Emerald Nuclear today announced a $2.1 million award from The Research Council of Norway to support its efforts to bring nuclear energy to the shipping industry and offshore power. The Seattle-based startup is developing high-temperature gas reactors that use an encapsulated fuel designed to resist meltdowns.

“This award will enable Emerald Nuclear to work directly with our marine partners to validate integration of our technology with their state-of-the-art marine power distribution and control systems,” said Wesley Deason, co-founder and CEO.

The funding supports Norway’s Marine Nuclear Propulsion System Pilot project, which is being led by Emerald Nuclear’s Norwegian subsidiary.

Shipping accounts for roughly 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, making it a significant target for lower-carbon energy solutions. Some ferries serving shorter routes are adopting hybrid-electric propulsion. Shipping companies are exploring methanol, ammonia, biofuels and other alternatives to heavy fuel oil, but their climate benefits depend on how those fuels are produced and used.

Nuclear reactors have powered U.S. Navy submarines for more than 70 years. Now, a new wave of companies is working to expand nuclear power’s role in commercial shipping and other marine applications.

The award supports an early development step for Emerald Nuclear, with substantial work remaining before commercial deployment. The company has yet to build its first reactor, and its plans will require additional financing, regulatory approvals and a reliable fuel supply. The startup has previously received an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors.

Emerald Nuclear has five employees, most of them in Norway, and is targeting two applications: offshore ships that help construct facilities like oil platforms and wind turbines and lay deep-sea cables, and floating power plants for remote communities. Each reactor is designed to produce 5 megawatts (6,705 horsepower), according to the company.

Bringing nuclear to the marine environment poses several significant challenges. They include safety issues, regulations for vessels traveling internationally, management of nuclear fuel and waste, and the way shipping companies frequently buy and sell vessels.

Deason said the company’s approach helps address those concerns:

• The reactor will use TRISO fuel, which consists of a uranium-containing kernel surrounded by protective carbon and silicon-carbide layers. The uranium is in short supply, but Deason is confident it will be available by the time the company is ready to deploy.
• Nuclear regulations are still being developed for international vessels, though initial deployments will be within a single country’s jurisdiction.
• Emerald Nuclear will have seaside manufacturing, providing easy access for ships and floating power plants that need installations, repairs and exchanges of fresh and spent fuel.
• The company will lease, rather than sell, its systems, allowing customers to swap nuclear in or out depending on their needs.

Emerald Nuclear is designing its technology “to integrate with the unique power needs of the ship, but also to meet the ways that the maritime industry does business,” Deason said.

Other companies pursuing nuclear ship propulsion include Core Power, newcleo and Blykalla. Core Power, Westinghouse, Saltfoss Energy and Prodigy Clean Energy are also developing floating nuclear power stations. Russia’s state-owned Rosatom already has nuclear-powered icebreakers and a floating nuclear power plant in operation.

Prior to launching Emerald Nuclear, Deason, a nuclear engineer, worked for Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. (USNC) developing reactors for space-based applications.

During his tenure at the Seattle company, a professor from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology approached USNC about applications for the maritime sector. USNC declared bankruptcy in October 2024 and the deal wasn’t pursued. But the idea interested Deason and Hallgeir Juliebø, a Norwegian entrepreneur who had been a consultant with USNC. The two co-founded Emerald Nuclear in 2024 and Juliebø serves as chief commercial officer.

Emerald Nuclear has signed a lease for an engineering center in Norway, where it’s designing and building its first prototype, a non-nuclear thermal device that will be used for the Marine Nuclear Propulsion System Pilot project.

Other partners for the project are VARD Group, Vard Electro, Island Offshore, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Imperial College London and Maskindynamikk, bringing together nuclear technology, ship design and integration, vessel operations and academic research.

The startup will build its first nuclear reactor, named the Gem Microreactor, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with 2030 as its goal for completion. Emerald Nuclear will integrate equipment from Peregrine Turbine Technologies in Maine to convert the reactor’s heat into electricity.

The target for the first commercial deployment is 2031, on a Norwegian offshore vessel.

Deason is hoping to open a manufacturing site in the future in Western Washington on Puget Sound with an initial focus on floating nuclear power systems that replace diesel generators. That phase of growth is roughly targeted to the early 2030s.

Seattle-based ag-tech startup Strella has landed $4.25 million to expand the reach of its technology that monitors produce to prevent spoilage and food waste.

