Happy Saturday. Here's our rundown of the week's big stories, anchored by GeekWire's big AI summit and a weekend transportation milestone that should change how a lot of tech workers commute.
Agents of Transformation: The debate over whether AI will transform industries is over. At GeekWire's half-day summit in Seattle, founders, executives and engineers wanted to know what's working, what isn't, and how fast everything is moving — and the answers came fast.
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OpenAI CTO of Applications Vijaye Raji (above, left) made his own tool using Codex that summarizes Slack messages, emails, and notifications every 15 minutes. "Everyone is going to be a builder," he said.
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Microsoft EVP Charles Lamanna described a similar shift: teams replacing static docs with lightweight interactive web apps built by agents. He also shed light on the job candidate request that is changing hiring dynamics in the AI era: ample funds for AI tokens.
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Startups pitched their big AI ideas in a session featuring innovations involving AI spend, HR support, agent "workers" and hardware cooling.
On this week’s GeekWire Podcast, Todd and John share their personal takeaways from the day and play a few highlights from the sessions. Read more and listen here, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
WA AG sues Kalshi: Washington Attorney General Nick Brown filed suit Friday against prediction market platform Kalshi, alleging the company violates state gambling and consumer protection laws. The complaint seeks to shut down Kalshi's Washington operations, the latest in a wave of more than 20 civil suits against the New York-based company.
T-Mobile cuts jobs: Bellevue-based T-Mobile confirmed layoffs this week, the second round of cuts in less than two months, after shedding 393 Washington state workers in February. The company said it is restructuring its IT organization to support future growth.
Crosslake Connection opens: GeekWire rode the world's first floating-bridge train this week in a preview of Sound Transit's 2 Line over Lake Washington between Seattle and Bellevue. The public gets on board starting today, and next week officials are hoping the daily work commutes of thousands of Microsoft, Amazon and other tech workers will be transformed.
From Ai2 to Microsoft: Former Ai2 CEO Ali Farhadi and two key researchers from the Seattle nonprofit are heading to Microsoft's Superintelligence team.
- Meanwhile, Ai2 released MolmoWeb, its own open-source web agent that navigates browsers — a transparent alternative to closed agentic systems from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
Washington's AI identity problem: Washington state may have everything it needs to become a global AI hub. The problem is, it hasn't figured out how to tell the world. At a roundtable convened by the Washington Technology Industry Association, civic and industry leaders debated what it will take to stop playing catch-up with Silicon Valley and start leading.
Brinc's big week: Seattle-based Brinc Drones unveiled the world's first drone with Starlink connectivity for first responders. CEO Blake Resnick's bold vision: "To replace the police helicopter." Brinc is moving to a new headquarters and factory up the Lake Washington Ship Canal from its current Seattle home.
Startup news:
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Edo is gaining momentum with its mission to turn existing buildings into virtual power plants, coordinating energy use across properties to reduce strain on the grid as data center electricity demand spikes.
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Aetheon, a new startup helping job candidates map their real-world capabilities into work opportunities, raised $1.24 million in seed funding.
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Helion Energy, the Seattle-area fusion company, is negotiating a deal to supply OpenAI with up to 5 gigawatts of power by 2030, ramping to 50 gigawatts by 2035. Helion also just nabbed the No. 1 spot on the GeekWire 200.
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Plug and Play selected 10 startups — nine of them from Seattle — for its third accelerator cohort, covering enterprise software, biotech, physical AI, robotics, and health tech.
Gaming notes: Bungie's revival of its online shooter "Marathon" overcame layoffs, a CEO departure, and an indefinite delay to become one of this year's unexpected successes. Meanwhile, Epic Games is laying off 82 employees at its Bellevue office — part of a broader 10% cut. CEO Tim Sweeney cited reduced Fortnite engagement, not AI, as the reason.
Guardian angel of groceries: Katherine Sizov was doing neuroscience research at the NIH when she stumbled on a statistic that changed her path: 40% of food in the U.S. is spoiled or tossed. "It's alive — it's a living, breathing organism," she said of food. "And our supply chains aren't designed for that." In 2019, she launched Seattle-based Strella, which uses IoT sensors to monitor produce as it moves through the supply chain. GeekWire's new Sustainability Spotlight series profiles her journey.
Amazon and FedEx, together again: FedEx severed its logistics relationship with Amazon in 2019. Now more than 1,500 FedEx Office locations are accepting box-free Amazon returns, the latest step in a partnership the two companies started to rekindle last year.
Tech Moves: The Xbox shake-up continues; Remitly named a new accounting chief; Atlassian's CTO stepped down; Smartsheet added to its C-suite; Armoire landed an ML lead; and more personnel changes.
Upcoming events: Tech and startup community gatherings on our radar in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
Check out the GeekWire Calendar for more.
Offline, and loving it: Two friends working in tech joked for years about opening a coffee shop. Last summer, Krystal Graylin and Lucy Kong quit their jobs at Microsoft and EY and made it real — launching Offline Coffee Co. in Seattle, a cafe with Chinese-inspired drink flavors and decor. As tech speeds everything up, the business is their deliberate bet on slowing things down.
Thanks for subscribing, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com, and reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com.
