Seattle Children’s is announcing today the launch of its Institute for Pediatric Innovation, a $10 million initiative with eight focus areas and a chief innovation officer yet to be named. The hospital is positioning the institute as the “core engine” driving its strategic plan.

CEO Dr. Christopher Longhurst has specific health challenges in mind where he hopes today’s technology could quickly improve care for pediatric patients.

“The question is, with this new generation of tools — not just AI and large language models, but precision health tools, whole genome sequencing, etc. — how can we leverage these tools to solve problems in ways that we have not before?” Longhurst said in an interview with GeekWire.

Seattle Children’s has approximately 600,000 patient visits last year and reported approximately $2.6 billion in expenses.

Longhurst became CEO in January after a decade at UC San Diego Health, where he founded and directed the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Center for Health Innovation. The institute is Seattle Children’s most prominent new organization-wide initiative since he took the job.

The institute “is not a new AI center. This isn’t about the shiny objects or the tools. This is about the outcomes that we can achieve and the impact that we can have,” Longhurst said. “So really, the focus here is impact at scale.”

The organization will concentrate on eight areas:

AI tools. Seattle Children’s plans to develop, test and use new technology tools. One example is a digital care platform specific to pediatric patients where families and providers can manage appointments, medications, results and communications. The hospital is already helping build one with industry partners and Longhurst is eager to include an AI chatbot for caregivers. Other AI work includes a pilot of an automated tool that rapidly generates anonymous copies of medical images for research and a listening tool that drafts clinical notes during appointments.

Industry partnerships. Longhurst said these cut across the other focus areas. The hospital is working with industry on the care platform, for example, and plans to partner on seeking FDA approval for pediatric uses of existing devices.

Innovation unit. The hospital is establishing a facility that offers advanced care and can test new pediatric devices. Longhurst pointed to Ochsner Health’s innovation lab as a model and said he wasn’t aware of a comparable facility focused on children.

Medical device innovation. This focus overlaps with the innovation care unit and aims to serve unmet pediatric needs. Longhurst noted that numerous medical devices designed for adults are being used off-label for children. One piece of the solution is taking data related to these applications and seeking FDA approval for use in kids.

Precision medicine. Seattle Children’s already offers targeted therapies and aims to expand them. A recently published study from the hospital found that genome analysis, usually performed only for critically ill patients, could lead to faster diagnoses for non-ICU patients, particularly children with failure to thrive. “The question for us now is … how do we make a research project into something that we do every day at scale?” Longhurst said.

Biomedical data. Patient monitoring produces vast amounts of electronic data that can be combined with genetic and protein-expression information. The hospital is pursuing technology that recognizes patterns across these sources in real time to guide treatment for critically ill and other patients.

Therapeutics. Research into next-generation cell, gene and protein therapies will expand.

Training for young scientists and clinicians. The hospital’s Invent@SC program provides mentorship and education for early-career researchers and clinicians. The initiative focuses on treatments discovered at Seattle Children’s that can be widely adopted.

Projects from the institute must be approved by a Seattle Children’s AI Review Board, which will assess whether proposed uses of AI are ethical, equitable and responsible. Those involving research will also go to the Institutional Review Board for regulatory compliance.

Seattle Children’s has recruited three external launch advisors to help recruit the CIO and develop the institute’s organizational structure. They are Dr. Matthew Lungren, a Stanford University adjunct professor and former chief scientific officer for health and life sciences at Microsoft; Dr. Kevin Koo, a radiologist whose experience includes leadership at Seattle Children’s and roles at UW Medicine and McKinsey & Company; and Dr. Jessica Mega, a cardiologist and co-founder of Verily, an Alphabet company.

Longhurst said the work will require a cultural shift at the institution, from risk aversion to an openness to change.

The institute’s initial funding comes from a $5 million anonymous gift and $5 million in existing resources. Longhurst acknowledged the amount is limited relative to the scope of the work.

“That’s really just the beginning,” he said. “And what that should signify is a commitment from me as the leader to allocate actual investments in this space.”

Aviation startup Reliable Robotics is opening a new engineering hub in the Seattle area, establishing a radar research and development center in Bothell.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also announced Tuesday that it has raised $115 million, pushing its valuation above $1 billion. The funding will help expand its aircraft fleet, production facilities and engineering team as it works toward federal certification of its autonomous flight technology.

Reliable’s new office in the Bothell Highlands north of Seattle will open with about 25 employees and serve as its Radar Center of Excellence, a facility for developing and testing systems designed to help aircraft detect and avoid other aircraft. The company plans to grow the team and is heavily recruiting in the region, including roles across radar, embedded software, flight controls, guidance and navigation, simulation and systems engineering.

The expansion adds another player to the Seattle area’s growing mix of aerospace, robotics and autonomous systems companies.

Last month, GeekWire reported that San Diego-based Shield AI selected Des Moines, Wash., as the production and engineering hub for its X-BAT, an AI-piloted aircraft designed to take off and land vertically. The heavily-funded company is planning a 420,000-square-foot manufacturing and engineering facility and says it expects to employ about 4,000 people in the region by the early 2030s.

Reliable is developing systems that can automate aircraft operations, including engine startup, taxiing, takeoff and landing. Its longer-term ambitions include enabling aircraft to fly without a pilot aboard, with remote operators overseeing flights from the ground. The company is working toward certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Founded by former SpaceX engineers in 2017, Reliable has spent nearly a decade developing technology designed to work with existing aircraft rather than requiring entirely new planes. Its initial system is intended to keep a pilot in the cockpit while automating key flight operations, with more advanced levels of autonomy planned over time.

The 250-person company’s latest financing, including $90 million led by Nimble Partners and a $25 million term loan from Silicon Valley Bank, brings total funding to $380 million.

The company’s new Bothell lab will bring together engineers to design, build and test radar systems, including its active electronically scanned array air-to-air radar.

The technology is intended to support detect-and-avoid capabilities that would help autonomous aircraft safely operate in the national airspace alongside conventional planes.

“Seattle represents the past, present and future of aviation. For decades, engineers here have developed aircraft and systems that change how the world connects,” Chris Schulenberg, Reliable’s vice president of programs, said in the company’s announcement. “By expanding into the Pacific Northwest, Reliable is uniting the tech talent in Silicon Valley with the aviation expertise of Seattle.”

The Bothell office — located at 21222 30th Drive SE — will be led by Schulenberg and Marc Pos, a senior technical fellow focused on radar who previously spent more than two decades at Honeywell.

“Radar development is a hands-on process,” Pos said in a statement. “By bringing a team together in a centralized lab and engineering environment, with all of the resources we need at our fingertips, we can move from design through development and testing with the rigor, speed and precision unique to Reliable.”