The investment extends the company’s Series A round and brings its total funding to $26.25 million.

CEO and co-founder Katherine Sizov launched the startup in Philadelphia in 2019 and relocated its headquarters to Seattle four years ago to be closer to Washington’s fruit orchards.

Strella uses IoT devices to measure gases including ethylene, a plant hormone released by ripening fruit, and machine vision to monitor the produce. Its software interprets the fruit’s real-time conditions alongside data such as country of origin, packing date and varietal type.

The 19-person team serves customers in 26 countries and provides information to growers of apples, pears, avocados and citrus. It recently added kiwifruit to the lineup.

“Our vision is to become the system of record for quality in the food supply chain, or the ‘guardian angels’ of produce as it passes from hand to hand,” Sizov said.

The company works with all of the players in the supply chain, including farmers, produce packers, shippers, distributors and retailers.

“The next step for us is to begin stitching all the pieces together to become a one-stop shop for quality and tackle the food waste problem at scale,” Sizov said.

The United Nations estimates that roughly 33% of food intended for humans worldwide is lost or wasted, totaling $940 billion in annual economic losses. Waste in the U.S. is even worse, at about 40% of edible food and $218 billion each year.

The funding was led by SilverBlue, with participation by LeVert Ventures, Beta Milouot and PeakBridge. 

— Kymeta has appointed former CIA Deputy Director Elizabeth Kimber as chief growth officer.

Kymeta, a Redmond, Wash.-based mobile satellite communications company, is working to increase sales with the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and other organizations in national security.

Kimber had a 37-year career with the CIA, departing in 2022 as the agency’s deputy director for operations. She most recently worked as a vice president with Two Six Technologies and has served on Kymeta’s board of directors for two years.

— Alaska Airlines has named Amaresh Siva as its first chief information technology officer. Siva joins from CVS Health and has held technology leadership roles for more than two decades at companies including Lowe’s, Target and GE Money.

“Technology touches nearly every part of how we run our airline and serve our guests, and Amaresh will bring our technology and digital teams together under one leader,” said Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska Air Group, in announcing the news.

— Vijaye Raji, founder and former CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Statsig and now OpenAI’s CTO of applications, has joined the board of Amplitude, a digital analytics and product intelligence company. OpenAI acquired Statsig last year, and Statsig and Amplitude announced a strategic partnership in May in which Amplitude would build on Statsig’s brand and customers.

“Statsig continues as a platform and brand within Amplitude,” Raji said. “Joining the board is an opportunity for me to help carry that mission forward as Amplitude and Statsig build their next chapter together.”

Here are four departures and arrivals for Microsoft leaders:

— Vasu Jakkal has left her role as Microsoft corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, management and privacy after more than six years. She has joined Armadin, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based cybersecurity company, as chief strategy and business officer.

Jakkal is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and previously held executive roles at FireEye and Intel. She praised Armadin’s mission, which she described as building “autonomous security to stay ahead of attackers and build a safer world for all.”

— Microsoft VP Hans Yang is leaving. The Los Angeles-based leader, most recently focused on AI transformation, product strategy and growth, was formerly a general manager for Microsoft for Startups and Microsoft Learn.

“I think my next hill to climb is helping companies capture real ROI from AI,” Yang said, adding, “If you know a company that is struggling to get started with AI, or has invested but is not yet seeing meaningful value, I would welcome any introductions.”

— Venky Chandrasekharan is returning to Microsoft for the role of general manager of Windows commercial category and investments. He left the company in 2021 after 12 years and worked at Qualcomm and Acuity Brands in the interim.

“Having spent some of my most formative years at Microsoft, there’s definitely a sense of familiarity — but I’m coming back with new experiences, a broader perspective, and a lot of excitement for what’s ahead,” Chandrasekharan said.

— Meg O’Conor Bannecker has left Microsoft after two years leading communications for the company’s Washington state team. Past roles include communications leadership at NanoString Technologies, Bannecker Public Affairs and Pier 70 Ventures.

— Patrick Miller has been appointed as global division president of real estate company JLL’s technology sector. Miller joins from Snap, where he served as senior director of global workplace services. He previously oversaw real estate operations for Amazon’s Seattle-area headquarters for more than three years and has worked for Facebook and DTZ.

“I’ve spent my career on the client side … so I know exactly what it feels like to need a partner who shows up, tells you the truth, and solves real problems,” Miller said.

