Convenience Big Store: Amazon’s big bet | Oren Etzioni on AI

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“We have a philosophy in Seattle: old school principles, new school methods.” As the Seahawks gear up for tomorrow’s Super Bowl, check out our interview with head coach Mike Macdonald from before this season started. The self-described “football nerd” described his leadership approach as a hybrid of traditional football fundamentals and modern technology.

Super Bowl tech ads: AI is a big theme for this year’s big game, with Amazon, Ring, Google, Meta, and others pitching their latest technology products. Anthropic also takes a swing at OpenAI. Watch the ads here.

OpenAI is going big in Bellevue. The company is taking 10 additional floors at a downtown office tower, boosting its footprint to nearly 300,000 square feet in one of the largest AI leases across the Seattle region. The move also gives OpenAI a major hub just a short drive from Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters campus and within a few blocks of Amazon’s expanding Bellevue offices, tightening its ties with both cloud giants. Read more.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon bets $200 billion on AI infrastructure, AI agents get their own social network, and AI veteran Oren Etzioni talks agents, startups, deepfakes, and the race between the major AI research labs and big tech platforms. Read more and listen here, and subscribe to GeekWire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Upcoming Live Event: Join us 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, at Fremont Brewing in Seattle for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Register here.

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

Feb. 9: Executive Roundtable: AI Fluency in Action
Feb. 10: New Tech Seattle February Meetup
Feb. 11: AI-assisted coding in practice: successes, failures, and engineering trade-offs
Feb. 12: Live Recording: The GeekWire Podcast
Feb. 12: BDA Annual Celebration
Feb. 13: Eastside Marketing Morning Brew Meetup

Check out the GeekWire Calendar for more.

Hot Links:

Amazon’s corporate income tax bill shrunk by more than half in 2025, thanks to new federal tax laws. (Wall Street Journal)
Verizon sued T-Mobile, alleging that its rival exaggerated savings for customers. (Reuters)
The Oregon AI Accelerator announced its first cohort of companies. (Silicon Florist)

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

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