Reliable also plans to expand its engineering operations in San Diego, where it will focus on aviation autonomy for military applications.

The two offices bring the company’s footprint to five locations, joining its headquarters and aircraft hangars in California and the operating hub of its subsidiary airline, Reliable Airlines, in Albuquerque, N.M.

Carbon Robotics, the Seattle-based agricultural technology startup known for its AI-powered, laser-weeding farm implements, has trimmed its workforce.

The company did not disclose the total number of layoffs, but confirmed to GeekWire on Monday that the cuts affected employees across multiple departments both in the U.S. and internationally.

Carbon Robotics currently employs 275 people worldwide, according to Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing, who attributed the decision to a need to “realign costs due to broader economic conditions.”

The cuts come after a period of rapid momentum for the startup. The company raised $20 million last year to support the development of an undisclosed AI-powered farm robot. Carbon also unveiled an autonomous tractor kit in 2025.

The company’s signature product is its LaserWeeder, a machine which can be pulled behind a tractor and uses AI to detect and map plants in fields and then target and eliminate weeds with lasers. The most recent iteration is the LaserWeeder G2.

Founded in 2018 and led by CEO Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics has raised about $177 million to date from investors including BOND, NVentures, and Anthos Capital.

In a recent interview with AgFunder, Mikesell noted that the startup crossed the $100 million revenue threshold, stating, “We intend to keep scaling from there — it’s our intention to get to the point that we’re an independently publicly traded company, so that would involve going through an IPO.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of health and human services, earlier this year touted Carbon Robotics’ machines on an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” as a possible solution in cutting pesticide use.

Carbon Robotics was named Next Tech Titan at the 2026 GeekWire Awards earlier this year. The company is currently ranked No. 8 on the GeekWire 200 index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.

Seattle-area innovators made a strong showing on Time’s 2026 Best Inventions list released Thursday, claiming spots for breakthroughs ranging from a tactile sports tablet for low-vision fans to an ultrasonic chef’s knife.

The annual roundup — featuring 300 innovations, with Apple CEO John Ternus and the new iPhone Duo gracing the cover — includes startups like Yoodli, Tin Can, and OneCourt, alongside major regional hardware operations like SpaceX’s Redmond-based Starlink team and Bellevue’s Valve.

While the main headline focused on Apple’s leadership transition and new flagship hardware, the Pacific Northwest’s outsized presence on this year’s list highlights the region’s growing influence across everything from consumer AI and assistive hardware to outdoor gear.

Among the region’s tech giants, Amazon landed two spots on the list, for both its Amazon Pharmacy Kiosk in the medical category and its voice-directed Proteus warehouse robots in logistics. But Microsoft was shut out entirely, missing a placement in both the main 300 list and special mentions.

“These are creations changing how we live, work, play, and think about what’s possible,” Time’s editor’s wrote, adding that each contender was evaluated on key factors, including originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.

Here’s a breakdown of regional innovations honored by Time:

OneCourt (Accessibility): Developed a tactile tablet that translates real-time player and ball data into physical vibrations, allowing blind and low-vision fans to track live sports action with their fingertips.

Yoodli (Education): Recognized for its AI platform for human skills, which uses realistic AI roleplays and real-time coaching to help users build and practice workplace communication skills.

Tin Can (Parenting): Earned a spot for its landline-style home phone built specifically for kids, offering a safe way for families to stay connected without screens.

Seattle Ultrasonics C-200 (Food & Drink): Created by Modernist Cuisine alum Scott Heimendinger, this ultrasonic chef’s knife vibrates tens of thousands of times per second to slice effortlessly through food.

SpaceX Starlink V5 (Connectivity): Engineered by SpaceX’s team in Redmond, the newest internet terminal is roughly 35% smaller and 52% lighter than its predecessor, making on-the-go satellite connectivity easier to mount and deploy.

Valve Steam Machine (Entertainment & Gaming): The Bellevue-based gaming giant made the list for its latest hardware push to bring PC gaming into the living room.

NBBJ (Architecture): The legendary Seattle-founded architecture firm was recognized for its design of the Life and Mind Building at the University of Oxford.

Pebblebee Halo (Privacy & Security): Created by the Issaquah-based startup founded by former Boeing engineers, earning a special mention for its latest tracking and safety hardware.

Therm-a-Rest NeoLoft (Outdoors): Honored for its ultra-comfortable sleeping pad, designed under Seattle-based parent company Cascade Designs.

Superfeet ME3D (Sports & Fitness): Selected for its personalized 3D-printed insoles, crafted by the Ferndale, Wash.-based footwear innovation company.

Several other Pacific Northwest companies made the cut. Three Vancouver, B.C., startups earned recognition: Moment Energy for its clean energy storage made from second-life EV batteries, Glüxkind for its AI-powered self-pushing stroller, the Rosa, and Form for its Smart Swim 2 Pro real-time coaching goggles. And in Oregon, Nike secured a spot in apparel for its innovative ACG cooling running shirt.

The Oct. 26 issue of Time goes on sale on Friday.

USAFacts — the nonpartisan civic data initiative founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer — is stepping out of its usual spreadsheet-and-report routine and onto the debate stage, launching its first-ever YouTube debate special titled “The American Dream at 250: Data doesn’t argue. They do.”

The 75-minute program pairs conservative commentator and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro with progressive author and NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway to hash out escalating cost-of-living pressures and the viability of homeownership — all while tethering their arguments to official government numbers. PBS NewsHour co-anchor Geoff Bennett moderated.

Ballmer steers the effort from the organization’s Fact Desk, leaning into USAFacts’ core mission of grounding national political flashpoints in verified government numbers rather than partisan rhetoric.

“Americans can disagree about the role of government in their lives, but productive debate begins with a shared understanding of the numbers,” USAFacts President Lauren Woodman said in a news release Wednesday, explaining that the project is designed to give the public a common factual baseline to evaluate competing policy choices.

The debate focused on three core economic questions, using federal data as a launching pad:

Capitalism vs. government intervention: The debaters tackled whether free markets or government programs are better equipped to preserve the American Dream and address mounting economic pressures.

The scale of government: They sparred over whether Washington is currently doing too much or too little to intervene in the everyday lives and finances of citizens.

The housing crisis and homeownership: The discussion zeroed in on whether homeownership remains a realistic milestone of the American Dream for younger generations, and whether the government should step in to make housing more attainable.

Founded by Ballmer in 2017 with $10 million of his own money, Bellevue, Wash.-based USAFacts operates like a reporting unit for the public sector, aggregating statistics from over 70 federal sources.

The organization is best known for publishing annual corporate-style “10-K” reports on government revenue and spending, as well as running a data-driven “State of the Union” companion timed to the president’s annual address to Congress.

