When machinists with decades of experience retire, everything they know about how metal behaves under a cutting tool — or anything else they learned through a career of scrapped parts and expensive mistakes — walks out the door with them.

A startup with roots in Seattle, started by two founders in their 20s, is building technology to capture that knowledge long before that point.

Neuramill, founded last year by CEO Nistha Mitra and COO Nick Khormaei, is developing what the company calls an intelligence layer for high-precision manufacturing.

The software reads a design file and figures out how the part should be made: which tools, which machines, and in what order. A machinist reviews and approves every plan before anything reaches the floor.

“This is a high-skill job, and nobody’s retaining this information,” Mitra said. When the machinists who know how to build complex jet engine parts retire, she said, that knowledge goes with them. “We help retain that for the future generation.”

Khormaei said the two founders spent much of the past year visiting machine shops to watch how the work gets done.

“The craft itself is so impressive,” he said. “They’re able to look at these drawings and models that come in and know exactly how to build it. It’s like they’re doing real-time physics simulation.”

Early customers and partners: The company says it has closed a six-figure contract with a major defense contractor, one of the companies known in the industry as primes. Neuramill declined to name the contractor.

Two of the machine shops using the software are Diamond Machine Works, a Seattle precision machining company founded in 1959, and VTN Manufacturing in San Jose, Calif. Satellite maker Astranis is a design partner.

Mitra said the company is not yet selling broadly, but has been paid by some of the early customers testing the software.

How they got here: Mitra, 26, has a computer science degree from the University of Maryland and spent three years at Oracle, most recently as an AI applied scientist in Seattle, working on multimodal models that reason across several kinds of data at once.

Khormaei, 24, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Washington. He was a propulsion engineer at Boeing in Everett, where he worked on 777X fuel system electrical certification, and then spent part of last year at SpaceX as an integration and test engineer on Starlink manufacturing in Redmond.

He also grew up around machining. His father, Ron Khormaei, co-founded FINEX Cast Iron Cookware in Portland in 2012 and sold it to Lodge in 2019. Khormaei worked production there as a teenager.

Where the software fits in: Neuramill’s technology works at a stage that has stayed largely manual: after the design file arrives, and before a programmer opens the computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software that translates decisions into machine instructions.

Rather than position the company against Siemens and Mastercam, Mitra said Neuramill plugs into those systems. The company recently joined Siemens’ Frontier Partner Program, which gives startups access to the company’s software tools.

“At this point we are very collaborative with these companies,” she said, adding that the established vendors are looking for new technology of their own.

Bay Area and Seattle: Both founders worked in the Seattle region before leaving for San Francisco, a move Mitra described to GeekWire in February. They are back every four or five weeks now, working out of Foundations, the Seattle founder hub.

“We love this ecosystem. It gave birth to Neuramill,” Mitra said. They keep coming back in part for the customers: “This is a booming ecosystem in space and in aerospace.”

Funding and team: Neuramill has raised an undisclosed amount from Ascend, Breakwater Ventures, Schema Ventures, Creative Destruction Lab, Acequia Capital and Correlation Ventures.

The team is six people plus a contractor: the two founders, a chief research scientist who worked with Mitra at Oracle, and three engineers, one of them a machinist.

What’s next: The long-term goal, Mitra said, is a “world model” for manufacturing: a system that can reason across geometry, materials and machine behavior at any level of complexity. Even then, she sees a role for the people on the shop floor.

“There is a beauty to the craft of manufacturing that we should really respect,” she said. “There are some places where humans should not be extracted out of an industry, and I think manufacturing is one of them.”

[Editor’s Note: Jacob Colker is co-founder and co-managing director of AI House.]

Seattle is one of the most talented, creative and inventive places in the world. But if we want the rest of the country to see us that way, we have to start acting like we believe it ourselves.

First, we need more pride around here.

Let’s talk about what it means to be proud. 

My mother grew up in Tarnów, Poland. She escaped communism and came to the United States in 1978 looking for a better life. She found one, built a family, and has lived in America for nearly 50 years. 

But my mom is still very, very Polish.

Several times a year, I get a message: “Jakub. Did you see this?”

I already know what’s coming. 

Some Polish person did something. A Polish athlete won something. A Polish scientist discovered something. Some guy with a Polish grandmother finished third in a regional Nebraska chess tournament. Doesn’t matter. Poland.

“Jakub. Look at this person.”

Okay, Mom. Who is she?

“POLISH.”

That’s it. That’s the story. 

And I love it, because Mom has this completely indestructible pride in where she comes from. Plenty of us know someone like this: a Greek mom, Vietnamese dad, Indian uncle or Nigerian aunt. Somebody from their corner of the world did something great, and you are going to hear about it.

There is power in that instinct. Not because your people are better, but because you believe your place matters.

Seattle could use more of that.

We are almost pathologically humble. Our response to notable achievements is often a polite nod before everybody gets back to our regularly scheduled Seattle freeze. 

