Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce CEO Joe Nguyen delivered a direct message to regional leaders at the organization’s 144th annual meeting on Thursday: Seattle’s progressive social goals cannot exist without a thriving employer base.

Nguyen, a former Washington State Senator and Microsoft manager who served as Director of the Washington State Department of Commerce before taking over the Chamber, used his inaugural annual meeting address to bridge the gap between regional business priorities and broad civic goals.

While political and business leaders often appear at odds in Seattle, Nguyen argued that the two are deeply intertwined and fundamentally interdependent. Having a healthy business community is “not up for debate; it is a requirement,” Nguyen told the audience of more than 800 civic and business leaders.

He continued:

“So I want to be very clear: the progressive values in this region depends on the economic activities and jobs created by strong employers. Housing doesn’t fund itself. Human services do not fund themselves. Public safety and parks do not fund themselves. They are made possible by people creating companies, making payroll, and hiring workers, when businesses succeed, our values get funded. Economic growth is not separate from social progress.  In fact, economic growth makes social progress possible. You cannot fund compassion from an empty treasury.” 

Nguyen framed his vision for Seattle through a personal lens, detailing his family’s journey arriving in Seattle as refugees from Vietnam with little more than “hope.” A powerful image of his family departing Vietnam on a rickety boat accompanied his remarks.

He recalled his family taking footholds in local business, operating a billiards hall in White Center, working at the Port of Seattle and his mother sewing for JanSport. Nguyen later attended Seattle University on Capitol Hill while washing dishes, went on to work at Microsoft, entered the Washington State Senate representing the 34th District, and eventually joined Governor Bob Ferguson’s administration as Commerce Director.

“The larger lesson from my family story is not about any one company or career,” Nguyen said. “It is about what’s possible when a region creates opportunity. Microsoft opened doors for me that I never knew were even possible as a kid growing up in White Center. The employer community did more than employ my family; it changed the trajectory of our lives.”

Pointing to macro-level data, Nguyen highlighted that the tri-county regional economy (King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties) generates $600 billion in annual economic activity, representing 71% of Washington State’s total economic output and ranking as the 10th largest metro economy in the United States.

Additionally, local business activity funds roughly 70% of the City of Seattle’s budget revenue.

However, Nguyen cautioned against taking the regional economy for granted amid rising operational costs, public safety challenges, and regulatory friction.

“Prosperity is not permanent. It is not part of the scenery like Mount Rainier,” Nguyen said. “It is something a region must earn, protect, and renew… When an employer leaves, we lose jobs, we lose customers for nearby small businesses, we lose charitable giving, we lose future investments, and we lose the public revenue that sustains our shared priorities.”

Nguyen pointed to recent momentum in aligning state and local government with economic development priorities.

Over the past year, state lawmakers introduced a dedicated economic development committee in the legislature, the governor formed a state business council, and the Mayor of Seattle signed an executive order establishing a local Economic Development Council.

The Chamber’s core advocacy pushes remain centered on faster permitting, housing expansion, and addressing public safety as both a quality-of-life and economic imperative.

On the latter issue, Nguyen joined other business leaders earlier Thursday in signing an open letter with executives from Microsoft, Starbucks, and dozens of regional employers demanding a 100-day public safety action plan from City Hall.

The letter, spearheaded by the Chamber, Challenge Seattle and the Washington Roundtable, urged the city to accelerate 911 response times, activate surveillance cameras, and step up foot patrols to protect workers, visitors, and foot traffic across downtown.

“We will partner when partnership produces results. We will push when pushing is necessary,” Nguyen said in his remarks at the annual meeting. “We will be constructive, but we will not be passive. And we will never apologize for standing up for the employers and workers who make this region possible.”

Looking forward, Nguyen urged the region’s tech sector, innovators and policymakers to resist complacency and bet on the future of Seattle. Nguyen concluded his remarks by asking the audience to embrace the future, and he said he’s optimistic about what’s ahead because he sees “people betting on Seattle every single day.”

“I believe that Seattle is at an inflection point. We can give in to complacency… or we can decide that our next chapter will be even more ambitious than the last… Somewhere in this region, an entrepreneur is building our next great company, a scientist is making a discovery that will save lives, and a young person in White Center is imagining a future none of us can see yet. And it is our responsibility to give them that chance.”

We’ll be breaking down Nguyen’s address, the Chamber’s 100-day public safety push and the broader debate over Seattle’s economic future on this weekend’s episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Be sure to tune in here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Seattle startup veteran Stefan Kalb is back with a fresh brand and an ambitious vision for enterprise automation in the AI era.

Rebranded earlier this year from Super Labs, Kalb’s latest venture, Latch, is positioning itself as the context layer for enterprise AI, helping companies observe, learn and document how work actually gets done.

Kalb launched the startup alongside co-founder and CTO Jared Kofron, a University of Washington physics alum and former principal software engineer at Pioneer Square Labs last year.

Kalb is well known in startup circles. In 2009, the Bainbridge Island resident founded Molly’s, a fresh food supply company that serviced Seattle-area cafes and hospitals. That led him to start Shelf Engine, which used machine learning to drastically reduce food waste for retailers like Target, Kroger and Walmart. After raising $60 million in venture funding, it sold to New York retail data analytics company Crisp in 2025.

We recently caught with Kalb to hear more about Latch, his latest startup venture that has the ambitious goal of liberating humanity “from doing work that owns us.”

In 50 words or less, give us your startup’s elevator pitch?
Latch captures how work actually gets done. An employee records themselves doing a task and narrates it like they’re training a new hire. Latch turns that into a knowledge graph of the company’s processes and serves it to your AI agents. Your agents finally know how the business really runs.

What problem are you obsessed with solving?
Liberating people from work they don’t like. Every job has hours in it that only exist because software never learned how the company runs. I want that work to disappear, and I don’t think anyone will miss it.

What surprised you after talking to customers?
That people are bad at explaining their own jobs, and they know it. Ask someone to document their process and you get a five-step list. Watch them do it and it’s forty steps with a dozen decisions they never mention, because to them it isn’t a decision. It’s just Tuesday.

How has AI changed the way you build?
The obvious stuff is real, but the interesting change is org shape. The ratio of product to engineering has flipped. So has the ratio of SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) to closers. Building used to be the bottleneck, so you staffed for it. Now the bottleneck is deciding what to build and who to sell it to, and you staff for that instead.

What’s one thing people misunderstand about your startup?
They think we’re Loom. A Loom is a video in a folder waiting for a human to watch it. Latch watches the recording, figures out what you did and why you did it that way, and turns it into something your agents can act on. The video is the input. What we learn from it is the product.

Toughest decision in the past year?
Go to market. AI made reaching customers harder and more expensive, not easier. Every inbox is full of AI-written outbound now, so the cheap channels are gone. We decided to stop competing on volume and spend real money on fewer, deeper conversations. Showing up in person. It costs far more per account than we planned for, and it’s the only thing that works.

One piece of advice for other entrepreneurs?
Look away from the obvious. If someone is telling you about the front of their store, ask them about the loading bay. The best problems are the ones nobody is talking about, usually because they can’t put words to what’s happening. That’s also where you’ll have the least competition.

We’ll know we’ve made it when…
Someone gets furious that we’re down. Not because they lost a file, but because they can’t do their job without us. That’s the moment we stop being a tool and become key infrastructure.

Seattle biotech startup BrainChild Bio has raised $116 million to advance an experimental CAR T cell therapy for one of the deadliest forms of childhood brain cancer.

The Series A financing will primarily fund a pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial of an investigational therapy being developed for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG. The rare brainstem tumor primarily affects children ages 5 to 10 and has few treatment options.

The financing was led by an undisclosed private family fund and foundation, with participation from BrainChild Bio’s initial investor, Seattle Children’s, and new investor WRF Capital.