Watch the full debate below:

Apple is going after Amazon’s smart home business on several fronts at once.

The iPhone and iPad maker on Tuesday unveiled HomeView, a $299 smart display that competes directly with Amazon’s Echo Show, along with a lineup of cameras, a video doorbell and a smart lock made by LG Electronics. That puts Apple in the core categories of Amazon-owned Ring for the first time.

Apple also announced a new Apple TV 4K and the HomePod mini 2, which will go up against Amazon’s Fire TV and Echo speakers.

Amazon made its own move into Apple’s territory last week, unveiling premium Alexa Tablets, including a Pro model that competes more directly with the iPad.

The new Apple HomeView has a 7-inch screen and comes in a tabletop version with a speaker base and a wall-mounted version. It recognizes up to six household members by their faces and switches to each person’s messages, calendar and apps.

It runs Siri AI, Apple’s rebuilt version of its voice assistant, which the company calls “profoundly more capable and conversational.” Pre-orders started Tuesday, and the device ships Nov. 13.

Amazon’s big lead: About two-thirds of U.S. smart speaker owners have an Amazon device, compared with about a quarter for Google and 7% for Apple, according to the latest data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, covering the 12 months ending in June. Apple’s share has stayed in the mid-single digits for years.

CIRP’s Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz wrote that Apple may go after people who don’t own a smart speaker rather than try to convert Amazon and Google customers. Only 57% of recent Apple buyers have a smart speaker of any kind, the firm found.

The HomeView is aimed at people already using Apple devices. Setup and the personal features require an iPhone or iPad. It won’t be sold in the European Union because Siri AI isn’t available there.

Apple is also hinting that its AI won’t stay free. A footnote in the HomeView announcement says certain Apple Intelligence features that rely on server-side models are subject to daily limits, with expanded access “available for a fee in the future.” Amazon’s Alexa+ is free with Prime or $19.99 a month on its own.

Competition for Ring: The new Apple Home Collection, designed with LG and Schneider Electric, includes a $249.95 LG video doorbell with two cameras, LG indoor, outdoor and floodlight cameras priced from $199.95 to $399.95, and a $349.95 LG deadbolt that unlocks automatically as its owner approaches, using ultra-wideband technology.

The accessories are set for release starting in December, with some arriving in early 2027.

Camera video history requires an iCloud+ storage plan, and Apple says there’s no separate camera subscription. Apple’s retail stores will also offer installation by ADT for an extra charge.

The LG lock was announced a week after Ring unveiled its first smart lock, a $249 deadbolt with no keyhole and a hand-turned dial that revives a dead battery. It’s due in the first quarter of next year. Ring also announced five new cameras priced from $69.99 to $219.99.

The LG lock includes a backup key slot. “If you have to have a key, it’s like, well, why have a smart lock?” Ring founder Jamie Siminoff told GeekWire last week.

— Ravi Vedula, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, is leaving the company after 26 years. Vedula, who is based in the Seattle area, led an organization of more than 1,000 people that runs the data and analytics platform behind Microsoft 365 and Copilot.

“26 years. It’s time,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Goodbye and thank you, Microsoft. It’s been a privilege. I gave it my all.”

Vedula joined Microsoft in 2000 and was the first engineering manager for Exchange Online.

His memoir, “Hyderabad Days: The code we lived by before we coded,” was published in March by Microsoft’s 8080 Books. It recounts his childhood in a government housing colony in Hyderabad, India, with each chapter followed by a lesson about leadership, engineering or life, as GeekWire reported at the time.

“I leave with gratitude for the people and experiences that shaped those years,” Vedula told GeekWire.

He said he is leaving room for “another professional chapter if the right opportunity comes along,” but for now plans to focus on travel, ways to contribute and writing, including a possible book based on his experiences receiving a heart transplant in 2017.

— AI and robotics company Boston Dynamics announced Rohit Prasad as its new CEO, effective Oct. 7. Prasad, who is based in the Boston area, was Amazon’s senior vice president and head scientist for artificial general intelligence until he left the company at the end of 2025.

He takes over from interim CEO Amanda McMaster, the company’s chief financial officer, after Robert Playter retired in February following more than 30 years at Boston Dynamics. Hyundai Motor Group holds a controlling stake in the company.

Prasad joined Amazon in 2013, during the early days of Alexa, and oversaw the creation of its Nova AI models. Boston Dynamics makes the Spot and Stretch robots and is developing the Atlas humanoid. Prasad is also expected to join the company’s board, subject to approval.

“Boston Dynamics is uniquely positioned to advance Physical AI through its world-class robotics expertise,” Prasad said in the announcement.

— Qualtrics has appointed Mike Potter chief technology officer of the experience management company. He joins from Petal, an Ontario healthcare company, and has worked in leadership at Qlik, IBM and Cognos.

“I have spent the better part of my career building platforms at scale, the kind of work that requires deep technical conviction, strong collaboration, and a relentless focus on what customers actually need. That is what drew me to Qualtrics,” Potter said.

Qualtrics has dual headquarters in Seattle and Provo, Utah. It recently cut 117 jobs connected to its Seattle operations, largely affecting engineering and product teams. Last year, the company spent $6.75 billion to acquire Press Ganey Forsta.

— Shawn Stapleton has been named vice president and chief AI and innovation officer, a newly created role at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. He joins the Seattle nonprofit from MD Anderson Cancer Center, where he led AI lifecycle management for more than three years. Before that, he was the Seattle-based head of data science for Philips.

Stapleton helped scale MD Anderson’s AI initiatives across clinical, research and administrative settings, Fred Hutch said, adding, “His experience at the intersection of strategy, governance and implementation will be instrumental as we continue building the foundation for AI-enabled medicine and discovery.”

— Seattle-based defense tech startup Overland AI has named Jon Abramovic as vice president of international growth. Abramovic has held sales leadership roles in Taiwan, Prague and Beijing. He was most recently director of global defense sales at SIG Sauer and spent eight years at Oshkosh Defense leading business development across Europe and Asia.

“Having spent years operating overseas, I’ve seen firsthand what our allies face against near-peer adversaries and what it takes to stay ahead. Overland AI’s technology represents a generational leap in the ground domain,” Abramovic said.

Overland AI is No. 7 in the GeekWire 200, a ranking of the region’s top privately held tech startups.

— Noosphere Labs, a Seattle-area AI startup first covered by GeekWire in August, has announced its leadership team. The company, launched by former Meta AI research director Kevin Carlberg, is pursuing “human-centered physical intelligence” — AI designed to help people interact with and make sense of the physical world, beyond text and images on screens.

