Portland, Oregon, startup news - Silicon Florist

This week in Oregon startup news, Agility Robotics is headed toward a SPAC IPO w — could be one of the biggest Oregon IPOs this year. Speaking of IPOs… with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all going public the Bay Area is getting less and less affordable. And I also spent way too many hours with the 2026 Oregon Prosperity Council Report so you don't have to — 452 pages. LINKS: A startup founder&...

Catch up on the biggest Oregon startup news of 2026 news with a breakdown of the top 10 startup stories defining the year so far. Get the essential details you need to stay informed on the major headlines without the filler. Whether you have been following the news closely or just need a quick catch-up, this summary breaks down the key developments affecting current events today. It is designed fo...

This week in Portland startup news, we start with the top 10 Silicon Florist posts from H1 2026 — the list readers built by clicking, not me — and the story it tells is worth pausing over: QSBS grabbed the top two slots, Dwayne Johnson's community read landed at number three, and Panthalassa's quiet $140 million Series B slotted in at four. From there, a midyear refresh of the "how to Portland sta...

Two weeks straight, we've lost the people who showed us this was even possible — first Josh Baer, and now Om Malik, the guy who made writing about tech a real job. The models keep leaving, and I don't have a clean way to say what that feels like. So this week is a tribute first — and then, because Om would've wanted us to keep going, a hometown robot company walking onto the public markets at $2.5...

I almost didn't record this week. We lost Josh Baer — Capital Factory's founder, the godfather of the Austin startup community, and honestly one of the few people who showed the rest of us this work could actually be done, and done right. Then we turn the corner toward the Portland dream that refuses to die: Devin Gaffney's CoCore, an "Airbnb for compute" rebuilt on AT Proto — the same rails as Bl...

The week starts with Dwayne Johnson's "The Red Pill" — the most honest structural diagnosis of Oregon's innovation economy I've read in years, from someone who's been inside the system for two decades, not outside it. Oregon fell from #7 to #41 in CNBC's Top States for Business across the Brown era; Oregon got second in semiconductor productivity and 0.002% of federal CHIPS R&D funds. His phrase:...

Plus a quietly extraordinary week of Portland startup news on top of that. Hydrolix is named Portland's fastest-growing company at 2,721% two-year revenue growth — with nearly flat headcount. Tellagence drops LLM variability from 22–28% down to 1–2.5% with a freshly-published arXiv paper. Prophetic lands M/I Homes, its second national homebuilder after DR Horton. The Portland Metro Region Innovati...

Short week, light coverage, and I'm recording this from Bend, Oregon, ahead of tonight's fireside. This one's about Oregon quietly building an autonomy beat — drones in Pendleton, robotic farms in Portland — plus a new objective answer to whether the LLMs are recommending your dev tool, and a small-business front door that actually delivered. CHAPTERS:00:00 Live from Bend, it's Oregon startup news...

Inside this week in Oregon startup news, a Bend EV dirt bike company gets acquired, a stealthy Portland-area startup lands a seat in Seattle's Maritime Blue incubator (water as a financial product), three small startups making interesting moves around AI, home ownership, and your voice, and a vibe-coded tick map that arrived in my life the week before I head to Bend, Oregon. Plus the usual secrets...

Portland Startup Week 2026 wraps with a quiet news week and a loud everything-else week. Oregon showcased innovation — and got some tough love on the workforce side. A robotic greenhouse out of Portland punched its ticket to the global Startup World Cup finale. And 19 AI startups took the stage at Big Pink for the inaugural Oregon AI Accelerator demo day — which the organizers say is the first of...

This week's recap: Panthalassa's $140M Series B for ocean-energy-powered AI compute and where it lands on the all-time Portland funding leaderboard. Plus the finalized Portland Startup Week 2026 lineup (including the AI events I punted on last week), Latino Founders' Next Wave Startup Lab Climate Edition opening apps for May 29–31, three founder podcast conversations, plus Startup Grin...

A week that felt like everywhere-all-at-once. Waymo finally confirmed it's coming to Portland — they're driving manually for now, but they're here. Portland Startup Week 2026 dropped its schedule with 50+ events already and counting. And All Raise — a national organization doing some of the most important work in venture — has its CEO right here in Portland, and she's just getting...

Portland startup news for the week of April 24, 2026 — I finally wrote up the "Vicious Cycle of Venture Capital" — the dynamic I've been talking about for years that explains why early-stage fundraising is so hard in Portland. Plus: Portland is hosting its first-ever Startup World Cup regional (applications due early May, $1M investment on the line), the Oregon UAS Accelerator just h...