BrainChild Bio is building on CAR T cell technology developed at Seattle Children’s and licensed exclusively to the company in 2023. The approach involves genetically engineering a patient’s own T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.

The company says its new therapy has now entered its ILLUMINATE Phase 2 study, designed as a registration-stage trial that could eventually support an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

DIPG presents a particularly difficult challenge for cancer researchers because the tumors grow in the brainstem, an area critical to basic functions, and the blood-brain barrier can limit the ability of treatments to reach the tumor.

BrainChild Bio’s approach delivers the CAR T cells directly into cerebrospinal fluid through an implanted catheter, allowing the cells to reach the tumor locally and potentially be administered repeatedly.

About 300 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with DIPG each year, a devastating brain tumor with no cure and few treatment options. Radiation is the current standard of care, but children diagnosed with DIPG have a median overall survival of only about 11 months.

BrainChild Bio also plans to use proceeds from the new financing to advance a CAR T therapy designed to target three different cancer markers, toward initial clinical testing in glioblastoma.

The company was founded by Michael Jensen, who previously helped develop the underlying work at Seattle Children’s and was a co-founder of Umoja Biopharma and Juno Therapeutics. The CEO is Steven Brugger, who most recently served as founder and CEO of Affinivax, a biotech company which was acquired by GSK for $3.3 billion in 2022. 

“This financing enables us to chart our path forward to serve the children and families afflicted with devastating brain tumors and represents a new paradigm for treating CNS brain tumors in children and adults,” Jensen said in a statement. “Our team at BrainChild Bio is steadfast in its commitment to harness CAR T cell technology in CNS tumors and we are uniquely positioned to do so.”

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Bill Gates published a new essay warning that the AI industry is crossing the safety lines it set for itself, and that nobody is preparing for what’s coming. At age 70, he also uses AI more than most people half his age, and he finds it enthralling, as you’ll hear on this week’s show, with highlights from our interview with him.

Along the way, we dig into his three proposals: new institutions for managing the transition, a category of jobs reserved for humans, and a tax on the use and purchase of AI and robots.

The change in his own tech usage: “I joke with people that I used to have Claude-like people that I would send email to, but they were so slow, and there were some topics they didn’t actually know. … It’s three a.m. I want to understand sodium batteries, and now there’s no reason to go to sleep. Here we go. Yeah, it’s crazy.”

How he uses AI specifically: “If you’re a curious person, this is a mind-blowing time. When I’m working on malaria, nutrition, my poor humans that I work with always get these long conversations from me, where I paste in — me, Claude, me, ChatGPT. Sometimes I do it if there’s three of us: Claude, ChatGPT and me, debating these things.”

On where personal agents are headed: “We will get to a point where you won’t buy things yourself. You just won’t. … You won’t go to those applications. You’ll just go to your personal agent. … From a productivity point of view, we are in heaven.”

What has surprised him: “I was shocked by ChatGPT, and I was shocked by Claude Code. Those are both things where I went, oh my God. … I did not expect that a statistical machine would essentially learn to read, and the idea that the code is better than human code. Those are two stunning thresholds.”

On writing this essay: “It’s very unnatural for me to think that innovation may be a net negative if it’s not managed properly. The more I wrote the memo, the more I was like, Jesus, we really need to get our act together here. Even though this may come across as negative, that’s the truth. If we don’t step up, the negatives will substantially outweigh the positives.”

What AI leaders say privately: “You’re in this perverse period right now where people in the AI industry who are willing to say that AI might have some negative effects are told, ‘Hey, you’re hurting our PR while we’re trying to raise trillions of dollars.’ … I know they’re all worried. Or all of them that I know, which is basically everybody but Elon.”

On losing control of AI: “The wake-up for the memo is that the bad stuff thresholds are all being crossed. Even lack of control that I thought would be many years from now, we’re seeing lack of control. … These are people who are super expert on the thing, going, well, maybe we won’t be able to control these things. What kind of risk have we chosen to run here?”

On how fast robots are coming: “What’s weird about AI is it’s better at doing jobs across the entire economy, including physical jobs when the robots come — which you can guess when that is, but my view is it’s only a couple of years.”

Is he still an optimist? “I don’t think being pessimistic is helpful. I do think, wow, this is sure an interesting time. I’m the guy who in my 30s thought people in their 50s or 60s didn’t understand anything. So it’s kind of bizarre if a guy who’s 70 comes and writes a memo that’s actually helpful. … But I am very concerned. And honestly, when you get people one-on-one, so are they.”

Related headlines and links

• The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. — Bill Gates, Gates Notes
• ‘I am very concerned’: Bill Gates says the world needs a plan to deal with AI, and he has three ideas to start
• Bill Gates says there’s ‘no upper limit’ on AI, citing opportunity and risk
• Etzioni on AI: Bill Gates has the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription
• Dwarkesh Podcast: Ryan Greenblatt — What happens once AI can automate AI research?
• NPR: Trump’s new AI safety order seeks voluntary review of new models
• New York Times: Bill Gates is warning that A.I. is more dangerous than Big Tech will admit
• Wall Street Journal: Three takeaways from Bill Gates’s 5,784-word warning on AI: ‘There is no plan’
• MIT Technology Review: Bill Gates says we’ve passed AI’s danger thresholds. Now what?
• Axios: Gates confronts the Epstein questions hanging over his AI push
• Transcript: Here’s what Bill Gates told lawmakers in his recent Epstein testimony
• OpenAI: A Collective Approach to Cyber Defense

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Edited and produced by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

Influencers and online creators have become an increasingly powerful way for brands to sell products. But managing those relationships can get complicated — especially for companies selling across Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and other channels.

That’s the market Seattle startup Levanta is targeting, which today is announcing $22 million in new funding led by Volition Capital. The company provides software that helps brands find creators, send them products, set up affiliate commissions, track sales and handle payments.

The company says it now has more than 90,000 vetted creators on its platform. Brands can offer creators products to review or promote, pay commissions when their links generate sales, or arrange flat-fee partnerships. Levanta tracks the performance across Amazon, Walmart and Shopify and handles payments.

The startup originally focused on Amazon sellers but has expanded to Walmart and Shopify. Its revenue is up 80% year-over-year in 2026, according to the company.

“Every marketplace has thousands of sellers that want more customers, and there are millions of creators and affiliates capable of driving those customers,” said CEO and co-founder Ian Brodie in a press release. “The missing piece is infrastructure that connects the two, handles the economics, and accurately measures what happens.”

In 2023, Goldman Sachs estimated that the the influencer marketing category was expected to grow to $480 million by 2027.

Levanta was founded in 2023 by Brodie, CTO Spencer McKenney and Chief Marketplace Officer Rob Schab, all University of Washington graduates. The three previously founded Grovia.io, an affiliate marketing company that was acquired by Acceleration Partners in 2022.

With more than 100 employees, Levanta is the rare startup that has already reached profitability with Brodie telling Business Insider that it has been profitable or roughly break-even since its launch. With the new funding, it also provided cash liquidity to some eligible employees.

“This is a milestone moment for Levanta and it reflects how far the company has come and the value our team has created together,” Brodie said in the release. “At the same time, it allows us to reward the people who have been instrumental in building the foundation of the business while ensuring they remain deeply aligned with where we’re going next as we continue building Levanta for the long term.”

The new funding will support expansion to additional retail marketplaces and international growth.

Previous Levanta backers include Long Run Capital, OpenSky Ventures and Arrived Homes CEO Ryan Frazier. The latest series B round brings Levanta’s total funding to more than $43 million.

Portland-based social media startup Graze is joining Flipboard in a strategic acquisition aimed at expanding open social protocols and giving users control over their own content algorithms.

Founded by Devin Gaffney, Peat Bakke and Andrew Lisowski — starting from a blog concept and officially forming 21 months ago — Graze has grown into an engine for the open social web.

The Graze platform has delivered over 41 billion posts to 12 million users. It enables creators, publishers and everyday users to build, tune, and monetize custom social algorithms, particularly across platforms like Bluesky, without writing a single line of code.