Its team includes:

• Tyler Simpson, co-founder and chief operating officer, who left Meta to start Noosphere Labs. He previously was co-founder and CTO of Luum by HealthEquity and spent more than 11 years at Microsoft.
• Andrew Ma, engineering leader, has more than 20 years’ experience across Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, most recently leading Google Cloud’s Apache Spark teams.
• Joshua Walton, founding design partner, was a director at Meta Reality Labs Research and worked on Microsoft’s HoloLens.
• Louis Barinaga, founding hardware partner, spent the bulk of his career at HP and more recently held leadership roles at Meta’s augmented reality program, Valve and Microsoft.
• Andrew Smith, founding AI engineer, led Zillow’s first agentic AI system and previously worked for Amazon and Sandia National Laboratories.
• Michael Iuzzolino, founding AI engineer, joined from Meta, where he worked on large language models, and previously held roles at Google Brain and Microsoft Research.
• Mikhail Shashkov, founding architect, was at Amazon Lab126 for more than seven years and previously at Sandia.

— Liz Pearce has been named Earth Finance‘s first chief commercial officer. She joined from Ever.green, where she was chief revenue officer. Past roles include CEO of LiquidPlanner, co-founder and CEO of Fresh Chalk, and vice president of marketing for GoDaddy.

Earth Finance, a Seattle-based startup helping businesses reduce their climate impacts, recently launched a platform called SpatiaFi that enables customers to make location-based capital decisions.

“Earth Finance is already delivering game-changing results for customers,” Pearce said. “I can’t wait to get to work with this team to scale that impact.”

— Charlie Bell, the longtime Amazon Web Services executive who left to run security, compliance and identity at Microsoft, has been appointed to the board of directors at the cybersecurity firm Tenable. The appointment was disclosed in an SEC filing and framed as “reinforcement for Tenable’s AI-driven exposure management push.”

— Two notable Amazon moves:

• Fırat Güder, a professor and chief engineer of Güder Research Group at Imperial College London, has joined Amazon as a scholar in the tech giant’s special projects organization. “Here, we are building the next generation of cutting-edge technologies that define the future of humanity. It is an incredible honor to join a small, elite group of innovators and researchers pushing the boundaries of what is possible,” Güder said.
• Leonardo de Moura has been promoted to vice president and distinguished scientist with AWS in Seattle. He joined the company in 2023.

— Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) has named Amelia Marckworth director of programs, innovation and entrepreneurship. She joins from Seattle University, where she has held leadership roles for more than a decade and also served as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship in the Albers School of Business and Economics.

“Amelia has a proven track record of launching and growing startup programs, coaching founders directly, and being part of WTIA as a committee member and mentor. We’re excited to bring that experience and talent onto our startups team,” Randa Minkarah, WTIA’s executive director and CEO, said in a statement.

— Hernan Alvarez has taken a role at Seattle-based Hyperparam to lead product and go-to-market at the startup, which is building tools for collecting, storing and analyzing the data that AI systems produce. The company recently launched a product called HypAware to improve oversight of AI agents and catch their errors.

Alvarez joins from Great Expectations, where he was CEO. He earlier worked with Hyperparam founder Kenny Daniel at Algorithmia, a machine learning company co-founded by Daniel and acquired by DataRobot.

— Philip Jensen has joined Zap Energy as vice president of fuel programs and operations. Zap, an Everett, Wash.-based fusion startup, announced in April that it was expanding its focus to include nuclear fission. Jensen was previously at First American Nuclear and spent more than seven years at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Zap said Jensen “brings deep expertise in nuclear fuel design, testing, and manufacturing, and a track record of launching new fuel programs and partnerships.”

— Christie Johansen-Pinney has joined Noble Studios as its Seattle-based vice president of client experience. She has held VP roles at firms including Rooster Punk, DEPT and The Marketing Practice.

— Anders Mortensen, formerly CRO at The Trade Desk, has been appointed to the advisory board of Scowtt, a Seattle startup helping advertisers optimize their ad spending. Mortensen spent more than 13 years at Google, leaving as vice president of U.S. mid-market sales lead generation.

Seattle startup Chiplytics today announced $4.5 million in funding to support the deployment of its microelectronics verification technology and the opening of an inspection facility in Bellport, N.Y.

The company provides authentication and quality screening of semiconductor chips and other critical electronic components. It focuses on detecting counterfeits, substitutions, inconsistencies and suspect parts before they’re assembled into machinery.

Chiplytics launched in 2022 during the COVID-driven chip shortage when manufacturers struggled to find parts and also ran into quality issues. The AI boom has created new bottlenecks in electronics.

“We’re seeing a lot of lead times now over 52 weeks for basic components,” said Stephen DiBartolomeo, president and co-founder of Chiplytics.

That leaves manufacturers with two options: wait for components from an authorized distributor or turn to independent brokers and distributors that may have the parts but are not authorized by the original manufacturer to sell them.

Chiplytics has developed technology that incorporates AI, automation and robotics to screen every electronics item for quality — rather than randomly selecting a few for testing.

“We just did an order for 50,000 parts. If you were to try and do that by hand or by sampling, it would take way too long,” DiBartolomeo said.

The company got its start through a U.S. Department of Energy program that connects entrepreneurs with technology developed in national labs to facilitate commercialization. The team worked alongside experts from Sandia National Laboratories to develop its verification platform and validated the solution with the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force before deploying it commercially.

The startup’s newly opened inspection lab sits within a 600,000-square-foot center operated by Quality King, a major U.S. distribution company. Chiplytics supports the company’s QK Special Services, which focuses on electronics.

DiBartolomeo and Chiplytics CEO and co-founder Steven Dourmashkin knew each other from high school on Long Island, N.Y. DiBartolomeo attended the U.S. Naval Academy and worked as a cryptologic warfare officer with the National Security Agency. Dourmashkin earned degrees in mechanical engineering and launched and sold a music tech company.

The two reconnected to start a business in hardware and national security. They brought on Chief Technology Officer Connor Dempsey, an expert in semiconductor physics whom Dourmashkin knew from Cornell University.

The startup has six full-time employees plus contractors. Its R&D operations are in Seattle.

The $4.5 million in funding includes $2.5 million in seed financing and a $2 million Air Force Tactical Funding Increase award. The round was led by Scout Ventures and Waypoint Ventures. Additional investors include QKSS, Industrious Ventures, Interwoven Ventures, Seattle Alliance of Angels, and Cornell University’s Red Bear Angels.

A free-flying NASA robot aboard the International Space Station will soon demonstrate a system for capturing and servicing satellites in orbit, using a pair of autonomous robotic arms built by Seattle startup Orbital Robotics.