Portland venture capital just hit a 10-year low — $69.7 million across 15 deals in Q1 2026. And honestly? I think that's a good thing. Because I've seen this movie before, and the companies that came out of the last downturn include a unicorn, a billion-dollar exit, and several acquisitions. Plus: one of the most active seed funds in the region just changed their name, 300 open source deve...

Upstart Collective officially opened its new home on the fifth floor of Big Pink — and it's a big deal for Portland's startup community. Plus: Governor Kotek signed SB 1507 (the QSBS tax), but her signing letter hints at a fix. ConductorOne rebrands to C1. And a YC alum in Vancouver, WA wants to freeze your brain and hook it up to the internet. CHAPTERS00:00 Oregon startup news07:00 Upstar...

Portland's Mayor Keith Wilson launched a Central City Roundtable to reinvigorate downtown — but there's not a single entrepreneur or startup person at the table. This week I've got feelings about that. Plus: an intercollegiate hackathon, a Portland cleantech startup heading to Atlanta, Business Oregon's $125K innovation plan check-in, the top 10 Silicon Florist stories for Q1 2026,...

This week: Beaverton Startup Challenge deadline, All Raise's VC diversity survey, Dominic Kuklawood on The Awkward Handshake, my Prosperity Council response on SB 1507, the Yex Labs fiscal impact model that shows Oregon could lose a billion dollars over 10 years from QSBS taxation, and Charles Voloshin's Control Your Persona manifesto. Plus secrets. Chapters00:00 Intro00:27 Beaverton Start...

This week: Silicon Forest Tech Summit 2026 recap, Eclypsium raises another $25M (bringing their total past $110M), Seattle's OneCourt wins SXSW Pitch with a Portland Trail Blazers connection, PIE alum James McDermott is back with a new AI startup called Antfly, and in Secrets — why Oregon's QSBS tax policy is an existential threat to the startup ecosystem.⏱️ CHAPTERS (estimated — adjust to...

Much better mood this week. Depot — a YC alum with Portland roots — just raised a $10M Series A. Tower, co-founded by PIE alum Brad Heller, raised $6.4M. PDXWIT is rebooting. The Claude Code hackathon drew 120 people who built 52 projects in 3 hours. And the Silicon Forest Tech Summit is tomorrow. TIMECODES 00:00 Oregon startup news intro 08:30 Silicon Forest Tech Summit preview 10:30 Depot raises...

The week started great — Silicon Forest Tech Summit lineup, Agility's rebrand, SBIR grants returning, Portland Dining Month — and then Oregon's QSBS legislation landed on the governor's desk. Let's break down what qualified small business stock exclusion meant for Oregon founders and investors, why removing it hurts the people who can least afford it, and what (if anything) you can...

We’ve got Hackathons Eve (OpenClaw unhackathon + Claude Code hackathon on Feb 28), a potential Oregon QSBS tax issue worth watching, a Marshall Kirkpatrick return with a new context-first browser extension (“What’s Up With That”), plus two major space stories: Feed the Mass taking over a former Airbnb office in Old Town, and Upstart Collective consolidating into Big Pink to become a bigger home ba...

Hackathons are back in the Portland tech community — and they’re coming back with an AI-shaped vengeance. On February 28, you’ve got two legit options: the OpenClaw Global Unhackathon with AI Tinkers Portland (a no-prizes, heads-down “ship code” session built around OpenClaw/Clawbot energy), and a Claude Code hackathon hosted by AJ Green + the AI Collective with Anthropic in the mix. Plus: Scott H...

Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, but Oregon Venture Fund just gave founders the real love language: clarity. OVF published a new AI startup rubric — stage-by-stage expectations from pre-seed to Series A — covering what they actually look for in product, traction, team, go-to-market, and yes… revenue (because “it’s AI” isn’t a business model). I break down how to use it to stop wasting shots, pitch when...

Oregon isn’t building the next Silicon Valley. But this week made me a lot more bullish on Oregon becoming a real center of AI excellence — because it’s not just startups, it’s the whole stack: accelerator momentum, community energy, education, hardware, and the infrastructure that makes AI actually work. TIMESTAMPS00:00 Oregon startup news intro01:00 Everyone wants to build the next Silicon Valle...

This was a heavy—but important—week in the startup community. We cover several meaningful shifts across the Oregon ecosystem, including Angel Oregon’s evolution into Angel Oregon CPG, expanding its focus beyond food to support a broader range of consumer product startups. There are signs of a possible PDX Women in Tech reboot, new thinking around fundraising in the AI era, and notable moves by Por...