In announcement announcing the deal, Gaffney said that Graze marks the most important work of his career, creating a new “playbook for how to re-orient the attention economy, and start pulling us back out of the widening gyre.”

Under the direction of Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has heavily invested in open social protocols like AT Protocol, ActivityPub and RSS through initiatives like its Surf browser and “Social Websites” product.

The acquisition combines Flipboard’s front-end discovery tools with Graze’s back-end algorithmic engine.

“Combined, we become two halves of one machine,” wrote Gaffney. “Surf will be the browser for the open social web — where people go to read and discover feeds across Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, RSS, and more. Graze will be the engine under those feeds — how a curator builds, tunes, and monetizes one without writing a line of code.”

As a lean team, Graze faced a number of operational slowdowns with Gaffney writing that they ended up “wearing a half dozen hats we didn’t know we needed at the start.” Joining Flipboard allows the team to accelerate development by tapping into Flipboard’s established infrastructure rather than rebuilding existing systems from scratch.

“Mike (McCue) and I share a vision of creating an attention economy that works for everyone, and as the onslaught of generative AI starts to clog the pipes of legacy platforms, we both deeply believe that a curatorial role in shaping “the algorithm” is the only sustainable way to run that attention economy into the future,” Gaffney wrote.

For Graze’s existing user base, the team confirmed that the core product and service will remain online. The combined entities aim to offer a creator-first alternative to closed, legacy platforms like Facebook or Instagram, providing users with ownership over what they see and how they earn.

In April 2025, Graze raised $1 million in a pre-seed round led by Betaworks, Salesforce Ventures Factorial, Apertu Capital, Skyseed, and angel investors from Mozilla and Protocol Labs. Graze employed just two people — Gaffney and software engineer Nick Gerakines — and both will be transitioning to Flipboard. Bakke and Lisowski left the company last year.

In an email to GeekWire, Flipboard’s McCue said that the Graze team has built a special tool that has benefited many curators, community builders, creators and developers.

“I’m inspired by their vision and can’t wait to work closely with them to continue building out the open social web,” McCue said. “Devin and Nick will continue to advance Graze as the ultimate feed building and hosting platform while Surf and Flipboard will enable millions of additional users to discover and experience feeds in new ways we’re going to design together.” 

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, though Gaffney tells GeekWire that they are “confident that this is a great outcome for the team, the company, and the investors.”

The next big test for AI isn’t happening in a data center. It’s happening in the dirt.

Really, it’s in the weeds.

Two Seattle-area startups are betting that AI can transform how farmers find and eliminate unwanted plants — one by mapping every weed, the other by zapping them with lasers.

Issaquah, Wash.-based TerraClear is commercializing a new system that uses ultra-high-resolution imagery and machine learning to map individual weeds across entire fields of corn and soybeans, then turns those detections into digital prescriptions that can be sent directly to precision sprayers.

The new Weed Maps technology from TerraClear — best known for its robotic rock picking technology — can identify weeds as small as a quarter of an inch, the company said in a press release today.

Meanwhile, Seattle-based Carbon Robotics is taking a different approach: Its autonomous LaserWeeder uses computer vision to identify weeds and then blasts them with lasers.

Now, the AI powering these systems is getting smarter, too — moving beyond simple weed detection toward models that can recognize and understand plants across different crops, fields and growing conditions.

TerraClear’s new Weed Maps, announced Tuesday, captures imagery at 1.5-millimeter resolution and identifies weeds as small as the eraser on a pencil. Rather than sampling portions of a field, the company says it collects images of every acre and produces a geo-referenced map that can be uploaded to section or nozzle-controlled sprayers used by farmers.

The goal is precision at a level that would be difficult for a human to achieve, allowing a farmer to know where the individual weeds are.

TerraClear says the maps can be delivered the next day, giving growers a chance to act while weeds are still small and easier to control.

Devin Lammers, the chief executive of TerraClear, tells GeekWire that its approach “sidesteps the capital problem entirely.” In other words, farmers need not buy a new piece of expensive equipment, instead using software to turn existing sprayers into precision instruments by telling them exactly where to spray.

He called Carbon Robotics laser-weeding system “impressive technology,” noting that it works well for specialty crops and organics.

But bigger farms producing commodity crops like corn and soybeans — the market TerraClear is going after — need a different approach, he said.

“Modern grain and oilseed sprayers already have individual nozzle control and RTK positioning — the actuation hardware is sitting in the shed,” Lammers said via email. “We just hand the sprayer a shapefile of individual weed locations and it turns the nozzle on only where a weed actually is.”

Given that large corn and soybean growers farm more acres at a lower revenue per acre, Lammers said it’s a “very different P&L” where expensive new equipment needs to pencil out.

With TerraClear’s new system, Lammers added that “the farmer buys a map, not a machine.”

RFK Jr. and new ways to farm

One of the benefits of both approaches is chemical use reduction in the field, a hot topic in political circles with President Trump earlier this year committing $1 billion to modernize farming and reduce chemicals in agriculture. That federal investment could help spark new innovations, like the ones TerraClear and Carbon Robotics are developing.

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

In the case of TerraClear, Lammers said the precision mapping technology alone could cut pesticide and herbicide use by up to 80% with no loss of efficacy.

Both startups are part of a broader Pacific Northwest ag-tech ecosystem that has been applying AI and robotics to agriculture, building on the regions farming and tech roots.

TerraClear founder Brent Frei represents that unique farming and tech DNA. He grew up on a family farm in Grangeville, Idaho, before studying at Dartmouth and then moving to the Seattle area where he co-founded Onyx Software and Smartsheet.

Founded in 2017, TerraClear originally attacked a much less glamorous agricultural problem: identifying and removing rocks from farmers’ fields. In 2024, the company raised $15 million, bringing its total funding to $53 million.

By February of this year, TerraClear had expanded to about 50 employees and was approaching 1,000 customers. At that time, it also launched an autonomous field robot called TerraScout, designed to collect high-resolution imagery across a field and convert that information into actionable maps for existing farm equipment.

The company says TerraScout can collect more than 4 billion image samples per acre and map more than 1,000 acres a day under favorable conditions.

In addition to TerraScout, Lammers said they are using aerial drones to ingest field-level data into its new Weed Maps product.

“That’s the part that compounds — the imagery we gather is field-level, repeated season over season, and specific to the commodity acre,” Lammers said. “Models get better, which makes the maps better, which brings more acres, which produces more data.”

Carbon Robotics is further down the road in making the machine the decision-maker, and eradicating weeds without the use of chemicals.

The Seattle startup’s LaserWeeder combines cameras, AI and high-powered lasers to identify weeds and destroy them without applying herbicides or pesticides. The company has deployed its machines on farms around the world and has built an enormous dataset in the process.

Announced in February, its so-called Large Plant Model was trained on 150 million labeled plants, which Carbon describes as the largest agricultural plant dataset of its kind. The company’s goal is to move beyond narrowly trained computer-vision systems that need to be retrained whenever a new weed or field condition appears.

With the Large Plant Model, farmers can use Carbon’s Plant Profiles feature to show the system a handful of images and customize what the machine should recognize and target.

Given the changing dynamics of a weed during various stages of its growth — and based on conditions such as soil, weather and crop varieties — Carbon wants to correctly identify the difference between a weed and a crop.

“When our robots can understand any plant in any field immediately and adapt behavior in real-time, farmers immediately get maximum value from the machines,” Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell said in a press release. “The Large Plant Model provides farmers with the most advanced AI technology to maximize the weeding quality of LaserWeeder in their unique environments.”

Founded in 2018, Carbon Robotics has raised $177 million to date and as of last year employed about 260 people at offices in Seattle and a manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash.

The farm becomes a giant AI dataset

TerraClear and Carbon Robotics are attacking one of agriculture’s thorniest problems — weed management — from different directions.