— DigniFi, a Bellevue, Wash.-based fintech company providing repair financing for autos, RVs, ATVs and other motorized vehicles, has named Jefim Piekarz as chief product officer. Piekarz joins from Arch, and his past employers include Skylab74, Welo, Octane and Etsy. Launched in 2012, DigniFi has facilitated more than $575 million in transactions for automotive merchants in the U.S.

— Seattle-based global logistics company Tideworks Technology has named two C-suite leaders:

• Mark Traynor, chief product and technology officer, joins from Lynxis. He is an entrepreneur who has worked in port, rail and terminal logistics for more than 20 years.
• Guenter Schmidmeir, chief revenue officer, joins from Avlino and has decades of maritime leadership from Germany.

— Adaptiva, a Kirkland, Wash.-based company automating software updates across computers, has named Allison Armstrong VP of product marketing. She joined from Elemica and has worked for Transmit Security, Hopin, Qualtrics, Apptio and others.

— Smarsh, a Portland, Ore.-based company providing communications data and insights, has appointed Alessandro Silva as its first chief growth officer. He joins from ACI Worldwide, and his past employers include Western Union and Carlyle Group. Silva is also a board member for Teach for America.

— Seattle-based Yoodli has named Mike Mather as chief learning advisor. The startup recently expanded from helping people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews to providing corporate training across wide-ranging skills. Mather is CLO for the accounting firm KPMG US and was previously a partner at EY, IBM and PwC.

“For most of my career, the hardest part of [learning and development] was the gap between training and the moment someone actually has to perform,” Mather said. “Yoodli closes that gap.”

— DigiStor, a company with offices in Austin, Texas, and Vancouver, Wash., that offers secure data storage products, has appointed Peter Bell to its board of directors. Bell co-founded StorageNetworks and serves as managing partner at Stowe Capital, among other roles.

— Seattle-area tech leader Jake Varghese has been promoted to chief product and technology officer for Dayforce, a Minneapolis company providing HR, payroll and related technology. He previously worked for companies including Microsoft, ServiceNow, Tanium and ConnectWise.

— The Association of Washington Business Institute has appointed Meagan Darrow as executive director. Darrow is also an adjunct professor at Evergreen State College and was most recently executive director of the American Diabetes Association. The AWB Institute is the nonprofit research and education affiliate of the association, a longtime organization advocating on behalf of its 8,000 members.

— Five Seattle-area physicians were appointed to the National Academy of Medicine:

• Dr. Susan Stern, professor emeritus and founding chair of UW Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine
• Dr. Elizabeth Swisher, professor in the Fred Hutch Clinical Research Division and UW Medicine’s Division of Gynecologic Oncology, as well as deputy director of the Fred Hutch/UW/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium
• Dr. Leslie Walker, chair and professor of UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and chief academic officer at Seattle Children’s
• Dr. Dimitri Christakis, professor in UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, pediatrician at Seattle Children’s and chief health officer with Special Olympics International
• Dr. Christopher Longhurst, CEO of Seattle Children’s and clinical professor with UW Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics

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.

When a new caregiver walks into an assisted living room for a shift, they usually hold a chart with a room number and a list of medical needs — and almost no background about the human being in the bed. They might be caring for a former machinist, a retired dancer, or a veteran, but in the rush of daily care, those life stories are often left behind.

Seattle-area software engineer Patrick Donahue wants to bridge that gap.

Donahue is the founder and sole builder of Porchlight, a newly launched life-story and reminiscence tool designed for assisted living and memory care communities. With the tap of a single button on a device, a resident hears a prompt, records their memories, and lets the platform automatically generate a concise “Know Your Resident” briefing for care staff, as well as a private audio feed for family members.

The goal is to give busy aides immediate context on a resident’s history, turning routine care into meaningful human connection.

The project stems from Donahue’s own history — both as a veteran backend developer who spent years scaling web platforms and as the son of medical professionals exposed to hospice care. Seeing how easily personal histories disappear without deliberate recording, he set out to build a tool that makes daily storytelling effortless for residents and care teams alike.

Donahue shared his inspiration, the realities of early-stage software development, and the power of asking the right questions is this edition of GeekWire’s Startup Spotlight.

In 50 words or less, what’s your elevator pitch?

Porchlight is a life-story tool for assisted living and memory care. A resident taps one button, hears a question, and talks about their life. Porchlight turns the answers into a briefing so every caregiver knows the person in the room, and a private page where family can listen and reply.