That humility is working against us.

Second, Seattle is awesome and the evidence is everywhere.

I see Seattle’s potential every day working alongside dozens of entrepreneurs building startups. Some of the most ambitious and talented people in the world are already here.

We have many billion-dollar startups across the region and more than 200,000 people working across technology, science, space, health and startups. That is more than enough talent to build yet a dozen more unicorns. 

Nearly 40% of the world flies every day on airplanes built here. Blue Origin and SpaceX build rockets here. Starbucks, Amazon, Costco, REI and Nordstrom reshaped how the world shops. Microsoft helped put computing into our homes. AWS and Azure helped make the cloud the infrastructure of modern life. The University of Washington ranks among the world’s best. Seattle medical breakthroughs have helped save tens of millions of lives. We are pushing forward fusion energy, aerospace and maritime innovation. And let’s not forget: we just won the darn Super Bowl.

And so, so much more. 

So why, despite all the evidence, do we still seem to have a communal case of imposter syndrome?

This is not a city lacking accomplishments.

It is a city with a branding problem.

Third, we have let other people tell our story for far too long. This ends, today. 

Cities have brands whether they intend to or not. Silicon Valley is where ambitious people build companies. Nashville is music. Los Angeles for film and television.

Seattle’s cultural humility mostly assumes our accomplishments speak for themselves.

They don’t.

Reputation gets built one story at a time. You hear one story and it is interesting. You hear 10 and you notice a pattern. You hear 50 and your beliefs begin to change: That’s where important science happens. That’s where talented people live. That’s where I should invest, build or work.

Those beliefs shape real decisions about where people move, where companies get built and where investors put their money.

So to fix Seattle’s branding problem, here’s what we need to do.

Step 1: Let’s tell one clear story — Seattle’s talent pool is ridiculous. 

Seattle is where deep technical talent meets deep domain expertise to build consequential things: AI, aerospace, cloud computing, medicine, fusion, robotics, maritime technology and enterprise software.

We do not need 50 slogans. We do not need another consultant-led branding exercise. We need one simple idea that people outside this region can remember: Seattle’s talent pool is ridiculous.

There is a reason some of the world’s most important companies have built major engineering centers, research hubs and second headquarters here for decades. They come for the talent.

And that talent is why Seattle will not just participate in the future. We will lead in building it.

Step 2: Let’s use the megaphones we already have.

Seattle already has outlets (including this one) telling this story — publications, podcasts and social channels that document the region’s startups, breakthroughs and product launches. 

Every day, startups are raising money, scientists are making breakthroughs, companies are launching products, engineers are building technology and institutions are pushing this region forward.

That is not just tech news. That is the raw material of Seattle’s reputation. So let’s use it.

When you read or hear about a Seattle startup doing something remarkable, share it. When you see a story about a breakthrough at Fred Hutch or the University of Washington, send it to someone outside the region. When a local company raises money, lands a major customer or gets acquired, don’t just scroll past it. Amplify it.

Step 3: Let’s treat every local win as Seattle’s win.

When a local robotics company ships something remarkable, that is Seattle’s story.

When a maritime startup reinvents how ports operate, that is Seattle’s story.

When our AI research labs, or hometown heroes in Amazon and Microsoft, create breakthroughs, that is Seattle’s story. 

When a biotech company lands a major breakthrough, when a game studio creates a global hit, when a clean-energy company reaches a milestone, that is Seattle’s story.

Our companies, universities, hospitals, labs, investors, civic organizations and business leaders should act like an amplification network for one another. Stop treating somebody else’s success as somebody else’s news.

Their win is our collective proof.

Step 4: Let’s put Seattle on the label.

Founders need to say where they are building. “Made with ❤️in Seattle” should be on the bottom of every website. Put Seattle in the press release. Put it in the LinkedIn post. Mention it onstage. Say it in interviews. Tell investors. Tell customers. 

Silicon Valley companies have spent decades attaching their success to their geography. We should do the same. If you build something extraordinary here, make sure the world knows it was built here.

Step 5: Let’s do a better job of selling Seattle.

Every venture capitalist, founder, executive and civic leader in this region should be able to explain in 60 seconds why somebody should build a company here.

Not defend Seattle. Not apologize for Seattle. Sell Seattle. 

Reminder: It’s the talent. 

(And also cream cheese on hot dogs.)

When investors and founders from New York, Boston or San Francisco come to town, show them the region. Introduce them to engineers, researchers and entrepreneurs. Bring them into the community. Let them see what is happening. 

The best branding campaign is somebody getting on a plane home saying, I had no idea all of this was happening in Seattle.

If we’re going to succeed, we need to believe first.

Insert all the Ted Lasso jokes you want, but this stuff matters. 

There is no giant Seattle marketing department coming to save us. There is no national referee who will eventually review the evidence and declare that Seattle deserves more respect.