TerraClear wants to allow a farmer to keep using a conventional precision sprayer, while making it dramatically more selective via its Weed Maps.

Carbon, meanwhile, is developing autonomous laser-weeding equipment itself, identifying and eliminating the individual weeds in real time without chemical spray or tractor operators.

The bigger opportunity for both companies may ultimately be neither maps nor lasers, but the underlying data they gather.

Every time a camera passes over a field, it can collect information about plants, soil, crop health and growing conditions. That’s vital information to farmers, seed producers, agriculture researchers and equipment manufacturers.

A federal judge has entered a final judgment requiring Guardant Health to pay more than $245 million to Seattle biotech TwinStrand Biosciences and the University of Washington over DNA sequencing technology developed at the university.

The judgment, entered Friday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, follows a 2023 jury verdict that found Guardant willfully infringed two patents covering TwinStrand’s Duplex Sequencing technology.

The case also establishes a continuing revenue stream for the university and TwinStrand from some of Guardant’s products.

The court’s final judgment includes $83.4 million in damages awarded by the jury for infringement through June 2023, plus $19.5 million in supplemental damages, $119.4 million in accrued royalties and $22.9 million in interest.

Going forward, Guardant is required under the judgment to pay a 6% royalty on covered sales through March 2033, when the patents expire.

The technology at the center of the case traces back to research at the University of Washington, where scientists, including co-founder Jesse Salk, developed Duplex Sequencing as a way to make DNA sequencing more accurate. Salk — who stepped down as CEO of TwinStrand in 2022 — now is the co-founder of cancer diagnostics startup CytoTerra.

The molecular biologist and clinical oncologist is the grandson of the late Jonas Salk, the scientist who discovered and developed the polio vaccine.

TwinStrand says its Duplex Sequencing technology can improve the accuracy of next-generation sequencing by more than 10,000-fold, allowing researchers to detect extremely rare genetic mutations that can be obscured by sequencing errors.

“Duplex Sequencing solved an accuracy problem the sequencing field had worked on for years, and this judgment affirms the jury’s finding that Guardant Health built products on that invention without a license,” said Chad Waite, chair of the TwinStrand board of directors, in a press release. “We remained steadfast in our conviction that the facts would prevail, and they have. We intend to see this through and stand firmly behind the intellectual property at the core of our technology.”

Salk and his colleagues from the University of Washington launched TwinStrand in 2015 to commercialize the technology. Based in Seattle, the startup raised funding from Madrona Venture Group, Soleus Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Ridgeback Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments. Section 32 led a $50 million series B round in the company in 2021.

A jury found in November 2023 that Guardant willfully infringed the patents through 11 products and services. The products identified in the judgment include Guardant360, Guardant Reveal, Guardant Shield and other cancer-testing products.

The Delaware court subsequently rejected Guardant’s effort to overturn the verdict or obtain a new trial. In June, the court also awarded TwinStrand and UW ongoing royalties and supplemental damages. The final judgment now formalizes those awards.

Guardant is not accepting the ruling.

The California-based precision oncology company said Monday that it plans to appeal the judgment, arguing that the court’s order covers products that existed at the time of the 2023 trial and that many have since been discontinued or substantially upgraded. Guardant also said current versions of its Reveal and Shield products are excluded from the final district court order.

Guardant — founded in 2012 — said the judgment and collection of potential royalties will be stayed pending the appeal.

“We strongly disagree with this decision and will promptly be appealing for its overturn,” said John Saia, Guardant Health Chief Legal Officer, in a press release. “We have full faith in the strengths and merits of Guardant’s intellectual property and R&D and are confident we will ultimately prevail on appeal.”

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon’s delivery drones are going national, nearly 13 years after Jeff Bezos unveiled them on 60 Minutes. We listen back and discuss what’s next.

Plus: We go inside Anduril’s unmarked Bellevue office as the defense company builds toward 1,000 Seattle-area engineers; a reporter hides an AirTag in a rare book and tracks it to a secret Amazon book-scanning facility in Las Vegas; and an Anduril-themed trivia challenge.

Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.

Related stories and links

Mentioned at the top

• Want to know what Jeff Bezos brings to Liverpool FC? Study Amazon’s Leadership Principles

Amazon drone delivery

• Amazon drone delivery set to expand nationally, reaching nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns this year
• Amazon’s big surprise: Working on autonomous flying delivery drones — GeekWire, December 2013
• Jeff Bezos unveils the Prime Air prototype on 60 Minutes — YouTube
• Amazon Prime Air drone delivery expansion — Amazon
• Andy Jassy’s 2025 letter to shareholders — Amazon
• Walmart, Wing expand drone delivery coverage — Supply Chain Dive

The AirTag and the book-scanning facility

• How an AirTag planted by a reporter led to a secret Amazon site where old books are cut apart and scanned
• We tracked a shipment of rare books. It ended at an Amazon AI training facility — 404 Media
• AI companies are buying tons of old books because they’re free of AI slop — 404 Media
• Trash Transparency Project — Basel Action Network
• America’s e-waste: a GPS tracker tells all — PBS NewsHour
• Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors — Associated Press

Anduril in the Seattle region

• Inside Anduril’s AI warfighting buildup: Defense giant sees a path to 1,000 Seattle-area engineers
• Anduril exits Seattle shipyard following canceled Navy program and omission from new warship list
• Defense tech giant Anduril eyes new funding at $100B valuation as Seattle expansion draws protests — GeekWire, July 2026
• AI weapons under scrutiny as activists plan weekend protest at Anduril’s Seattle office — GeekWire, July 2026
• Anduril lands $5B as defense giant builds autonomous warship operation in Seattle — GeekWire, May 2026
• Defense giant Anduril is quietly building autonomous warships on Seattle’s historic ship canal — GeekWire, April 2026
• Military tech giant Anduril lands in Bellevue, doubling footprint in Seattle region — GeekWire, July 2025

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BELLEVUE, Wash. — There is no prominent signage outside Anduril’s downtown Bellevue office. The name isn’t listed in the building directory, on the suite door, or in the lobby. That may be by design: Inside, Anduril engineers are quietly building AI-driven, autonomous technologies intended to keep the U.S. and its allies ahead in a rapidly changing military landscape.

Step through the front doors and it becomes clear that this is no ordinary tech company. 

Scattered across desks, production tables, conference rooms and showroom labs are autonomous drones ranging in size from a microwave to a ping-pong table, alongside next-generation digital night-vision goggles and military-grade edge computers designed to keep soldiers connected in an increasingly data-rich battlefield. 

The Costa Mesa, Calif.-based defense giant — which closed a $5 billion funding round at a $61 billion valuation earlier this year and is reportedly targeting a $100 billion valuation — is rapidly building a massive engineering footprint in the greater Seattle region. It includes modern offices in downtown Bellevue and Seattle, and a multi-acre military testing facility near Carnation, Wash.

GeekWire got a peek inside the iconoclastic company’s Seattle-area operations this week. We toured the Bellevue offices, demoed products, and sat down with senior vice president Tom Keane. The former Microsoft cloud executive leads Anduril’s local presence and oversees its connected warfare division, including mixed reality, AI and edge computing technologies.

Keane was clear about the company’s growth ambitions in the Seattle region: “I could absolutely see a world where we get to 1,000 people here in terms of engineers,” he said.

Asked when that milestone could be reached, Keane said, “It’s sort of almost as fast as you can hire people.” Realistically, that will likely occur over the next two years.

Anduril currently employs 560 people in its Bellevue and downtown Seattle offices, up from about 30 four years ago. That’s when Keane, who had interviewed with 62 companies looking for a new challenge in edge computing, joined Anduril because of what he called “world-class teams in every discipline.” 

With more than 110 open positions in Washington state and a newly leased third floor in downtown Seattle coming online, Keane said the regional expansion is only accelerating.

