Southeast Asia's digital economy is set to reach $368 billion in 2026 as AI investment grows, but fragmented data rules complicate regional operations.
Southeast Asia's digital economy is set to reach $368 billion in 2026 as AI investment grows, but fragmented data rules complicate regional operations.
Charles Fitzgerald at an abandoned Westinghouse light bulb and fixture factory in Cleveland. (GeekWire Photo / John Cook)
Editor’s note: GeekWire has beenexaminingthe economic challenges facing Seattle and the lessons the region can learn from Cleveland’s industrial decline and ongoing comeback. This three-part series from GeekWire columnist and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald explores how Seattle can navigate its own economic transition, adapt to a changing technology landscape, and preserve the prosperity that generations of innovation have built.
As you think about Seattle’s next act, let me offer a catchphrase: Don’t be Cleveland.
Before anyone from Northeast Ohio takes me to task again, let me quickly clarify: Don’t be the Cleveland of the last half of the 20th century. Today’s Cleveland is a story Seattle should study.
I’m far from the only one worried about Seattle. City Hall, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and the newly formed Partnership for a Competitive Puget Sound are all sounding alarms about the region’s economic future.
An independent 127-page City of Seattle-commissioned economic assessment — Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy — takes issue with the Cleveland comparison I penned for GeekWire earlier this year. The report says claims that Seattle could become the “next Cleveland” are “likely hyperbolic,” while acknowledging that “Seattle has real economic challenges.”
Hyperbolic is far from the worst thing I’ve been called.
Despite a reluctance to fully embrace Cleveland as a cautionary tale, the city’s report provides more to agree with than disagree with. And kudos to the city for taking an honest look at the economy, including criticism of the mayor’s signature policies.
Preparing for Seattle’s Next Act
Over the past decade, Seattle delivered more broad-based prosperity than almost any U.S. region, according to the Seawall report. Wages rose across the income spectrum, with the biggest gains at the bottom. Even after adjusting for living costs, workers at the 25th percentile earned roughly 15% more than their counterparts in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Minneapolis.
That’s a remarkable record.
It also makes Seattle’s current economic anxiety harder to dismiss — and its prosperity worth protecting. If Seattle’s performance disappoints, where exactly would you rather be? Growth brings problems, especially when poorly managed. But the alternative is worse.
We saw the aftermath firsthand when we visited Cleveland earlier this year. Its story is a reminder that prosperity isn’t permanent — and rebuilding an economy after decades of decline is a lot harder than keeping one healthy.
Much like Seattle today, Cleveland 75 years ago was a very successful city riding decades of strong economic and population growth, and home to some of that era’s Big Tech giants. The Cleveland Browns even dominated the 1950s NFL.
But Cleveland’s prosperity unraveled quickly.
The world changed. The Rust Belt started to rust. Employers closed down.
Cleveland’s population dropped 59% from its 1950 peak to 2020 — from 914,808 to 372,624 residents.
It went from one of the nation’s richest cities to one of the poorest. Seahawks fans take note: the Browns have never been to the Super Bowl.
When we visited Cleveland earlier this year, we asked everyone from the mayor to real estate developers to arts leaders what they wish they’d done differently and sought their advice for Seattle.
Author Charles Fitzgerald at an abandoned industrial site in Cleveland.
We learned a lot from a city hungry, united and focused on building prosperity for its residents.
Seattle rode the software boom to remarkable prosperity. Can it do the same in the AI era?
The warning signs are hard to ignore.
Amazon and Microsoft have cut more than 10,000 jobs across the Seattle metro area since 2023. Downtown office vacancy remains among the highest in the country. And the center of gravity for the AI boom is in the Bay Area, raising questions about Seattle’s ability to capture the next wave of growth.
The city’s economic report puts the challenge bluntly: “The version of the tech sector that drove the last wave of economic growth will not drive the next one.”