“This demo will prove our ability to capture, manipulate and upgrade satellites on orbit, moving humanity one massive step forward towards reusable satellites,” Orbital Robotics CEO Aaron Borger said today in a news release.

Borger told GeekWire that the company plans to send its robotic arms to the space station in the third quarter of 2027. Three separate demonstrations would be conducted, each about a month apart, he said.

The mission will mark a major milestone for Orbital Robotics, which was founded in 2024 by Borger and other veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, including lead hardware engineer Riley Mark, lead software engineer Sohil Pokharna and adviser Doug Kohl. Orbital Robotics has been developing arms controlled by artificial intelligence for use on free-flying spacecraft, and this will be the company’s first opportunity to prove out its capture technology and autonomous control software together in microgravity under real spaceflight conditions.

The demonstration is a joint effort with Arkisys, NASA’s sustaining and maintenance partner for the Astrobee program, which will provide integration support and in-space platform infrastructure. A successful demo would boost confidence that free-flying robots equipped with Orbital Robotics’ arms could conduct satellite servicing missions.

“Free flight proves you can get there, manipulation proves you can do something once you arrive,” Arkisys CEO David Barnhart said. “Pairing Astrobee with Orbital Robotics’ arms creates a powerful proxy for the servicing and assembly operations that will shape the future ISAM [in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing] economy.”

Three cube-shaped Astrobee robots — nicknamed Bumble, Queen and Honey — are currently available for testing aboard the ISS. In 2024, one of the Astrobees was outfitted with a set of tentacle-like arms that grabbed onto a boxy cube to demonstrate the system’s gripping ability. Borger said the Orbital Robotics / Arkisys demo would be similar to the tentacle test.

Orbital Robotics’ arms for the Astrobee demonstration will be scaled-down versions of the ORA-A arm that the company has built in its Seattle lab, Borger said.

“The arms will be sent up to the ISS and then installed onto one of the Astrobees by the crew,” Borger said in an email. “The Astrobee with the arms will then demonstrate the capture and servicing on a second Astrobee that is already on the ISS. … After the capture, we will replace a simple compute module we will launch and integrate with the Astrobee being captured.”

Borger said the ISS demonstration is an internally funded program. “We are paying for the launch and demonstrations with Arkisys as our implementation partner through their Space Act Agreement with NASA,” he said.

After the demonstration, the arms will remain available aboard the ISS to assist astronauts with moving cargo, to automate simple tasks involving robotic manipulation, and to provide opportunities for roboticists to conduct follow-up experiments.

NASA and its commercial partners are already preparing for the next step in space robotics: The Fly Foundational Robots mission, due for launch in late 2027, will deploy a satellite equipped with a commercial robotic arm for demonstrations of in-space servicing tasks.

Companies building software for the AI boom and advanced machinery for space, energy and defense are remaking the Pacific Northwest’s tech economy, and both trends are showing up in full force on the GeekWire 200, our ranking of the region’s top privately held tech startups.

The Fall 2026 update, released Wednesday morning, features a new No. 1: Temporal, the Bellevue, Wash., company whose software keeps AI agents running reliably. It raised $550 million this month at a $12.55 billion valuation, more than double its value earlier this year. Its annualized revenue has passed $250 million, up more than 200% in a year, with customers including OpenAI, Nvidia and Netflix.

Temporal replaces fusion company Helion, now No. 2. Helion grew its Series G round to $500 million and opened a Seattle office as its headcount topped 800, but questions have emerged about its timeline for delivering fusion power to Microsoft by 2028.

Six of the top 10 companies build advanced machinery: fusion reactors, rockets, drones, radar, military vehicles and weed-zapping robots. Several of them spent the quarter scaling up production.

• Stoke Space (No. 3), which is developing a fully reusable rocket, jumped three spots after it raised about $1 billion. It’s expanding its rocket test site in Moses Lake.
• Brinc (No. 6), which makes drones that police and fire departments send to 911 calls, is moving into a new headquarters and factory in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood with three times the production space of its current plant.
• Echodyne (No. 9), which makes compact radar used to detect and track drones, jumped 33 spots into the top 10 after it opened a $40 million factory in Woodinville to meet growing demand for drone detection.

The GeekWire 200 combines objective data, editorial insight and AI analysis of our coverage to provide a broad view of the region’s startup landscape. Dating to 2013, it has long served as a resource for investors, job seekers, service providers and others tracking the regional tech scene.

See the updated GeekWire 200, and continue reading for highlights. Here’s the new top 10.

Notable moves and news

Overland AI (No. 7, up 2): The military autonomy startup landed a Marine Corps contract worth nearly $20 million, which it says makes it the first ground-autonomy company to serve as prime contractor on a military production deal. It also opened a Bay Area office to recruit AI and robotics talent.

Carbon Robotics (No. 8): The laser-weeding company added Plant Profiles, letting farmers tailor its AI model to their own crops and fields.

Dropzone (No. 10, up 3): The maker of autonomous AI agents for security operations enters the top 10 after more than doubling its headcount over the past year, the fastest growth of any company in the top 20.

Starcloud (No. 52, up 23): The Redmond company building data centers in orbit raised $250 million at a $2.3 billion valuation, with Nvidia joining as an investor.

Levanta (No. 72, up 5): The creator-marketing platform raised $22 million and says revenue is up 80% this year.

AIM Intelligent Machines (No. 100, up 10): The autonomous construction startup laid out its vision for self-driving bulldozers on Earth and, eventually, Mars.

Portal Space Systems (No. 107, up 7): The Bothell company is getting its first Starburst spacecraft ready for launch.

Digs (No. 120, up 13): The Vancouver, Wash., homebuilding AI startup raised $25.3 million led by Builders FirstSource, which will offer its platform to 140,000 builder clients.

Augmodo (No. 122, up 23): The maker of AI camera badges for retail workers raised $21 million at a $350 million valuation and is expanding into warehouses, factories and other workplaces.

Clarify (No. 150, up 19): The AI-native CRM startup acquired San Francisco’s Seam AI and was named to Madrona’s IA40 for the second straight year.

Nuance Labs (No. 163, up 20): The AI lab founded by former Apple researchers raised a $50 million Series A led by Lightspeed.

NewDays (No. 172, up 14): The dementia-care startup expanded its seed round to $16 million and expanded to Nevada.

New to the list

Entire (debut, No. 101): Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke’s startup launched a distributed Git network built for the load of AI coding agents. It’s the highest debut this quarter.

BrainChild Bio (debut, No. 117): The Seattle Children’s spinout raised $116 million to advance a CAR T therapy for a deadly childhood brain cancer.

BuyWander (debut, No. 124): The retail-returns marketplace moved its headquarters from Spokane to Kent and raised $21 million led by Madrona and Inspired Capital.

