June 05, 2015
What’s next for Bungie? Rumored layoffs and end of ‘Destiny 2’ updates raise questions about studio’s future
May 22, 2026
(Bungie press image) Thursday abruptly became a big news day for fans of Bellevue, Wash.-based video game developer Bungie, which announced that it plans to cease development on its popular online shooter Destiny 2. Eight hours after Bungie’s announcement, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier released...
Tech Moves: Xbox names CTO; Smartsheet gets first AI chief; Amazon VP departs for DoorDash
May 22, 2026
Scott Van Vliet. (LinkedIn Photo) — Microsoft’s Xbox promoted Scott Van Vliet to the role of chief technology officer. Van Vliet, based in the Los Angeles area, has been with the company across two stints totaling more than seven years, with work on Teams and Azure Communication...
Bellevue teens targeting salmon die-offs and mental health win big at international science fair
May 22, 2026
Lakshmi Agrawal, left, and Anusha Arora, both of Bellevue, Wash., hold their prizes at the Society for Science’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair earlier this month. (Lisa Fryklund / Licensed by Society for Science) Two teenagers from Bellevue, Wash., took home a combined...
The view from Bellevue: Seattle has the foundation for future growth — if it can fix its taxes
May 22, 2026
Participants at the Bellevue Chamber’s Seattle-focused luncheon, from left: Joe Nguyen, Seattle Metro Chamber; Tiffini Connell, West Coast Commercial Realty; Jon Scholes, Downtown Seattle Association; and moderator Joe Fain, Bellevue Chamber. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler) BELLEVUE, Wash. —...
A ‘final season’ at Microsoft for Yusuf Mehdi: Longtime exec plans to leave after one last year
May 22, 2026
Yusuf Mehdi speaks at Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC event in May 2024. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Yusuf Mehdi, one of Microsoft’s best-known and longest-serving business leaders, whose tenure has spanned 35 years from Windows 3.1 to Copilot, plans to leave the company after one more year — his...
Why this Seattle-area startup is putting its name on the front of an English Premier League soccer team
May 21, 2026
Crystal Palace Football Club and Seattle-area open-source software platform Temporal are partnering on a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal. (Crystal Palace Image) A Seattle-area developer tools startup is doing something that no amount of banner ads or conference booths could: it’s putting its...
CEO of Paul Allen’s $3.1B science and tech fund steps down less than a year after launch
May 21, 2026
Dr. Lynda Stuart’s last day at the Fund for Science and Technology was May 8. (File photo courtesy FFST) The first CEO of the Fund for Science and Technology, the $3.1 billion foundation responsible for giving away a large portion of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s fortune, has...
SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing
May 21, 2026
SpaceX is producing an average of 70 Starlink satellites per week in Redmond, its IPO filing shows. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Redmond, Wash., has been known for decades as the home of Microsoft, to the extent that the city’s name has become synonymous with the software giant. Maybe it’s time...
UW’s Ed Lazowska adds ‘Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award’ to his long list of honors
May 21, 2026
University of Washington professor emeritus Ed Lazowska. (UW Photo / Mark Stone) Ed Lazowska needs to clear more room in the trophy case. The University of Washington professor emeritus — a longtime computer science educator, researcher and fixture in Seattle’s tech community — has been...
Opinion: Washington state’s tax debate is missing half the equation
May 21, 2026
Housing costs, public safety concerns and the local political climate have all contributed to Seattle’s struggles. But tax policy influences business decisions too, particularly at the margin where firms decide where future hiring and expansion will occur. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt...
EV startup Electric Era launches battery systems to tackle data center energy crunch
May 21, 2026
Artist’s rendering of a CoPower Platform by Electric Era. (Electric Era Image). Seattle EV charging startup Electric Era is applying its battery expertise to energy storage systems for data centers. The company on Thursday announced the CoPower Platform, which pairs large batteries with the...