The regional workforce was until recently slated to include a maritime manufacturing hub along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle. However, as GeekWire reported this morning, Anduril has since vacated the former Foss Maritime shipyard space after the U.S. Navy canceled the autonomous warship program the company was pursuing.

But Anduril’s maritime ambitions haven’t gone away. Alongside its autonomous aircraft, low-cost cruise missiles and counter-drone interceptors, the company continues to develop a large subsea fleet, from modular survey vehicles to the extra-large, school-bus-sized Dive-XL.

The Big Tech pipeline meets ‘grit’

The company’s Seattle-area ramp-up is a play for the region’s engineering talent — a mix of disciplines well-suited to a next-generation defense hardware company, and one Keane says is hard to find in one place. That includes distributed systems engineers, AI and machine learning specialists, and advanced optics experts.

Another advantage: proximity to major military installations including Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Naval Base Kitsap.

Tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta have long dominated local engineering hiring. But Anduril is recruiting aggressively from those companies, pitching engineers who want to move fast and see their work in the field.

Deep pockets and close ties to the U.S. defense establishment don’t hurt, either.

Anduril got a large infusion of that talent 18 months ago, when it took over Microsoft’s IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System) program along with about 100 local engineers who had spent years developing augmented reality hardware for the U.S. Army.

“If you take machine learning and AI… you can look out any of these windows and see places that we can recruit from,” Keane said from a conference room overlooking downtown Bellevue. “For a lot of software engineers, this is incredibly applied.”

Keane acknowledges the company’s culture isn’t for everyone. In fact, Anduril got plenty of buzz last year with its edgy recruiting campaign, “Don’t Work at Anduril.“

Rather than plush tech perks and work-from-home flexibility, Anduril pitches what Keane calls “grit” — a willingness to take ownership of hard engineering problems and test them in the field. It’s very much an in-office culture, in part because the company builds hardware.

Anduril also moves fast, an approach Hawaiian-shirt-wearing founder Palmer Luckey wields against slower traditional military contractors.

The company’s “grit” translates directly into how Anduril tests its gear.

In rural Carnation, Wash., about 20 miles east of Bellevue, Anduril operates a testing range with a built-out “shoot house” for low-light tactical work. It gives engineers a place to iterate on code and hardware in the mud and rain alongside active-duty warfighters.

Among them: members of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment from nearby Joint Base Lewis-McChord, who recently put Anduril’s EagleEye mixed-reality system through its paces on the firing range and obstacle course.

Hands-On with ‘EagleEye’ and Lattice

During a walkthrough of the Bellevue facility, Anduril’s team showed us a wide range of hardware being designed, tested, and calibrated on site.

The centerpiece was EagleEye, the company’s heads-up hardware and software suite built for warfighters. Historically, soldiers have had to lug 3 to 5 pounds of glass and electronics on their helmets, paired with fragmented radios, specialized batteries and thick cables.

Anduril’s system strips that down to a 115-gram pair of augmented reality glasses — about four ounces — built in collaboration with Meta (for waveguides), Canon (for sensors), Qualcomm (for custom silicon) and Oakley (for ballistic protection).

I tried on the lightweight camouflage backpack and glasses — no helmet in this case — in a demo in the Bellevue testing lab. It ran through three operational “vignettes” driven by Anduril’s core Lattice software:

• Tactical HUD: A heads-up display projecting friendly force markers, compass headings, and mini-maps into the user’s field of view so troops don’t have to look down at a handheld screen while moving.
• Threat Detection: Real-time alerts from external AI sensors — such as a tower camera or an overhead drone — highlighting incoming aerial threats directly in the display.
• Command & Control (C2): The ability to assign tasks to autonomous technology. Using a small handheld controller, an operator can send a virtual Ghost drone to a location, pull up a live video feed and execute a simulated strike.

In each case, the user controls the system — navigating between maps and text — with a click of a button on a small device connected to the front of the backpack.

The team also previewed its upcoming digital night vision system. Instead of the narrow “toilet paper roll” view of traditional analog goggles, Anduril’s VR-style digital displays offer an 84-degree field of view. That’s more than double the 40 degrees warfighters get in devices today.

Using machine learning models, the system fuses thermal imagery and low-light camera feeds in real time, making heat signatures leap out in pitch-black environments.

To ensure every pixel lands accurately without causing motion sickness, Anduril’s engineers use custom robotic arms to run geometric calibration on each lens distortion map before it leaves the facility. An engineer running the testing equipment politely asked GeekWire not to photograph the system.

The night vision system has not yet been deployed but will be part of the Soldier Borne Mission Command prototype delivery to the U.S. Army next year, said Stephanie Davis, communications manager for Anduril’s connected warfare group.

Protests, hiring and hardware

Operating a high-profile defense company in the Seattle area doesn’t come without friction. Activist groups recently staged protests outside Anduril’s downtown Seattle offices, targeting the company’s autonomous weapons development and military contracts.

At the time, Anduril issued a statement to GeekWire saying that it respects the right to free speech.  “That said, it is perplexing when people choose to protest a company dedicated to supporting the very military that safeguards those rights,” the company added.

When asked about the pushback, Keane said critics don’t affect Anduril’s hiring. “There’s protests at every company, frankly.”

Anduril’s hiring reaches well beyond Big Tech. Drew Swanson, a lead architect, spent 13 years in the military working in communications supporting special operations units in the field. He described an Anduril technology called Squad-A, which helps squad leaders pick the best network connections to stitch together incoming intelligence feeds.

Swanson said the draw of Anduril is the chance to escape corporate bureaucracy and tackle high-stakes physical problems, reflected in comments he gets from others in Seattle tech.

“One of the biggest things that I always hear is: ‘I want to come over there because you guys are going after really hard problems,'” Swanson said of conversations with tech colleagues around Seattle.

Solving those problems often comes down to fundamental hardware redesigns, like combining a soldier’s ballistic vest, battery and edge computing device into a single body plate. Keane showed off a prototype as the tour wrapped up — an example of Anduril’s broader approach.

“Batteries are such a huge thing,” he said, pointing to the body armor. “If you put the three of them together… you can start to get rid of stuff. You take what was historically three separate heavy things and turn it into one software-enabled platform.”

Defense technology giant Anduril Industries has quietly vacated its maritime operations along Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal.

The exit, confirmed by the company to GeekWire this week, comes after the U.S. Navy canceled the specific autonomous vessel acquisition program Anduril was pursuing at the historic former Foss Maritime shipyard site.

“Anduril has moved out of its shipyard space in Seattle,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “The space supported a Navy program pursuit; the Navy canceled that program, and the shipyard footprint was no longer needed. The Seattle shipyard presence was always small — a handful of employees worked from the space. Anduril’s broader Seattle footprint continues to grow across its other offices in the city.”

The disclosure provides a sudden plot twist in a maritime push that GeekWire first reported on in April, after Anduril established a presence at the Foss shipyard. At the time, the company offered a muted response when pressed for specifics about its local shipyard activities.

The plans went back to late 2025, when Anduril announced a major partnership with South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries.

The companies set out to build a new class of dual-use Autonomous Surface Vessels designed to compete for the Navy’s Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) program, which sought unmanned vessels capable of carrying large payloads over long distances.

At the time, Anduril pitched the Pacific Northwest as the ideal industrial launchpad, pointing to the region’s historic shipbuilding roots.

“Anduril has invested tens of millions of dollars to revamp a previously retired shipyard in the Pacific Northwest region at the historic former Foss Shipyard in Seattle, Washington,” the company said during the partnership rollout. “This facility will serve as Anduril’s initial U.S. hub for low-rate vessel assembly, integration, and testing of ASVs for the MASC program.”

That vision, however, was quickly upended. The U.S. Navy canceled the MASC initiative in March, replacing it with a new acquisition strategy for Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels, or MUSVs.