Endurance (debut, No. 128): Former SpaceX engineer Andrew Redd’s startup is tapping undersea volcanoes for geothermal power.

General Robotics (debut, No. 130): The Redmond startup led by Microsoft veterans says its AI has cut robot setup from a month to hours.

Thira (debut, No. 140): Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer reunited to launch the enterprise AI startup with $21 million led by Madrona.

Golden Analytics (debut, No. 152): The Bellevue startup led by Francois Ajenstat, Tableau’s longtime chief product officer, is using AI to take on traditional business intelligence tools. It launched with $7 million from NEA and Madrona in April, then added a $14 million extension led by Insight Partners in June, bringing its seed funding to $21 million.

Resect AI (debut, No. 158): The Washougal, Wash., startup launched out of stealth with $25 million to catch AI hallucinations before they happen.

NLM Photonics (debut, No. 165): The UW spinout, which makes materials that cut the power needed to move data between chips, added Pangaea Ventures and Mitsubishi Chemical’s venture arm as investors.

Interlune (debut, No. 170): The moon-mining startup extracted helium-3 from ordinary helium, demonstrating a process it plans to use on the moon.

Harell Data (debut, No. 176): Adaptive Biotechnologies co-founder Harlan Robins raised $15 million to connect AI developers with proprietary scientific data.

Noösphere Labs (debut, No. 180): Former Meta AI research director Kevin Carlberg raised $10.25 million from Trilogy and Madrona for the stealth physical AI startup.

Leaving the list

Agility Robotics (previously No. 5): The Salem, Ore., humanoid robot maker left the list as it prepares to go public in a $2.5 billion SPAC merger expected to close in the fourth quarter. It unveiled Digit 5, which lifts 50 pounds and is designed to work alongside people without safety barriers.

Common Room (previously No. 80): The sales-intelligence startup left the list after agreeing to be acquired by Zoom.

Auger (previously No. 31): The supply chain startup led by former Amazon operations chief Dave Clark moved its headquarters to Dallas. Auger still has a major engineering hub in Bellevue, which we’ve added to our list of engineering centers established in the region by companies headquartered elsewhere.

XBOW (previously No. 35): The AI hacking startup left the list because it doesn’t meet our standard that a company’s headquarters and leadership be based in the region. Its CEO is based in Malta, and its Seattle headquarters is a mailbox at a coworking space.

Notes on the GeekWire 200

Our list is not scientific, by any means, and the specific rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. But it has proven to be a valuable tool for many years. We hear regularly from readers who use the GeekWire 200 to look for jobs, prospect for customers, scout potential investments and get a high-level view of the region’s tech community.

Companies on the list must be privately held, founded within roughly the past 15 years and headquartered in the Pacific Northwest with their leadership based in the region. Companies generally leave the list when they agree to be acquired by another company or to go public.

To make sure your Pacific Northwest technology startup is eligible for the GeekWire 200, first confirm it’s included in the broader GeekWire Startup List. If so, there’s no need to submit it separately. If your startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and we’ll crunch the numbers to see if it makes the next GeekWire 200 update.

Email us at tips@geekwire.com with any questions.

Marysville, Wash.-based Gravitics, which is developing orbital carriers for government and commercial customers, is getting ready for a reverse takeover that could lead to a $125 million public offering.

The arrangements are being made with Non-Invasive Monitoring Systems, a Florida-based shell company, with the goal of getting Gravitics listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

The two ventures have been discussing the deal for months. The terms for the public offering were announced last month, and this week, a notice filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed a previously unreported $17 million funding round that was completed earlier this year. The filing appears to be part of the preparations for the reverse takeover.

Similar to a SPAC merger, a reverse takeover offers a faster route for a private company to go public by acquiring a less active shell company and taking control of the combined operations. Non-Invasive Monitoring Systems is a prime example: It stopped manufacturing motorized therapeutic platforms in 2019 but retained its OTC listing. The plan envisions “uplisting” the merged company from OTC to Nasdaq.

The reverse takeover strategy has been used by several prominent companies, including Berkshire Hathaway, Burger King and Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile US. Gravitics plans to follow up on the merger with an offering of 8.1 million shares priced between $14 and $17, which averages out to $125 million.

Because the offering has been registered with the SEC, the parties to the transaction are in a quiet period that restrains them from commenting on the arrangements.

Gravitics was founded in 2021 by CEO Colin Doughan, chief architect Gary Hudson and chief marketing officer Michael DeRosa. Over the past five years, it has secured some high-profile contracts for the design and manufacture of orbital carriers and space station modules.

Although Gravitics hasn’t yet put any spacecraft in orbit, several projects are underway. In 2024, the company won a $125 million contract from Axiom Space to provide a pressurized module for Axiom’s yet-to-be-launched space station. Last month, NASA said it would issue an award of up to $225,000 to support Gravitics’ work on a hangar facility for orbital cargo vehicles.

Gravitics is also receiving funding from the U.S. Space Force for multiple projects. The company said last month that it was selected by Lockheed Martin to support a “contract of national importance,” reportedly involving the development of orbital carriers for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

If you explore the main expo hall during the Penny Arcade Expo, you can often find some interesting booths around the edges of the room. These can offer rare games, designer clothing, blind boxes of themed merch, and occasionally/inexplicably, unfiltered access to local Washington politicians.

Steve Hobbs has held the secretary of state position for Washington since 2021. Visitors to his booth during PAX, held over Labor Day weekend at the Seattle Convention Center, could meet Hobbs and spin a prize wheel, with rewards that included buttons, collectible pins featuring the office’s official mascot Finn, custom 20-sided dice with Finn on the 20 face, and free snacks.

This wasn’t Hobbs’ first time at PAX, but it was the first time I’d heard about a closed-doors event he’d hosted on the night before PAX. One of the local exhibitors mentioned that Hobbs’ office had held a networking event in Seattle on Thursday, Sept. 3, between local tabletop companies and an assortment of international game publishers.

That got me curious enough to schedule a short conversation with Hobbs on the third day of PAX. Once we sat down, however, I had to ask him the question that I’d heard from a lot of other attendees: what was he doing at PAX in the first place?

“It’s twofold,” Hobbs told me. “One, this is a great opportunity for me to reach out to the gaming companies here in the state of Washington and look for opportunities for them to go overseas, linking up some of these indie game developers with major publishers.”

He continued, “The rest of it is civic engagement. Just reminding people, hey, don’t forget to vote. Don’t forget to check your registration.”

Washington mails a ballot to every registered voter, who can return it by mail or at an official drop box. Hobbs was urging people to use the drop boxes, citing what he called “a low-key fight with the USPS.”