Meet the company that won the Microsoft-donated World Cup suite with a $100k bid for a great cause
May 21, 2026
L-R: Michael Atalla, chief marketing officer at UiPath and Katie Fath, director of community giving at Seattle Children’s Hospital with John Cook, GeekWire co-founder and publisher. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Seattle’s business and tech community just delivered a World Cup-sized assist for a...
AI is not your strategy: Author and business advisor Brian Evergreen explains why vision comes first
May 21, 2026
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop interviews author and strategist Brian Evergreen for the GeekWire Podcast at an Agents of Transformation dinner presented by Accenture at El Gaucho in Bellevue, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Holly Grambihler) [Editor’s Note: Agents of Transformation is an independent GeekWire...
Data center resistance comes home to Seattle as council considers a one-year freeze
May 21, 2026
The rooftop park on Ocean Pavilion offers views of the Seattle skyline and Elliott Bay. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) While tech companies including Microsoft and Amazon call the Seattle area home, residents are voicing opposition to the construction of new data centers that underpin their...
‘One of a kind’: Tributes pour in for S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, beloved tech mentor and friend
May 21, 2026
S. “Soma” Somasegar at AWS re:Invent in 2019. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) The tributes came quickly for S. “Soma” Somasegar, and they came from seemingly everywhere and everyone he touched across the technology and business community. A consistent picture emerged: Somasegar was kind,...
Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has a new gig — startup CEO
May 20, 2026
Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle in October 2022. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong) Bruce Harrell has a new job — with term sheets and customers as opposed to stump speeches and constituents. The former mayor of Seattle is the new CEO of Filium, a...
At Tech Alliance annual luncheon, a stark analysis and a call to action
May 20, 2026
Tech Alliance CEO Laura Ruderman addresses the crowd at State of Technology luncheon in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) It’s a complicated moment in Washington, our home state, where the tech giants are strong, the satellites are abundant, and economic growth may no longer be above...
Seattle, we’ve got an image problem
May 20, 2026
The cover of Newsweek magazine, May 20, 1996 — exactly 30 years ago today. Take a breath, close your eyes, and think about the words that define Seattle. Innovative. Outdoorsy. Global. Inventive. Smart. Progressive. Independent. A little reserved. A little weird. Thirty years ago today,...
Lab of UW Nobel winner cracks challenge of creating roomier protein cages to deliver genetic medicines
May 20, 2026
A computer-designed protein that forms a cage-like structure of pentagons and hexagons. (UW Institute for Protein Design Illustration) Medical experts use gene therapies for a variety of ailments — treating hemophilia with a clotting-factor gene or dosing a cancer patient with therapeutic DNA or...
Starfish Space shifts its sights to Australian satellite for orbital docking demonstration
May 20, 2026
An artist’s conception shows Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite in orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration) Eleven months after launch, Starfish Space’s Otter Pup 2 satellite is finally kicking its test mission into high gear, closing in for a rendezvous with a newly designated target. If all...
Jeff Bezos describes his $38B startup Prometheus for the first time: ‘Nothing to do with robotics’
May 20, 2026
Jeff Bezos during a CNBC Squawk Box interview at Blue Origin’s Rocket Park in Merritt Island, Fla., on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. When CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin described Jeff Bezos’ startup Project Prometheus as being “really about AI robotics” in an interview on Wednesday, the Amazon founder...
Amazon Leo’s leaders provide an inside look at the satellite broadband network’s past and future
May 20, 2026
Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Amazon Leo, discusses Amazon’s plans for satellite broadband services while Chris Weber, Amazon Leo’s vice president of business and product, looks on during the Technology Alliance’s State of Technology Luncheon in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Brian M....
S. ‘Soma’ Somasegar, 1966-2026: Microsoft and Madrona leader was a champion of developers and startups
May 20, 2026
S. “Soma” Somasegar at Microsoft in 2014, giving a tour of the revamped Developer Division offices. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) S. “Soma” Somasegar, a fixture in the Seattle tech community who led Microsoft’s Developer Division as part of his 27-year tenure at the company before...
Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption
May 19, 2026
From left: Expedia Group chairman Barry Diller, CEO Ariane Gorin, former CEO and current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and founder Rich Barton at Expedia’s Explore partner conference in Las Vegas this week. (Expedia Group Photo) From her office overlooking the atrium at Expedia Group’s sunlit...
Mistakes new startup founders should avoid — according to those who made them
May 19, 2026
Tin Can co-founder and CEO Chet Kittleson, right, speaks with Pioneer Square Labs Managing Director Greg Gottesman at Seattle Flow Startup Day at Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle on May 15. (Dan DeLong Photo) This past Christmas, Chet Kittleson was in the back of a minivan watching his...
Student rocketry team soars in U.S. competition despite losing their motor in the mail
May 19, 2026
The Washington Youth Aerospace team, from left: Nikhil Sirivara, Daniel Tadesse, Mikhail Antipin, Bao-Ky Tran, Antoine Vigneron and Anay Mediwala, pose with the rocket supplies vendor who found the motor the kids needed for a successful launch in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy of Sudheer...
TerraByte raises the curtain on its campaign to use AI to unleash the power of geospatial data
May 19, 2026
A screenshot of TerraByte’s software platform pinpoints cargo ships, warehouses, solar farms, mining sites and areas of deforestation. One complex query generated more than 2,000 results that can be further filtered. Click on the image for a larger version. (Credit: TerraByte AI) A stealthy...
StitcherAI emerges from stealth with $3M and a different take on the AI spending problem
May 19, 2026
StitcherAI co-founders Varun Mittal (left) and Udam Dewaraja. (StitcherAI Photo) StitcherAI, backed by $3 million in pre-seed funding, launched today with an unusual approach to help companies get a handle on AI and cloud spending before the bills get out of control. Founded by a pair of...
Jury finds Musk waited too long to sue OpenAI and Microsoft, clearing defendants in landmark AI case
May 18, 2026
Reporters and lawyers line up outside the federal courthouse in Oakland for jury selection. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop) A jury ruled unanimously Monday that Elon Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit against OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft, finding the defendants not liable on all...
Starbucks layoffs impact 252 jobs at Seattle support center, including VPs and other senior roles
May 18, 2026
Starbucks headquarters in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo) Layoffs at a Starbucks support center in Seattle will impact 252 corporate jobs, including a number of vice presidents, directors and senior managers, according to a new state filing on Monday. A Washington Worker Adjustment and...
Gates Foundation Trust ends an era, selling off all remaining Microsoft stock
May 18, 2026
The Gates Foundation marked its 25th anniversary in May 2025 with a panel, from left: Emma Tucker, Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief; Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation; and Bill Gates. (GeekWire screenshot from live stream) The Gates Foundation’s trust no longer owns any shares of...
AWS veteran Matt Wood returns to cloud giant in new role: chief AI and technology officer
May 18, 2026
Matt Wood speaks at the AWS Summit in New York in July 2024. (Amazon Photo) Matt Wood, who spent more than 14 years helping to lead Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence and machine learning initiatives before leaving the company in 2024, is returning to the company in a newly created...
Opinion: Don’t let the OpenAI soap opera hide the precedent
May 18, 2026
From left: Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The courtroom spectacle in Oakland has obscured a bigger question, argues AI industry veteran Oren Etzioni: Can a charity be converted into a corporation? (GeekWire File Photos) We are watching a courtroom drama in...
UN digital envoy warns AI influence is concentrated in a ‘few zip codes,’ calls for global action
May 17, 2026
United Nations’ Under-Secretary and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, Amandeep Singh Gill, appears via Zoom to deliver the opening keynote at Seattle University’s 2026 Ethics and Tech conference on May 15, 2026. (Photo: Ken Yeung) Big tech companies are deploying compute...
Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of May 10, 2026
May 17, 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 May 10, 2026. Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter. Most popular stories on...
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