Rather than relying on a traditional program competition, the new marketplace allows the Navy to evaluate autonomous vessels through at-sea demonstrations, with successful systems eligible for follow-on production.

When the Department of the Navy announced the seven defense vendors selected to move forward in the new program, the lineup included defense contractors like Leidos, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Saronic Technologies and Sea Machines — leaving Anduril off the roster for initial testing.

Companies that successfully deploy vessels at sea will receive $15 million, and be eligible for follow-on production. At-sea testing was set to start in June, and is expected to conclude in October.

Anduril did not respond to additional questions about the Foss facility, its maritime operations in the Seattle area or its plans for the Navy’s new MUSV program.

Despite vacating its shipyard presence, Anduril’s broader push into Western Washington remains on a steep upward trajectory. The Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company employs 560 people across its Bellevue and downtown Seattle offices — up from roughly 30 four years ago — and operates a multi-acre military testing facility in rural Carnation, Wash.

The high-flying defense giant, which closed a $5 billion funding round at a $61 billion valuation earlier this year and is reportedly targeting a $100 billion valuation in a new funding round, is rapidly building a massive engineering footprint in the greater Seattle region.

Senior Vice President Tom Keane told GeekWire the company could eventually grow its regional workforce to 1,000 people, including engineers working on augmented reality displays, edge computing hardware and other military technologies.

Anduril’s rapid expansion in the region is the subject of a separate profile story today on GeekWire.

What does Jeff Bezos’ new ownership stake in English Premier League powerhouse Liverpool FC mean for the storied soccer club?

I was invited by Dan Clubbe of the Liverpool fan site The Redmen TV to talk about the Amazon founder’s recent investment, Bezos’ first real foray into sports ownership.

Across the 45-minute discussion, I shared thoughts about Bezos’ transformation from the nerdy, khaki-wearing entrepreneur of his early career to the higher-profile “Buff Bezos” of the past decade.

On the surface, it appears as if Bezos will, for now, take an arm’s-length approach to Liverpool. He’s investing through a consortium, 1892 Holdings, that owns about a 38% interest in the team and an option to buy it outright.

One point I made: Bezos leads a very busy life. The sci-fi nerd’s true passion is his space company, Blue Origin, and he is also spending considerable time as the co-CEO at newly formed AI startup Prometheus. And with a new wife (Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who seems to be the true sports fan between them) there may not be enough hours in the day for the Miami resident to worry much about the inner workings at Anfield.

But Bezos does bring enormous capital and business acumen to the team.

To better understand what this might mean for Liverpool, I suggested Clubbe and his mighty team of reporters take a closer look at Amazon’s famous Leadership Principles.

Some of the most relevant Leadership Principles include “Ownership,” which asks leaders to think long term and not trade lasting value for a quick result; “Customer Obsession,” which means starting with what the customer wants and working backward; and “Insist on the Highest Standards,” setting the bar higher than most people think reasonable.

That said, the Amazon principle of “Frugality” doesn’t really play well these days on the world soccer stage.

We talked about the changing nature of global soccer, driven by big personalities and big money, and the balancing act it takes to build a soccer club while respecting the community of fans. I noted how this tightrope was a hard one for Bezos to walk in terms of his relationship to Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, something that might give Liverpool fans pause.

Watch highlights from the discussion above, and subscribe to The Redmen TV for our full discussion. Listen to a much shorter analysis on last week’s GeekWire podcast.

BuyWander, the Spokane, Wash.-born startup building an auction marketplace for returned and overstocked retail goods, has moved its headquarters to the Seattle area and grown to 325 employees as it expands its warehouse network across the country.

The company said Tuesday that it has added four executives to its leadership team, including two former Amazon employees, as it pushes into new markets including Denver and Chicago.

BuyWander is now based in Kent, Wash., where it has 45 employees. The company said it moved its corporate headquarters from Spokane to the Seattle area this month, putting its leadership team closer to the region’s large retail and e-commerce ecosystem.

GeekWire last wrote about BuyWander in April 2025, when the startup employed 22 people and was on the verge of opening a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in Kent after raising $2 million in seed funding.

Founded in 2023 by Jordan Allen and Brock Kowalchuk, BuyWander’s marketplace sells returned and overstocked merchandise from retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart and Home Depot. Products start at a $1 opening bid in seven-day online auctions, with buyers picking up purchases at local BuyWander warehouses rather than having them shipped.

Current items for sale on the marketplace include: window air conditioning units; steel gate fencing; carbon fiber rear trunk spoilers; Jeep Wrangler seat covers; countertop microwave ovens, pop-up canopy tents and dozens of other products.

The model is aimed at giving returned merchandise another route to consumers rather than leaving it in warehouses or sending it to landfills. BuyWander’s technology is designed to scan, sort and identify inventory before putting it up for auction.

The sector is filled with rivals, including companies such as Mac.bid, B-Stock, Liquidation.com and ReturnPro, which focuses more on solutions for retailers.

Allen previously founded Stay Alfred, a Spokane-based short-term rental company that shut down in 2020, amid the pandemic, after expanding to more than 30 cities.

“Auction commerce is having a real moment, and it’s exciting to build the team to meet it,” Allen said in a statement Tuesday.

The four new executives are:

• Laura Sasser, chief operating officer, who spent nearly 20 years at liquidation and inventory-management company Channel Control Merchants and most recently was senior vice president of operations at FullSpeed Automotive where she oversaw facilities, inventory management, and loss prevention.
• Daniel Kiepfer, vice president of data and AI, who previously led data and analytics at Seattle online jewelry retailer Blue Nile and held roles at Microsoft, RealSelf and McKinsey.
• Abu Marcose, senior director of warehouse technology, who spent 12 years at Amazon, most recently as a senior software development manager on Amazon’s Supply Chain Optimization Technologies team.
• Roger Ling, director of marketing, who previously led integrated marketing at DoorDash and held go-to-market and product marketing roles at Amazon, including work on Prime Big Deal Days and Amazon Business.

Marcose’s hiring is particularly notable for BuyWander’s push to build technology around its warehouse operations. At Amazon, he worked on capacity planning, network optimization and generative and agentic AI systems used in fulfillment operations.

Ling’s experience also fits BuyWander’s retail focus, bringing experience in both Amazon’s e-commerce operation and DoorDash’s consumer marketplace.

Sasser’s experience will help the two-year-old startup expand into new markets, helping customers find deals in new geographies.

“My focus now is building the operational backbone that lets it scale across every new market we enter,” she said in a statement.

BuyWander said it currently operates eight warehouses, with Denver and Chicago among its newest locations, and plans to continue expanding nationally over the next year. The bulk of its employee base works in stocking, intake and customer service.

The company is backed by Triple Impact Capital, Animal Capital, Data Tech Fund, Vinay Menda, Quiet Capital, Maria Routimine, Eric Klein, James Dorman and Tom Simpson.

Harlan Robins spent years as the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Adaptive Biotechnologies, helping build massive datasets to decode the human immune system.

But as artificial intelligence exploded across life sciences, he recognized a growing divide: the groups spending immense resources to generate high-quality research data rarely receive fair compensation when AI developers use those assets to build commercial tools.

Now, the veteran biotech founder is stepping out with a new Bellevue startup called Harell Data that just scored $15 million in funding from Fuse, Cercano Management and others.

“The goal of the company is to connect AI modelers to proprietary training sets to enable the solution of challenging scientific problems,” said Robins in an email to GeekWire. “At present, the entities that generate proprietary training data using their own technology and expense do not have a good way to commercialize the data. So they effectively sit on it.”

High-profile successes like AlphaFold thrived because they drew on decades of publicly available, experimentally derived protein structures, Robins said.

But in many critical areas of biology and medicine, generating high-quality datasets requires millions of dollars and years of labor. The entities that own this data currently have no secure, profitable way to share it, so it remains sitting in isolated silos.

