Convenience Big Store: Satya Nadella on Microsoft’s 50th and its future

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It was a momentous day in Redmond, as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates joined former CEO Steve Ballmer and current CEO Satya Nadella to mark the company’s 50th anniversary.

Read our recap and see photos from the event, and hear highlights and catch up with our interview with Nadella on this week’s GeekWire Podcast.

Subscribe to the GeekWire Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Also see GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 special series.

A team of students from the University of Washington took the $15,000 grand prize in the annual Environmental Innovation Challenge. Voltair is developing self-charging drones that use AI to survey electrical lines to look for potential threats that could knock out power or spark a fire. Read more.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at Amazon as a vice president of product overseeing the company’s home security camera arm and related businesses. Siminoff left the tech giant in 2023, five years after Amazon acquired Ring for a reported $1 billion. Read more.

Blue Origin landed $2.4 billion in the U.S. Space Force’s latest round of procurement for future national security launches. Read more.

Seattle entrepreneur Varun Puri, CEO of communication training startup Yoodli, talks about his startup journey and helping build “the Grammarly for speech.” (Shift AI Podcast)

Upcoming events: Tech and startup community gatherings on our radar in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

April 5: SPEED HACKATHON: AI AGENTS
April 5: In-Person Hackathon Event | Microsoft Reactor | Redmond
April 6: Seattle Aviation Expo
April 7: DigiMarCon Northwest 2025
April 8: Startup & Small Business CoWorking Bellevue
April 9: Startup & Small Business CoWorking Kirkland

Check out the GeekWire Calendar for more.

Hot Links:

Alaska Airlines’ venture capital arm invested in Swiss startup Loft Dynamics to support development of full-motion Boeing 737 simulators and enhance pilot training. (Alaska Airlines)
Amazon rolled out a new Kindle feature that uses AI to show recaps for books to help readers jump back into a book series. (TechCrunch; Amazon)

A lean team, a partnership with TiVo, an investment in streaming, and a bold move from Jeff Bezos were key ingredients to Prime Video’s survival and success. (LinkedIn)

Thanks for subscribing to the GeekWire newsletter, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com; GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com; GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com.