What problem are you obsessed with solving?

The first shift. The aide walking into a room tonight often knows a room number and a care plan and nothing else. The resident might have been a machinist, a dancer, a veteran, and nobody has had time to find out.

It’s personal for me. Both of my parents worked in medicine, and hospice care was part of our family’s life. When my father died, I understood how much of a person’s story goes with them unless someone asks while there’s still time. I’ve also kept a journal my whole life, and I know what putting your life into words does for you. Porchlight is the tool I wish had existed.

What surprised you after talking to customers?

I don’t have paying customers yet, and I’ve had fewer conversations with activity directors than I’d like. The surprise in the ones I have had: the first question wasn’t about the technology. It was what does it cost, and who has time to set it up. That pushed me to make setup a printed QR card and nothing else, and to make it free while communities try it.

How has AI changed the way you build your company?

It changed what’s possible. Transcription can now handle older voices, and language models can turn an hour of rambling memories into a one-page briefing or a family highlight. Our whole vision is to use that to strengthen human connection, never to replace it. There are three ways it does that:

• With family. The family relay lets a resident’s children and grandchildren hear their stories and reply in their own voices.
• With neighbors. A community can build events and a newsletter around the stories residents are telling.
• With the care team. Staff know the person, not just the chart.

What we’re after is a better quality of life, more dignity, and a way for residents to pass their wisdom on to the people they love. The resident talks and real people listen. Nothing in it pretends to be a person.

On the build side, I’ve spent ten years as a software engineer helping startups scale. AI coding tools are the reason a bootstrapped company can build and run something this careful at this pace.

What’s one thing people misunderstand about your startup?

People hear “AI for seniors” and picture a companion chatbot, or a product only for people who are losing their memory. It’s neither. Reminiscence, meaning simply inviting someone to talk about their own life, is one of the oldest and most loved practices in eldercare, and it works for anyone with a life behind them. Porchlight makes it possible to do every day and keep what gets said. It isn’t a medical or therapy product, and I don’t claim it is.

What was the toughest decision you made in the past year?

Pulling claims off my own website. When I checked the marketing against the code, some of it described features that were planned, not built. Cutting that felt like making the product look smaller right when I needed it to look bigger. But I’m asking communities to trust me with their residents’ stories, so the copy has to match what the software actually does.

What’s one piece of advice for other entrepreneurs?

Make sure what you say matches what you’ve built. It’s tempting to describe the version in your head. Early on, trust is most of what you have to sell, and it’s easy to spend it without noticing.

We’ll know our company has made it when…

A new aide walks into a room on their first day, asks a resident about the dance where he met his wife, and watches him light up. And the community pays for Porchlight because that moment is worth it to them.

— Niantic Spatial hired Dave Citron as chief product officer. He joined from Microsoft AI, where he was corporate vice president of product on the Superintelligence team and helped build and launch Microsoft’s first frontier foundation models.

San Francisco-based Niantic Spatial, spun out of Pokémon Go maker Niantic, builds spatial AI models and services, including a visual positioning system trained in part on images crowdsourced from Pokémon Go players. The company has an engineering team in Bellevue, Wash.

The Seattle-area executive was previously senior director of product for the Gemini app at Google DeepMind and worked on Google Meet and Google Duo. He began his career at Microsoft in 2005, helping take OneDrive from its first release to more than 200 million monthly users.

“AI is remarkably good at reading and writing, but it still doesn’t understand the physical world well enough to act in it safely,” Citron said in the announcement.

— The Fund for Science and Technology, the Seattle-based foundation responsible for giving away a large portion of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s fortune, named Jane Dietze its first chief investment officer. She starts Jan. 4, 2027, after finishing the year at Brown University, where she has held that role since 2018.

Brown says its endowment grew from $3.2 billion to $8 billion over the 10 years through fiscal 2025. Her deputy, Joshua Kennedy, will succeed her. Dietze previously held investment roles at Bowdoin College, Fortress Investment Group and Columbia Capital.

The foundation launched publicly in August 2025 with a mandate to deploy at least $500 million over four years in bioscience, the environment and AI for good. It also funds the Allen Institute and Ai2, the Allen Institute for AI.

The fund started with a $3.1 billion endowment from Allen’s estate and is expected to oversee a large portion of the proceeds from the sale of Allen’s sports teams. Its first CEO, Lynda Stuart, stepped down in May.

