GeekWire

This week: As the Musk v. OpenAI trial heads to the jury, we dig into what Microsoft's internal board memos and executive testimony revealed about the origins of the company's massive bet on AI, and why this case matters beyond the billionaire drama. Plus, Howard Schultz, a former Washington governor, and the tech community weigh in on whether Seattle is squandering its edge as an innovation capit...

This week on the show: Conversations with finalists and special guests at the annual  GeekWire Awards about AI, innovation, startups, and the forces reshaping their industries, plus a special trivia challenge marking GeekWire's 15th year hosting the event. Guests include: Luis Poggi, CEO of HouseWhisper AI , winner of CEO of the Year Tracy Drinkwater, founder of the Seattle Universal Math Mus...

This week on the show: Todd  reports from inside the Oakland federal courthouse where Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft, with jury selection revealing just how hard it is to find anyone neutral about Musk these days. Meanwhile,  Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership the same morning the trial began — and less than 24 hours later, OpenAI's models lan...

Bill Hilf has spent decades enterprise tech, open-source technologies, and AI, from IBM and Microsoft to running Paul Allen's portfolio as the CEO of Vulcan. He now chairs the Allen Institute for AI and American Prairie . His debut sci-fi novel,  "The Disruption," imagines AI gone very wrong, and implicitly challenges the industry to think differently about how it's building our real future t...

Microsoft is offering a voluntary retirement program for the first time in its history, with thousands of U.S. employees eligible. GeekWire's Todd Bishop joins KIRO Newsradio hosts Angela Poe Russell and Mike Lewis to break down the details, what makes this so unusual in the tech industry, and what it says about the company's approach to managing costs in the AI era.  See omnystudio.com/liste...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast , a week of Seattle-area startup news shows how the AI era is reshaping the regional tech scene. Q1 venture numbers reveal bigger checks going to fewer companies, with Seattle slipping behind the likes of Austin and Miami on deal volume. And yet the distributed nature of modern startups is complicating what it even means to be a regional tech hub. (Does a mailbox...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit's 2 Line as we ride the world's first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle's Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft's campus in Redmond. Along the way, we talk tech news, chat with fellow passengers, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering from Sound T...

This week: Rec Room , the Seattle-based social gaming platform once valued at $3.5 billion, is shutting down — and Snap is picking up some of the pieces . Todd talks about what it was like fielding calls from distraught users on the night of the announcement. John offers his thoughts on what the shutdown says about the VR hype cycle, and whether everyone betting on the AI boom should take no...

Fresh off the big GeekWire AI summit this week, Todd and John unpack what they heard from Microsoft EVP Charles Lamanna, OpenAI applications CTO Vijaye Raji, and other speakers at the Agents of Transformation event in Seattle , presented by Accenture. The big thread: the economics of AI, from token budgets becoming a hiring negotiation point to startups running on subsidized credits that may not l...

Amazon is working on a new smartphone, code-named "Transformer," more than a decade after the Fire Phone debacle, according to Reuters . We dig into the connection to a past GeekWire scoop : former Microsoft Xbox leader J Allard joined Amazon's devices team in 2024, and he's now leading a group called ZeroOne with a mandate to create "breakthrough" gadgets. Is this an AI-native device? A companion...

Brice Budke (President) and Zeek Earl (Executive Creative Director) run two Seattle studios: Shep , a video agency that works with tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and Packrat , a creative studio that specializes in miniature worlds, handmade sets, and retro creative projects. You might know Packrat's work from the epic and widely watched 2025 Seahawks  schedule release video , which...

OpenAI just opened its largest office outside San Francisco, in downtown Bellevue, Wash. GeekWire was there on day one to tour the space. Chatting inside the OpenAI game room, we share our observations about the Mad Men-meets-Pacific Northwest aesthetic, which features open floor plans and lots of common areas, and try to figure out what it all says about OpenAI's culture.  Plus, we talk with...