Washington and 24 other states sued in August to block a U.S. Postal Service rule requiring new barcodes on ballot envelopes, and the Supreme Court kept it from taking effect on Sept. 14, after this interview.

“Look, PAX is where all the young people are at, right?” Hobbs said. “This is a very diverse, young community, and this is where we need to engage people.”

That brings us back to the games.

The Thursday-night event was intended to help connect Washington’s homegrown board games industry with interested publishers and players in Japan, Poland and elsewhere. This could allow Washington-based designers to sell their products overseas, as well as potentially letting foreign partners export their own games to North America.

Washington doesn’t make quite as big a deal about it as one might expect, but it’s one of the biggest states in the U.S. for tabletop and board game design, if not the biggest. Local Washington studios range in size from Renton-based Wizards of the Coast to one-person indie creators who make card games as a hobby. Hobbs’ office estimated early last year that tabletop gaming in Washington is a $2 billion industry.

The Secretary of State’s Office is best known for its core duties of running elections and registering businesses, but state law also directs the secretary of state to develop a citizens’ exchange program promoting ties that “may result in increased tourism, business relationships, and trade.”

“So what we do is help these indie game developers get access to foreign markets by putting on these trade missions,” Hobbs said. “What we’ll do is provide the booth [at international gaming conferences, such as Game Market in Tokyo], which is the most expensive thing. We will also help them navigate through the federal grant process in order to mitigate some of the costs over there.”

His office then works its connections with the U.S. State Department and the host nation’s commerce department to set up meetings for the developers.

“We have really strong ties with the German and Japanese governments, and we actually get these people to do their pitches with the major publishers in Europe and Japan,” Hobbs said.

As an example of the initiative’s success, Hobbs pointed to Lethal Shadows, a Snohomish County business that specializes in premium tabletop miniatures. According to Hobbs, he’d helped Lethal Shadows partner up with a Lithuanian company. As a result, Lethal Shadows has moved from a garage to a warehouse and is hiring more employees.

That did raise the question of why Hobbs’ office wasn’t making equivalent inroads toward Washington’s significantly larger video game industry.

“It’s more of a lack of bandwidth,” Hobbs said. “We want to take baby steps. We didn’t want to take a big step into it. And frankly, I didn’t realize that it was important to go to these conventions. In Japan, Germany, and Poland, we’re seeing if there might be an opportunity to do the same thing on the digital side.”

Hobbs continued, “I believe trade must go two ways. We need to support each other.”

In a cramped corner workspace in a mechanical engineering building at the University of Washington, a team of students is working to harness the power of the sun.

They operate on a fraction of the budget of elite international programs, fitting build hours around class schedules and other extracurriculars. Yet this summer, the scrappy crew took their handmade, solar-powered car — dubbed Sakura — out of the shop and onto the open road.

Over seven days in July and 1,778 miles from Minnesota to Texas, they outpaced nearly every competitor to finish fourth overall and cross the line as the top-ranking American team in the American Solar Challenge.

Now entering its fourth year, the Solar Vehicle Team at UW (SVTUW) is still a relative newcomer to collegiate solar racing. Officially affiliated with the university’s Mechanical Engineering Department, the roughly 50-person group has evolved into a broader interdisciplinary effort spanning electrical engineering, computer science, business, aerodynamics, and more.

Operated entirely by undergrads, the club handles every aspect of the operation in-house — from sponsor outreach and logistics to hands-on fabrication.

While top international competitors rely on multi-million dollar budgets and years of development, the Huskies assembled their vehicle (named after the Japanese word for cherry blossom) in just 11 months — a lightning-fast turnaround for a machine built entirely from scratch.

For team president Rudy Heredia-Jantz, an electrical and computer engineering senior, even making it to the starting line felt like a triumph.

“Frankly, we have no idea [how we pulled it off],” Heredia-Jantz said. “This car — it was a little bit of a miracle. We did not have it up and running until the day before we left for competition. We didn’t even have it moving. We just spun the rear motor, threw it in the trailer, and figured we’ll blow something up eventually.”

Things did indeed blow up — 12 tires in total along the way — but the Huskies kept rolling. For a third-year program competing against seasoned international juggernauts, simply keeping the car on the road was an achievement; outpacing them was a statement.

UW didn’t just survive the route to Texas — they blew past expectations for a young club, clinching the Aesthetics Award and Spirit of the Event Award alongside their top-four finish.

For second-year mechanical engineering student Elijah Yan, who serves as the team’s mechanical lead, the learning curve was immediate.

“Building a car is just not something I’ve done before, so it’s very new to me, and it’s super cool to learn that type of stuff — suspension stuff, how to do vehicle dynamics,” Yan said.

That hands-on engineering paid off when Sakura hit highway speeds on open pavement. Designed to maximize efficiency, the ultra-lightweight vehicle — weighing roughly 500 pounds with a driver inside — stretches 19 feet long to fit its array of solar panels while keeping its profile as narrow as possible.

Under the hood, Sakura is a blend of precision engineering and strict energy conservation:

• Solar array: 386 Maxeon Gen 7 photovoltaic cells covering six square meters, producing up to 1,540 watts of max power output directly from sunlight.
• Battery pack: A student-built 5.125 kWh lithium-ion battery in a 36S9P cell configuration (121V nominal), supplemented by a secondary backup battery used solely for system startups.
• Drivetrain and motor: Powered by a 2 kW Mitsuba 2096-III hub motor capable of pushing the 500-pound vehicle up to 65 mph on open highways.
• Data and cockpit: A custom steering wheel equipped with push-to-talk comms, digital telemetry displays, and regenerative braking controls, paired with an onboard Samsung Galaxy smartphone that streams real-time battery and motor analytics back to the pit crew.

To pull off a competitive build on a shoestring budget, the team combined its resourcefulness with local industry support. The vehicle’s lightweight frame, for instance, relies on carbon fiber sandwich panel flooring donated by Boeing, held together with specialized fiberglass tape.

“It’s the perks of being a Seattle-based team — we work with some amazing materials,” Heredia-Jantz said.

Yet even with aerospace-grade composites, bringing a prototype car across the finish line required plenty of improvised shop hustle.

“The car is held together with cardboard and duct tape, essentially,” Yan joked.

And managing the technical hardware on the road is as much a game of data processing as it is driving.

During the race, a dedicated strategy team monitors Sakura‘s health in real time. Using a custom dashboard that feeds off the onboard smartphone’s data stream, students track battery state-of-charge, individual array voltages, and motor temperatures from a trailing support vehicle.

By pairing live telemetry with incoming weather forecasts, the crew calculates optimal cruise speeds on the fly — relaying instructions to the driver via walkie-talkie so they can balance energy consumption, leverage regenerative braking, and avoid tripping the battery’s protection systems on steep climbs or hard accelerations.