Harell Data Corp. is built to serve as a secure bridge between data creators and world-class AI modelers. It works like this:

• Secure Cloud Platform: Data creators host their proprietary datasets on Harell’s platform, allowing machine learning groups to train models without the raw underlying data ever leaving the secure environment.
• Direct Revenue Sharing: Instead of waiting years for speculative downstream drug royalties, data owners earn a direct share of the compute revenue generated during training runs.
• Compound Value: As models improve through training on these rich datasets, the intrinsic value of the underlying data becomes more valuable.

While the startup is initially targeting problems Robins knows best — largely around computational medicine — he emphasizes that the data-silo problem spans across scientific disciplines, from materials science to imaging.

“If the business works right, we should be able to enable solutions to really important problems,” he said.

The company’s name also carries a fun personal story. When Robins decided to start the venture, he asked his 8-year-old son, Ellis, for a recommendation. Within seconds, his son suggested “Harell”: a combination of “Harlan” and “Ellis.”

“No offense to the large cap cloud compute companies, but it sounds better to me than any of their names, and things seem to have worked out OK for them so I went with it,” said Robins.

Robins, who continues to serve as a consultant focusing on scientific strategy at Adaptive Biotechnologies, has built an 11-person team split between Bellevue and Palo Alto, California. The team includes Chief Technology Officer Rakesh Nair, Head of Operations Saray Covey, and Head of Sales Analise Polsky.

Early access for the platform is launching this week with initial datasets provided by partners including Seattle-based A-Alpha Bio and Adaptive Biotechnologies.

Adaptive, which is publicly-traded with a market value of $3.9 billion, earlier this year spun out a new startup called Digital Biotechnologies that is developing DNA sequencing technology. 

The biotech publication Timmerman Report first reported on the news of Harell Data.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: What should Liverpool FC fans expect from Jeff Bezos as a member of the storied English Premier League club’s new minority ownership group? We consult the Amazon leadership principles for the answer.

Plus, a tip and an SEC filing lead to a scoop on a former Meta AI director’s new startup, the GeekWire Editorial Board convenes to decide whether Dave Clark’s Auger stays on the GeekWire 200 after moving its HQ to Dallas, and Microsoft quietly semi-retires its AI blob.

Related Stories and Links

Bezos and Liverpool FC

• Group including Jeff Bezos buys minority stake in Liverpool FC, with option to become controlling owner — CNBC
• Liverpool: FSG sell minority stake to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos-backed consortium led by Amit Bhatia — Sky Sports
• Bezos, Bhatia buy a stake in Liverpool: What does it mean for the club and FSG? — ESPN
• Bezos, Bhatia, Saverin buy Liverpool stake at $7 billion valuation — Sportico
• The Redmen TV — independent Liverpool FC fan channel

Noosphere and the Form D

• Ex-Meta AI research director raises $10.25M from Trilogy and Madrona for stealth physical AI startup
• Kevin T. Carlberg — founder’s research site

Auger and the GeekWire 200

• This former Amazon exec is moving his startup’s HQ to Texas, and he has a few notes for Seattle
• Dave and Leigh Anne Clark move Auger headquarters to Dallas — D Magazine
• GeekWire 200
• Seattle Engineering Centers
• New map traces Washington state’s tech ‘universe’ to a few key hubs, and shows what’s at risk
• ‘We can’t become callous’: KIRO hosts debate what a startup’s departure to Texas says about Seattle’s business climate — MyNorthwest

Microsoft and Mico

• Farewell, Mico: Microsoft’s cute little AI blob is going the way of Bob
• Microsoft starts merging its Copilot consumer and business apps in advance of ‘Super App’ rollout

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

A bio-manufacturing facility in Everett, Wash., which was built by Seattle biotech giant Seagen but never opened under its Pfizer ownership, is getting a new lease on life.

Breakthrough Properties, a life sciences real estate company, said Friday that it has acquired the 270,000-square-foot facility at 215 Shuksan Way for $78 million and leased the entire campus for 21 years to an unnamed global biopharmaceutical company.

Seagen invested approximately $350 million to build out the facility, which was designed for drug manufacturing, quality-control labs, warehousing and distribution. But the company never moved in after drug maker Pfizer acquired Seagen for $43 billion in 2023.

“Pfizer regularly evaluates our manufacturing network to ensure capacity is effectively utilized based on projected product demands,” the company said in a statement to GeekWire in 2024. “After careful evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to wind down construction of the site.”

The facility sits about 25 miles north of Seattle along the I-5 corridor and is Breakthrough Properties’ first investment in the Puget Sound region.

The deal comes as pharmaceutical companies increase investment in U.S. manufacturing capacity. Breakthrough said major drugmakers have announced more than $600 billion in recent commitments to expand domestic production and strengthen supply chains.

The Everett facility was part of Seagen’s broader manufacturing expansion before the company was acquired by Pfizer for $43 billion. GeekWire previously reported on Seagen’s plans for the 270,000-square-foot Everett facility.

Breakthrough Properties is a joint venture between global real estate company Tishman Speyer and biotech investment firm Bellco Capital. A spokesperson for the company, which owns and develops life sciences properties in the U.S. and Europe, declined to provide details on the new tenant or the move-in date.

InduPro, a 4-year-old biotech startup with operations in Seattle and Cambridge, Mass., this week announced $77 million in series B funding as it begins a Phase 1 clinical trial of its lead cancer drug candidate.

The company said that the first patient has been dosed in the trial of IDP-001, an experimental antibody-drug conjugate designed to target cancer cells through a combination of two proteins on their surface.

The early-stage trial is enrolling adults with advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and other solid tumors whose disease has progressed following standard treatment. Researchers will evaluate the drug’s safety, tolerability, drug behavior and early signs of antitumor activity.

InduPro is developing drugs based on the spatial relationships between proteins on the surface of cells. The company says its approach can identify combinations of targets that are close together on cancer cells but not on normal tissue, potentially allowing drugs to more selectively attack tumors.

The Series B was led by The Column Group, with participation from Vida Ventures, MRL Ventures Fund, Emerson Collective, Euclidean Capital, Solasta Ventures, Sanofi and Eli Lilly and Company.

“We are delighted to have the support of this outstanding group of life sciences investors and strategic partners who recognize the potential of our proximity-guided platform to create precision therapeutics in oncology and autoimmune disease,” said InduPro CEO Prakash Raman in a press release.

Raman is a longtime biopharma executive who previously served as president and CEO of Ribon Therapeutics. Before that, he spent nearly 14 years at Novartis, where he served as vice president and global head of business development and licensing for the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.

The company’s president and chief scientific officer is Scott Lesley, who previously served as vice president of discovery biologics at Merck.

InduPro said the new funding will support the Phase 1 development of IDP-001 and further development of its preclinical pipeline, which includes programs targeting cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Earlier this year, InduPro inked a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement with Eli Lilly covering up to three oncology targets, a deal worth up to approximately $950 million.

Archer Aviation is acquiring three Boeing subsidiaries focused on autonomous aircraft, airspace management and unmanned systems, a deal that will significantly expand the electric aircraft maker’s business into defense and add more than $200 million in annual revenue.

The companies announced the deal Monday, saying Archer will acquire Wisk Aero, SkyGrid and Insitu. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory and other closing conditions.

The deal brings together Archer’s work on electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, unmanned aircraft and artificial intelligence with Boeing’s investments in autonomous flight and defense technologies.

The transaction represents a major expansion by Archer beyond its core effort to develop electric air taxis. The company said the three Boeing businesses operate across 35 countries and collectively have nearly two million flight hours.

Bingen, Wash.-based Insitu, which develops and manufactures uncrewed aircraft systems for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, is the largest piece of the acquisition from a defense perspective. The profitable unit has manufactured and deployed more than 3,500 unmanned aircraft and supports military customers in 35 countries, according to the companies. Founded in 1994, Insitu was acquired by Boeing in 2008 for about $400 million.

