Happy Saturday. Here are our picks for seven noteworthy storylines from the week — from the surprising collapse of a Seattle gaming giant, more layoffs in Seattle-area tech, the launch of a new moon mission, and more. Rec Room is signing off: The Seattle-based social gaming platform announced it will shut down on June 1, ending a 10-year run that saw the company raise $294 million and reach a $3.5 billion valuation — without ever finding a path to profitability. Snap confirmed to GeekWire that it has acquired select assets from Rec Room, with some team members joining Snap's hardware subsidiary to work on AR glasses.
Artemis 2 lifts off: After years of delays and close to $100 billion in spending, NASA launched its first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day Artemis 2 mission sent four astronauts on a journey around the moon — with Seattle-area companies playing a supporting role. Sen. Maria Cantwell toured two regional contractors, including Karman Space & Defense's facility in Mukilteo and an L3Harris facility in Redmond.
It was a bruising week on the jobs front. Oracle is cutting 491 employees in Washington state across two Seattle offices; Meta's latest round will impact 168 workers primarily in Seattle, Redmond and Bellevue; and Seattle VR gaming studio Polyarc significantly reduced its headcount after failing to secure new funding.
In her debut column for GeekWire, veteran tech journalist Mary Jo Foley dug into Microsoft's recent wave of reorgs, hiring freezes, and leadership shakeups and asked whether it's business as usual or something bigger.
A new space unicorn: Starcloud reached a $1.1 billion valuation after
raising $170 million in Series A funding, the fastest company in Y Combinator history to attain billion-dollar unicorn status. The Redmond, Wash.-based startup aims to solve Earth’s data center power crisis by launching solar-powered, AI-ready "server boxes" into orbit.
Apple's iPad revenge: Apple turned 50 this week, and David Pogue's new book "Apple: The First 50 Years" is packed with stories about the rivalry and partnership between Microsoft and the Mac/iPhone maker. One stands out, involving a birthday party, a Microsoft engineer who wouldn't stop talking about stylus tablets, and a very indignant Steve Jobs.
Hit or miss? Researchers at Washington State University took a swing at understanding the science around baseball bat design, and whether the viral “torpedo” bats used by the New York Yankees perform any better than traditional bats. Read more.
The WSU study is one of the topics on this week's GeekWire Podcast. Todd and John also discuss MLB's new automated ball-strike system and what it says about the future of human judgment vs. machine precision. Plus, the Rec Room shutdown, OpenAI's surprising acquisition of tech talk show TBPN, and a field test of Amazon's new FedEx Office returns. Read more and listen here, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Upcoming events: Tech and startup community gatherings on our radar in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
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Thanks for subscribing, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com; reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com; and reporter Lisa Stiffler, lisa@geekwire.com. 
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