When somebody here does something extraordinary, act like it. Read the story. Share the post. Send the article to your team. Text it to your friend in New York. Put it in the group chat. Bring it up over dinner. Tell your kids.

Basically, become my Polish mother.

My mom doesn’t give a hoot that Kraków ranks No. 6 on some list or Warsaw is No. 8 on another. She doesn’t need a clickbait listicle to tell her Poland matters. She already believes it does.

We have to build our reputation ourselves. The good news is that we already have everything we need: extraordinary companies, world-class institutions, ambitious people, groundbreaking science and media documenting it all.

What we have been missing is the confidence to start being more loud. Stories become patterns, patterns become reputation, and reputation becomes gravity. 

Gravity is what creates influence and respect.

Pride is not something somebody else gives you. You don’t wait until the rest of the country decides your home is important. YOU decide it is. Then you act like it.

Let’s get to work. 

This week on the GeekWire podcast: SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company, and Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver a majority of the world’s internet within a decade, leveraging production facilities in Redmond. Musk also explains the company’s data center ambitions, calling terrestrial infrastructure a trivial problem next to reusable rockets. 

Plus: we bring two Washington tech universe posters into the studio, 17 years apart. The 2009 original turns up gems including Boeing’s unlikely connection to Classmates.com, the 1990s forerunner to Facebook. It also brings back memories of Teledesic, the Craig McCaw venture backed by Bill Gates that tried to beam internet from space decades before Starlink.

Finally, the GeekWire Trivia Challenge returns with a timely question about Google’s origins.

Related stories and links

SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company

• SpaceX earnings: Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver most of the world’s internet within a decade
• Elon Musk’s Mars illusion — Dominic Gates on the gap between the Mars vision and the timeline
• Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket explodes on pad during test; Jeff Bezos vows to rebuild
• Blue Origin’s rocket blowup hits NASA and Amazon Leo as well

Mapping Washington’s tech universe

• New map traces Washington state’s tech ‘universe’ to a few key hubs, and shows what’s at risk
• The latest Washington Tech Universe map from WTIA, and posters are available here
• Massive map shows how Seattle’s tech ecosystem evolved over the last 30 years — the 2015 edition
• The original 2009 Puget Sound Tech Universe map. (Thanks to Ken Myer for digging this up!)
• GeekWire’s Seattle engineering centers list

GeekWire Trivia

• The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years
• What a longtime Google AI leader told UW computer science students at their graduation

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

Audio edited and produced by Curt Milton.

The satellites rolling off the line in Redmond, Wash., are paying for Elon Musk’s AI ambitions — and he says the company’s satellite internet business is only getting started.

SpaceX’s Starlink connectivity division posted $1.7 billion in operating income for the second quarter, maintaining its status as the company’s only profitable business, according to numbers released Tuesday afternoon as part of its inaugural earnings report as a public company.

The AI division, built around the Grok model and the X social media and technology platform, lost $1.3 billion while spending $15.8 billion on capital projects. That capital spending amounted to more than three times Starlink’s quarterly revenue of $4.3 billion (up 66%).

Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, used the first SpaceX earnings call to make the case that investors are badly underestimating Starlink.

He said a new generation of satellites could increase Starlink revenue tenfold, and the network could deliver “a majority of the world’s internet” in less than 10 years. Musk said AI and robots will drive demand for bandwidth far beyond anything people generate on their own.

“I think Starlink is the only thing that can actually service that bandwidth,” he said.

Amazon is getting in the race, building its own satellite internet network at a factory in nearby Kirkland, Wash. Its Leo constellation has “close to 400 satellites in orbit, enough to begin initial satellite internet service this year,” CEO Andy Jassy told analysts last week.

Overall, SpaceX topped Wall Street expectations with revenue of $7.8 billion for the quarter, up 92% from $4.1 billion a year earlier. It also narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion.

SpaceX shares closed at $125.33, up 9.4% on the day, then fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading following the report, apparently on concerns about the company’s capital spending.

SpaceX builds its Starlink satellites at a Seattle-area factory that produced about 70 a week from December 2025 to April 2026, according to the company’s IPO filing. The output has put roughly 9,600 Starlink satellites in orbit, about 75% of all active maneuverable satellites circling the planet.

For the second quarter, SpaceX reported 12 million Starlink subscribers, double the number a year earlier and an increase of 1.7 million from the first quarter. The revenue increase in the Starlink division (officially known as “Connectivity”) was driven by a 108% jump in enterprise and government business, which now accounts for more than 40% of the segment’s sales.

The subscriber total was just under the 12.19 million Wall Street had projected, but the segment’s revenue exceeded expectations by about $460 million, more than any other part of the company.

Starlink now brings in $66 a month per subscriber, down from $85 a year ago as it expands overseas and adds cheaper plans. The good news for SpaceX: the figure stopped falling, holding flat from the first quarter, despite the company’s warning to IPO investors that it would keep sliding.