That real-time power management was also put to the test right before the cross-country journey, when the team competed in the Formula Sun Grand Prix — an annual three-day track race where cars run on a single initial charge and whatever sunlight they can harvest along the way. Despite navigating a track that pushed their power distribution system to its limits, the track time gave the team crucial baseline data and momentum before taking on the road race.

Now the club is already preparing for its next evolution. While repairing Sakura for upcoming competitions, students are designing their next-generation vehicle from scratch — overhauling power distribution, reinforcing the chassis, and building a new solar array.

For a club building sun-powered technology in a city known for grey skies, the project is ultimately driven by something deeper than weather.

“I believe this team is building something special in the early morning hours on UW’s campus: talent that shows up before sunrise, a refusal to wait for better resources before doing great work, and a stubbornness that looks a lot like faith,” said Caoilin Krathaus, the team’s administrative lead. “It reminds me of the story behind Boys in the Boat, and what I’ve always thought of as the true Husky experience.”

Pointing to recent security incidents where networked AI agents spontaneously formed “swarms” to hack computer systems, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) took to the Senate floor Monday to demand urgent federal guardrails and mandatory independent safety testing for frontier AI models before their release.

Cantwell warned that recent security incidents involving autonomous AI agents executing unauthorized cyberattacks demonstrate that dangerous threats are already here, well before the arrival of superintelligence.

Citing recent public alarms sounded by tech leaders including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, she emphasized that AI systems are advancing faster than expected and risk slipping out of human control without immediate oversight.

“The technology keeps advancing, the risks keep growing, and now the very dangers we’ve warned about — autonomous cyberattacks and biological weapons — are no longer theoretical,” Cantwell said. “We need our colleagues to say, ‘Stop with saying the industry can do what it wants’ and let’s put together the infrastructure at the federal level that not only has strong federal standards, but also has independent testing and real safeguards for the American people.”

Cantwell, a five-term senator and former RealNetworks vice president, delivered her speech in the wake of increasing alarm over rogue AI behavior and internal whistleblower warnings across the tech sector.

The senator highlighted several stark warnings during her address, pointing out that the risks associated with rapid AI deployment extend far beyond theoretical models:

On the speed and deceptive potential of agent networks: “These networks of agents are extremely well informed. They operate at the speed of light and, as we are learning, they are also capable of creating their own goals, and they are highly capable of deception.”

On why swarms pose a unique threat compared to standalone AI models: “Unlike powerful AI models designed to serve individual users… this situation with agents swarming is more difficult to manage and is far more dangerous.”

On Congress running out of time to establish federal oversight: “Now, some of these risks may not have been apparent in the last two years, but we would have stood up the muscle of our organization at the federal level to better detect risks like cyberattacks… At a time when we still had a window to get ahead of these dangers, the federal government, people here, were denying this opportunity.”

To address these emerging threats, Cantwell is calling on Congress to establish robust federal safety standards, independent third-party audit requirements, and dedicated federal infrastructure to evaluate advanced frontier models before they hit the market. Her legislative push centers on revival and passage of a suite of bipartisan bills:

The Future of AI Innovation Act: Originally introduced by Cantwell to empower the federal government to collaborate with industry to independently test advanced models for national security, biological, and cybersecurity risks.

The TEST AI Act and VET AI Act: Measures designed to bolster the Department of Energy’s testing capabilities for national security and establish official standards for third-party safety auditors.

A veteran policymaker on technology and innovation, Cantwell has long leaned on her private-sector tech experience to position herself as a primary legislative bridge between Washington, D.C., and the Pacific Northwest’s tech ecosystem.

As a lead author of the landmark 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, Cantwell helped direct federal investments toward AI and emerging technologies. Over her Senate career, she created the National AI Advisory Committee (NAIAC), championed small business adoption via the AI for Mainstreet Act, and led the opposition to a proposed 10-year moratorium on AI regulation.

Agility Robotics unveiled the next version of its Digit humanoid robot, which it says is designed to work safely alongside people in warehouses and factories without the barriers that are usually required.

The Salem, Ore.-based company, which is preparing to go public through a $2.5 billion SPAC merger, said Digit 5 is its first humanoid built for “cooperatively safe” work at scale.

The robot uses AI and multiple sensors to watch for nearby people. Depending on the situation, it steers around them, stops or sits down. Visual and audio cues signal what it’s about to do, and a separate safety controller triggers its responses when someone gets too close.

Digit 5 can lift up to 50 pounds, 40% more than its predecessor, and reach objects as high as 7.2 feet off the ground, up from 5.5 feet, according to the company. A new battery runs for 90 minutes and recharges in 9 minutes, which Agility says allows more than 20 hours of work in a 24-hour day. Its grippers can be swapped for different jobs.

“We built it to the exact requirements our customers gave us after three years of Digit 4 working on their production floors,” said Agility CEO Peggy Johnson, a former Microsoft executive and Magic Leap CEO, in the announcement.

Digit 4, the current model, has mostly moved totes, logging more than 65,000 hours at customers including GXO, Schaeffler, Amazon and Toyota’s Canadian manufacturing arm, according to the company. Agility says Digit 5 will take on more of a facility’s work — unloading pallets, tending machines, gathering parts and inspecting items before loading them back onto pallets for shipment.

Amazon, an early Agility investor, has run multiple pilots of earlier Digit models, including one GeekWire observed at a warehouse south of Seattle in 2023. It bought five Digit robots for $1.05 million, according to Agility’s S-4 registration statement, filed with the SEC this month in connection with its merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a special purpose acquisition company.

Agility says it had more than $300 million in multi-year orders for Digit 5 as of May, contingent on hitting certain milestones. According to the S-4, those orders are from one customer, for 1,000 robots over three years. The filing doesn’t name the customer, but it also describes a May deal for at least 1,000 robots with a “related party,” an accounting term for those with close ties to a company, such as major investors.

Agility had $1.78 million in net sales in 2025, up from $310,000 the year before. Its loss from operations doubled to $140.2 million.

Its auditor, Grant Thornton, included a going-concern warning in the report, citing substantial doubt about the company’s ability to keep operating. Agility said in the filing that the cash forecasts behind that conclusion didn’t take into account the SPAC deal, which the companies said in June could provide more than $620 million in gross cash proceeds before any shareholder redemptions.

In the S-4, Agility names Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Apptronik, Figure AI and 1X Technologies among its competitors, many of which it describes as well-funded.

Early access to Digit 5 is expected to begin in the first half of 2027, with general availability by the end of the year. The robots are assembled at the company’s RoboFab factory in Salem, which is designed to produce up to 10,000 robots a year.