— Nicholas Stevens joined payments giant Stripe as head of product for agentic commerce, working from Seattle, after a decade at Zillow. He was most recently Zillow’s vice president of product for AI and data, leading product strategy for the company’s AI products and data platform.

His LinkedIn profile notes that he drove the partnership that made Zillow one of seven global launch partners for OpenAI’s ChatGPT apps platform. He previously worked in product at Prismatic.

“I believe AI buying & selling on your behalf can be magical,” he wrote.

— Scowtt, a Kirkland, Wash.-based startup that uses AI to predict which sales prospects will become customers, named Ben Trenda chief revenue officer. Trenda is an ad tech veteran who worked at Overture/Yahoo, AOL and Rubicon Project, and co-founded iSocket. Scowtt says it is approaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue.

— The American Astronomical Society named University of Washington astronomy professor Emily Levesque the next editor in chief of its journals, including The Astrophysical Journal. She takes charge in August 2027, succeeding Ethan Vishniac.

— ThriftBooks, the online used-book seller founded in Seattle in 2003, named Carla Anderson Skogland chief financial officer. She had been interim CFO since April. Anderson Skogland, who is based in the Seattle area, was previously CFO of Sono Bello. She spent 11 years at Amazon, and earlier worked at T-Mobile and for more than 15 years at Starbucks.

— Michael Mann is stepping down as executive director of Clean & Prosperous, a climate policy group that backed Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, once a successor is chosen. He took over on an interim basis from the late founder David Giuliani and led the group for five years. Mann, founder of consulting firm Cyan Strategies, previously led the City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment.

— Lani Ramos joined Yoodli, a Seattle startup that uses AI roleplays for communications training, to build its renewals function. Ramos spent 13 years at Tableau and Salesforce, most recently as director of renewal for North America.

— Former Starbucks CFO Rachel Ruggeri joined the board of San Diego-based Jack in the Box. Ruggeri, a Seattle-area finance leader, spent more than two decades at Starbucks and was its CFO from 2021 to March 2025. She also serves on the board of Stryker.

— Victor Fetter is stepping down at the end of the year as chief technology and business systems officer at Everett, Wash.-based Fortive after nearly seven years. Rich Noonan, Fortive’s chief information security and technology operations officer, will become CIO. Fetter, who is based in Mississippi, plans to expand his board work and angel investing.

— And in case you missed it:

• Microsoft moved its communications team under President Brad Smith. Brent Colburn is interim communications leader, and longtime comms chief Frank Shaw will serve as an advisor through the end of the year.
• Truelist founder Carey Armstrong, a former Zillow vice president, is joining Mainstay as chief strategy officer after Mainstay acquired her startup.

It’s the final call to recognize the Seattle area’s boldest innovators — nominations for GeekWire’s 2026 Uncommon Thinkers Awards close this Friday. Help us select individuals who challenge conventional thinking, push boundaries and make an impact across the region.

Now in its fourth year, and in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners, the program aims to honor inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs who are transforming industries and driving positive change throughout the world.

Community nominations will be accepted through Friday, Sept. 18 at 11 a.m. PT, after which a panel of judges will select honorees. They’ll be celebrated on stage during a VIP reception at the annual GeekWire Gala on Dec. 10. Early-bird tickets available here.

Honorees are selected based on innovation, creativity and leadership and should have a track record of introducing novel ideas, technologies, or solutions that challenge the status quo. Nominees should also demonstrate a measurable and meaningful impact on their respective fields or industries, contributing to the betterment of society.

Do you know an Uncommon Thinker deserving of recognition? Fill out the nomination form today.

Read the GeekWire profiles of last year’s Uncommon Thinkers honorees:

• Anindya Roy’s journey from rural India to turning science fiction into drug candidates
• Chet Kittleson’s Tin Can is a calling, and a way to foster deeper connections for kids
• Brian Pinkard looks for impact, from flipping rocks to destroying forever chemicals
• Portal Space’s Jeff Thornburg plans to harness the heat of the sun in the cold of space
• Kiana Ehsani thrives on scrappy persistence at AI startup Vercept and in the outdoors
• Bluesky’s Jay Graber is planting the seeds for a decentralized digital world

Thanks to First Tech Federal Credit Union, the title sponsor of this year’s GeekWire Gala. For a recap of last year’s event, head here.