hospital in Oregon

Providence to receive $1.1B from Nike co-founder to build women’s health hospital in Oregon

September 15, 2026

Oregon’s first hospital focused on women’s health will be built on the campus of Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland. (Providence Illustration) Providence will receive $1.1 billion — one of the largest gifts ever pledged to a U.S. healthcare institution — from Nike co-founder Phil...

America’s machinists are retiring, and two startup founders in their 20s want to salvage what they know

America’s machinists are retiring, and two startup founders in their 20s want to salvage what they know

September 15, 2026

Neuramill co-founders Nick Khormaei (COO) and Nistha Mitra (CEO) at the Reindustrialize summit in Detroit. (Photo courtesy of Neuramill) When machinists with decades of experience retire, everything they know about how metal behaves under a cutting tool — or anything else they learned through a...

BuyWander raises $21M as retail returns startup expands nationwide from new Seattle HQ

BuyWander raises $21M as retail returns startup expands nationwide from new Seattle HQ

September 15, 2026

BuyWander co-founders Jordan Allen, left, and Brock Kowalchuk. (BuyWander Photo) BuyWander, an auction-based online marketplace for returned and overstocked retail items, announced Tuesday that it has raised $21 million in a Series A funding round led by Madrona Venture Group and Inspired...

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