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 Meta ma...

Amazon promises 30-minute delivery with its new Amazon Now service . We put it to the test — live on the show — with help from Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz , co-founders of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and two of the sharpest Amazon watchers we know. While we wait for our order of yogurt, blueberries, and flossers ( long story ), Mike and Josh break down why Amazon closed i...

We're live this week in the "Center of the Universe" in Seattle for a special recording of the GeekWire Podcast, presented by the Fremont Chamber of Commerce at Fremont Brewing Co . Fresh off the Seahawks' Super Bowl victory, we debate some potential ownership groups for the Seahawks and Sonics — from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez to Costco's Jim Sinegal. (Who wouldn't want $1.50 hot dogs an...

GeekWire brought Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Seattle tech veteran Charles Fitzgerald together on the phone Thursday after a guest column warning Seattle not to repeat Cleveland's past mistakes sparked a big response — including from Bibb himself. What followed was a constructive conversation about what cities should do when the economic ground shifts beneath them. Plus: a Seattle-to-Clev...

Upcoming GeekWire Podcast Live Event: Join us from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb 12 at Fremont Brewing for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Free for Fremont Chamber members, $15 otherwise. Register here . This week on the show: Andy Jassy tells Wall Street that Amazon is  planning $200 billion in capital expenses this year, mostly to build out AI infra...

Upcoming GeekWire Podcast Live Event: Join us from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb 12 at Fremont Brewing for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Free for Fremont Chamber members, $15 for everyone else.  Register here . This week on the show, Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper hit the road for a driving tour of the news, making stops at Starbucks, Microsoft, and a...

Newly unsealed  court documents reveal the behind-the-scenes history of Microsoft and OpenAI · including a surprise: Amazon Web Services was the Silicon Valley AI lab's original partner. Plus, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella  debuts a new AI catchphrase at Davos, startup CEO Dave Clark gets attention for his " wildly productive weekend, " Elon Musk  talks aliens , and the latest...

Someone listening to last week’s GeekWire Podcast caught something we missed: a misleading comment by Alexa during our voice ordering demo — illustrating the challenges of ordering by voice vs. screen. We followed up with Amazon, which says it has fixed the underlying bug. On this week’s show, we play the audio of the order again. Can you catch it?  Plus, Microsoft announces...

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon and Microsoft are racing to define the next era of consumer AI, on multiple fronts. We discuss Amazon's attempt to upgrade Alexa into a true generative AI home chatbot — complete with a new web portal and updated Alexa app — while Microsoft leverages its enterprise strength to win over retailers with a new Copilot Checkout feature . Plus, we ex...

The FCC delivered a massive shakeup to the drone industry right before the holidays, adding foreign-made drones (most notably from industry giant DJI) to its "Covered List" of national security threats. While the move effectively bans the sale of future DJI models in the U.S., GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook explore why this might be a golden economic opportunity for the Pacific Northwe...

Todd Bishop and John Cook reflect on the top tech stories of 2025, a pivotal year defined by the AI boom's dual nature: massive infrastructure spending alongside widespread layoffs. We discuss Bill Gates' framing of AI as "intelligence becoming free," the tension between tech workers and corporate mandates to adopt AI, and the "best of times, worst of times" dichotomy playing out at Microsoft, Ama...

If you're looking for an uncommon thinker, how about a tech industry veteran developing and selling landline phones in 2025 — and selling out of them in the process. Chet Kittleson is the co-founder and CEO of Tin Can, a Seattle startup making Wi-Fi enabled landline phones designed to let kids talk to friends and family with just their voices. No screens, no AI.  GeekWire recognized Kit...

On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded backstage at the GeekWire Gala at the Showbox Sodo, we sit down with five of the inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs selected as the Seattle region's 2025 Uncommon Thinkers, in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners . Jeff Thornburg spent years building rocket engines for Elon Musk at SpaceX and Paul Allen at Stratolaunch. Now, as C...