Insitu’s portfolio includes small unmanned aircraft systems, vertical-takeoff-and-landing capabilities and software designed to support military intelligence and surveillance operations. It has offices in the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and the United Arab Emirates.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Wisk was formed in 2019 as a joint venture between Boeing and Kitty Hawk Corp. and has since developed autonomous electric aircraft. The company — which raised $450 million from Boeing in 2022 — has designed, built and flown six generations of its eVTOL air taxi systems and conducted more than 1,700 flight tests.

Austin, Texas-based SkyGrid provides software for managing increasingly automated airspace, including systems designed to coordinate aircraft and integrate autonomous vehicles into the broader aviation system.

Archer said it plans to combine those capabilities with its own artificial intelligence platform, known as ZEE, which the company describes as a foundation model for aerospace and defense applications.

“This is a watershed moment for Archer and the future of physical AI in aerospace and defense,” Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said in a statement. “This is the next big step forward in becoming a diversified platform, rapidly growing our revenue base and bringing scale to our business.”

The transaction also creates a new strategic relationship between Archer and Boeing.

As part of the deal, Boeing will take a stake in Archer and enter into a collaboration and technology-sharing agreement with the company. Boeing will receive class A shares in Archer worth approximately 19.75%. After the transaction closes, Boeing’s shares will amount to a roughly 16.5% ownership stake in Archer, according to The New York Times.

It will also retain access to Wisk’s core autonomous flight technology for use in its current and future commercial and defense aircraft.

“This transaction is a win-win for Boeing and Archer,” Brian Yutko, Boeing’s vice president of Commercial Airplanes Product Development, said in a statement. “It allows Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu to accelerate capability development and time to market while ensuring Boeing capitalizes on its investments in these technologies over the past two decades through continued development in our core businesses.”

For Boeing, the transaction provides a way to retain exposure to the technologies while shifting the three businesses into Archer, where they can be combined with its aircraft and AI efforts.

Archer, based in Silicon Valley, is developing its Midnight electric air taxi which it touts as a “new way to move through cities.” Monday’s deals also increasingly expand Archer’s focus to defense applications and other aircraft technologies.

Shares of Archer soared in Monday trading, up more than 7 percent.

Planning a trip to a college campus, concert or Northwest landmark? Portland startup HitchPiggy is betting the ride you need may already be headed out on the road.

The company’s new marketplace allows drivers to post trips they’re already planning and connect with passengers heading the same way. Unlike on-demand services such as Uber or Lyft, HitchPiggy is focusing on regional travel, allowing drivers to choose who rides with them and what passengers contribute toward the trip.

Founder Skylar Windham says the idea has been percolating in his head for years, sparked from experiences traveling through Europe. Only recently, AI-powered coding tools allowed him to build the platform he always imagined.

The bootstrapped startup is small, with a little more than 100 registered users signing up for Pacific Northwest trips since its launch on June 1. No rides have been completed through the platform just yet, but Windham is looking to grow college ridership this fall through a partnership with the Portland State Business Accelerator.

Arsh Haque, director of the Portland State Business Accelerator, said he loves startup ideas like HitchPiggy that are hatched from international experiences.

“I got to firsthand experience a solution like HitchPiggy abroad, have always wanted it in the U.S., and think Skylar has the raw talent to bring it here,” said Haque.

Windham — a therapist and sailboat instructor by training — believes the service is on the right course as it tackles the complex challenge of matching drivers and riders. In fact, Windham’s background as a certified counselor and sailor is proving to be a useful in getting HitchPiggy on the road.

Counseling has honed listening skills, while sailing has taught adaptability.

“When you’re trying to reach a destination and the conditions change, you have to stay calm and adjust your course without losing sight of where you’re going,” Windham tells GeekWire. “That applies to building a startup too.” Let’s meet our latest Startup Spotlight company: HitchPiggy.

In 50 words or less, give us your elevator pitch.

HitchPiggy is like Airbnb for the empty seats in your car. It helps drivers already traveling between cities connect with passengers heading the same way, making travel more affordable and putting existing empty seats to better use.

What problem are you obsessed with solving?

There are already thousands of empty seats traveling between cities every day. I want to help drivers and passengers fill them instead of letting them go to waste.

What surprised you after talking to customers?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how encouraging and helpful people have been. Even when there’s been a hiccup, users have been patient and supportive. I think HitchPiggy naturally attracts community-minded people who genuinely want to help each other.

How has AI changed the way you build your company?

I first tried building this idea in 2016 by hiring engineers overseas, but getting the product right was difficult. Eventually, I put the project on the back burner. Today’s AI tools gave me the ability to finally build the platform I had envisioned, despite having no coding background.

What’s one thing people misunderstand about your startup?

Many people assume HitchPiggy is like Uber or Lyft. It isn’t. It’s a community-based rideshare platform for intercity travel, not local, on-demand rides.

Another common misconception is that the idea itself is unusually risky. In reality, people have been sharing rides for years through Craigslist, Facebook groups, and word of mouth. HitchPiggy makes that process more transparent and easier to use. It won’t be for everyone, and that’s okay. But for people who already like the idea of sharing rides, I think it’s a much better option than what has existed before.

What about safety?

Like any platform that connects people online, there is some inherent risk, and HitchPiggy can’t eliminate that entirely. What the platform can do is help people feel more informed and comfortable before deciding to ride together. Users can see details about who they may be traveling with, the vehicle, pickup location, route, timing, cost, and other important trip information. They can also message each other beforehand and ask any questions they need.

What’s the toughest decision you’ve made in the past year?

The toughest decision I’ve made was deciding not to pursue investors, at least not yet. There’s a lot of pressure in the startup world to raise money and grow as quickly as possible, but I wanted to build HitchPiggy differently. I’d rather grow steadily and learn from real users before trying to scale. It hasn’t been the fastest path, but it has felt like the right one.

What’s the one piece of advice you give to other entrepreneurs?

Have thick skin. Most feedback will be positive, but there will always be people who are quick to tell you why your idea won’t work. Anything worth building comes with challenges. Focus on what’s possible instead of everything that could go wrong. If entrepreneurs listened too closely to every critic, very little would ever get built.

We’ll know our company has made it when…

It’s a household name and people naturally check HitchPiggy before looking for a bus or train ticket whenever they’re traveling between cities.

This week on the GeekWire podcast: Microsoft and Amazon both reported quarterly numbers, and both stocks rose on cloud results that beat expectations. Is all that AI spending paying off? And in related news, Microsoft sees a rare annual headcount decline, hitting product R&D hardest. 

Plus: Satya Nadella builds a Power BI dashboard out of an analyst’s research report, and touts it on the earnings call to make a bigger point. Jeff Bezos names Amazon’s chips business as the long-awaited fourth pillar. And AI House managing director Jacob Colker delivers a much-needed pep talk for Seattle tech, calling on the region to recognize and build on its strengths. 

Related stories and links

Microsoft and Amazon earnings

• Microsoft Azure tops $100B in annual revenue as record AI spending cuts into cash flow
• AWS is ‘booming,’ but Amazon’s free cash flow turns negative on record AI spending
• Microsoft R&D jobs drop for second straight year as total headcount falls for first time in a decade
• Which Microsoft businesses are growing and shrinking, according to obscure table in regulatory filing

Amazon’s fourth pillar

• Jeff Bezos says this business is becoming Amazon’s next ‘pillar’

A rallying cry for Seattle tech

• Watch: A venture capitalist’s passionate speech, a rallying cry, really, about Seattle
• Seattle’s AI2 Incubator rebrands as AI House, and adds key investor as managing director
• ‘I’m tired of that narrative’: Seattle VC pushes back on tech exodus talk

The Washington tech ecosystem

• New map traces Washington state’s tech ‘universe’ to a few key hubs, and shows what’s at risk
• After hiring AWS exec and raising $107M seed round, Virginia startup plants flag in Seattle area
• GeekWire’s Seattle engineering centers list

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