eNeural Technologies gets the lay of the land in Bellevue during a Greater Seattle Partners Spinoff program reception at Amazon’s Everest building in Bellevue. Pictured from left: Tom Florino, director, Worldwide Economic Development, Amazon; Rebecca Lovell, COO, Greater Seattle Partners; David Kou, SVP sales and marketing, eNeural Technologies; Lynne Robinson, City of Bellevue councilmember; Jesse Canedo, chief economic development officer, City of Bellevue; Eric Crowley, commercial section deputy chief, American Institute in Taiwan; Kelly Lee, commercial specialist, American Institute in Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of Greater Seattle Partners)
Add another name to Bellevue’s growing list of AI tenants.
Taiwan-based eNeural Technologies is setting up its North American headquarters in the city, joining a wave of AI companies — from CoreWeave to xAI to OpenAI — that have staked out office space east of Seattle over the past year.
eNeural plans to invest $3.5 million in the Seattle region over the next three years and create about 30 jobs, more than 20 of them AI engineering positions, according to Greater Seattle Partners, the regional economic development group that announced the expansion.
The company said it eventually envisions its Bellevue office growing into a core edge AI research and development center with more than 500 employees over the next decade.
The company builds lightweight, low-power AI software and chips that let devices — logistics equipment, vehicles, smart city infrastructure — run AI directly on-site rather than relying on the cloud. eNeural says its portfolio spans model optimization tools, self-learning edge platforms, and neural processing unit silicon IP, along with vision-language and large language model tools built for private, secure deployments.
eNeural founder and Chairman Jiun-In Guo called the region “one of the most innovative technology ecosystems in the world” and said establishing an HQ in Bellevue gives the company access to “a unique combination of world-class AI talent, global technology leadership, and proximity to key enterprise customers.”
eNeural’s path to Bellevue ran through Greater Seattle Partners’ SelectUSA Seattle Spinoff program, which introduced the company to the region’s AI and tech ecosystem in 2025.
eNeural’s arrival adds to a run of AI companies moving in alongside tech giants Amazon and Microsoft and staking claims on the Eastside over the past year:
CoreWeave recently doubled its footprint to 36,000 square feet at One Bellevue Center, expanding its engineering hub with dozens of open roles in the region.
Elon Musk’s xAI unveiled a 25,000-square-foot office in the former Epic Games space at Lincoln Square South.
OpenAI moved into a new engineering office at City Center Plaza, a space built for 250 employees with room to grow to as many as 1,400.
Denver-based Crusoe opened a 7,400-square-foot office in the Key Center building.
Seattle did notch a win of its own this week with the news that Anthropic is leasing 113,000 square feet of space across multiple floors in a South Lake Union development.
The Bellevue office will serve as the eNeural’s primary hub for customer engagement, strategic partnerships, business development, and advanced AI engineering across North America.
Heather Koponen at her family home on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska. She was stunned to learn that the well built by her parents in 1966 is contaminated with PFAS. (Photo courtesy of Koponen)
It was on something of a lark that Heather Koponen went to a screening of “Dark Waters” — the Mark Ruffalo film about dangerous “forever” chemicals fouling creeks and drinking water.
She really liked the movie and took home a free test kit offered by the nonprofit that organized the event to check her own drinking water for the pollutants, known as PFAS.
Koponen, a retired physician’s assistant, lives on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, in a home that once belonged to her parents. She knew about PFAS contamination in the area from firefighting foams used at military bases and airports, and had local friends who believed their health had been harmed by the chemicals. Koponen thought she was in the clear given her location relative to potential sources.
“Surprise, surprise, the well that my parents had put in in 1966, had the best-tasting water in the world and was west of the known contamination, turned out to have high levels of PFAS,” Koponen said. “We didn’t believe it, so we tested again, multiple times.”
PFAS — a family of industrial chemicals used in non-stick pans, food packaging, and as a grease and water repellent in clothes and carpets — contaminate water and soil across the U.S. and the world. Most people have detectable levels in their blood.
The chemicals are linked to reduced immune response, developmental delays in children, increased incidence of some cancers and hormonal impacts such as decreased fertility.
As PFAS have spread through the environment, strategies for controlling and destroying the persistent pollutants have been in short supply and extremely costly.
Now, decades into the problem, that’s finally changing. On this debut episode of Positive Charge, GeekWire’s podcast about hope in the sustainability and climate fight, we go inside the effort to build and deploy technologies that can effectively destroy PFAS. Two companies at the forefront are based in Western Washington: Aquagga and Sedron Technologies.
Blasting PFAS in Tacoma
Calvin Rhodes, mechanical design engineer for Aquagga, is suited up in safety gear for working with PFAS. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
Located in downtown Tacoma, Aquagga does its R&D work inside the Petrich Marine building — a former marble works facility on the industrialized Thea Foss waterway. Inside the cavernous wooden structure, the startup builds devices that treat PFAS pollution from concentrated sources, housed in easy-to-move shipping containers painted bright white.
“We can step inside,” said Brian Pinkard, Aquagga’s co-founder and chief technology officer, letting visitors inside one of the containers. “It’s a little dirty. Watch your step. Just don’t touch anything. That’s the one rule.”
The system uses hydrothermal alkaline treatment, or HALT, blasting PFAS with high temperatures and extremely alkaline conditions — imagine a very strong bleach. Contaminated wastewater flows through the machine, and the process breaks the chemicals into smaller, nonhazardous components, including carbon and fluoride compounds.
What comes out isn’t drinking-water safe, but the technology destroys more than 99.99% of PFAS.
In recent years, Aquagga has treated contaminated water from various sources, including a lined underground pit that once held 20,000 gallons of waste at Fairbanks International Airport. A project with the Department of Defense treated 3,000 gallons of waste in North Carolina. DOD alone has an estimated 2 million gallons of PFAS-containing firefighting foam stockpiled for disposal.
Turning waste into a weapon against PFAS
Cheeky swag at a Sedron Technologies event. (Sedron Photo)
Sedron wasn’t launched to battle PFAS. It set out to purify sewage waste into drinkable water — which it once served to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Janicki Industries, an aerospace engineering and manufacturing company, received funding in 2011 from what is now the Gates Foundation. The philanthropy wanted a wastewater purification system for use in developing countries. That project led to the creation of Sedron.
The company developed systems to treat dairy waste and municipal biosolids — the residual product from wastewater treatment plants. Sedron dries the biosolids in an energy-efficient thermal dryer, turning them into a biofuel fed into a biomass boiler. The boiler generates electricity that cycles back to power the dryer and produces excess clean energy sold to the grid.
The system also destroys PFAS that contaminate sewage waste, having escaped from consumer goods or passed through humans.
“When you’ve got biosolids in these thermal systems that are heated above 900 degrees Celsius, they’re in there for over two seconds, and there’s enough turbulence within that system, the literature suggests, that PFAS is destroyed,” said Meghan Carlo, Sedron’s senior permit manager.
Without this treatment, biosolids would typically be returned to the environment as fertilizer spread on farms, golf courses or similar sites — keeping PFAS in circulation.
The long road to clean water
Groundbreaking at Sedron’s South Florida treatment plant. (Sedron Photo)
Solutions for cleaning up PFAS exist, but the scale of the problem is staggering. One academic study estimated the cost of removing a subclass of PFAS from the environment at the same rate they are released: somewhere between $20 trillion and $7,000 trillion per year.
In 2024, the Biden administration established the country’s first drinking water limits on six forms of PFAS, setting a ceiling of 4 parts per trillion — roughly a tiny drop of water in five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The Trump administration is moving to cancel limits on four of the six and delay compliance for the other two.
States are forging ahead with their own restrictions on PFAS in drinking water, including monitoring requirements and limits on how and where the chemicals can be used. The resulting liability concerns for municipalities and other stakeholders are stoking demand for cleanup technologies.
Aquagga has devices available for lease, purchase or demonstration projects. Sedron broke ground this year on a regional waste treatment facility in South Florida that will serve municipalities home to 2 million people, with operations expected to begin in 2028.
Fairbanks resident Heather Koponen needs a solution now. Her options include an hour-long round trip to a natural spring to fill five-gallon jugs, deliveries from a local company whose water appears to have low-level PFAS contamination, or PFAS filters similar to a Brita.
But she’s also focused on the bigger picture.
“The most important thing is to stop more contamination,” she said. “We’ve got to think of future generations and the future planet.”
Sources and references
Interviews:
Brian Pinkard, Aquagga, co-founder and chief technology officer
Heather Koponen, Fairbanks, Alaska, resident impacted by PFAS
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