The report warns that Seattle’s next generation of startups may not be ready to replace the growth engines of the past. The risk isn’t just layoffs or empty office towers. It’s the company never founded, the midsize business squeezed by rising costs, or the engineer who leaves to build a startup somewhere else.
So how does Seattle prepare for its next economic chapter?
A Grand Unified Theory of Urban Success: Attract People
At its simplest, a city’s job is to attract people — and give them reasons to stay.
Population isn’t a perfect measure of prosperity, but it’s a useful proxy for a city’s appeal. People come for opportunity. They stay when the opportunities and quality of life are worth it. Growth brings challenges, but those are preferable to the alternative.
As Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb told us, “I envy problems around growth.”
Seattle’s population has grown nearly 40% since 2000.
A new report shows weakness in Seattle’s job growth from 2019 to 2025. (Graphic via the Downtown Seattle Association)
The Boeing Bust of the 1970s, when Seattle’s population fell 7% and unemployment hit 17%, is a reminder that what goes up can come down.
Today, cities compete globally for talent, entrepreneurs and employers. That competition will only intensify as populations age and immigration restrictions tighten.
The most talented workers and entrepreneurs can go where they see the greatest opportunity — and where they feel wanted.
Consider what Seattle’s last century might have looked like without three people: Bill Boeing, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Boeing helped turn Seattle into an aerospace powerhouse. Gates chose to move Microsoft from Albuquerque to the Seattle area to usher in the software boom. Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie, famously drove their Chevy Blazer from Texas to Seattle to start Amazon.
Each helped shape the region’s economic future. We can’t predict who the next generation of business builders will be. But does Seattle have the same pull today? Or are the people we need choosing Austin, Miami, San Francisco or somewhere else?
Attracting newcomers matters. So does keeping the people who are already here. Do the economic opportunities still justify the cost of living? Is Seattle still a place where people want to live, work and play?
Residents have plenty of reasons to question the deal: public safety, housing costs, homelessness, schools, government services and taxes. Do the positives still outweigh the negatives?
Decades of growth brought extraordinary people and companies to Seattle. Our best chance of building the next era of prosperity is to keep them here — and give them room to build what comes next.
Yet we risk losing people and businesses we can’t easily replace: talented workers, entrepreneurs, executives, inventors, technologists, engineering teams and global headquarters.
As Seattle’s mayor waves goodbye to departing business leaders, the city’s own Seawall report offers a blunt warning: “Headquarters and top-tier tech jobs are very hard to replace.”
The report makes the broader case for growth, too. Losing tech jobs and companies won’t make Seattle more equitable, it warns. “If they leave, Seattle won’t become more equal, it will just become poorer.”
There’s a practical reason for that. Seattle’s fiscal model depends on a growing economy.
More residents and businesses generate property and sales tax revenue without requiring higher tax rates on those already here. As the report puts it, “it is easier to distribute the benefits of a growing pie than a fixed one.”
That’s another way of saying that when government spending outpaces population growth, a stagnant economy leaves fewer options for paying the bills — a challenge we’ll revisit in the next post.
Thanks to Cleveland for reminding us prosperity is fragile, decline is real, and recovery can take generations.
Seattle’s next era of prosperity is ours to build — or squander.
In the next post, we’ll look at what Seattle needs to do to get the fundamentals right to ensure the city is a great place to live, work and play.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is interviewed by Bret Baier of Fox News in Florida. (Screen grab via Fox News)
When Jeff Bezos sat down on Blue Origin’s Cape Canaveral factory floor for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier earlier this week, he laid out an unapologetic defense of free enterprise and wealth creation.
“Success is not villainy,” Bezos said.
The Amazon founder’s point was simple: building a massively successful enterprise isn’t something society should apologize for or view with suspicion, it’s the natural result of creating something people actually want.
“There’s nothing wrong with making unbelievably good chicken that people love,” Bezos said, referencing the growth of Raising Cane’s and why restaurant entrepreneurs deserve their wealth. “And it doesn’t make him a bad person.”
Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2021 and left Seattle for Miami in 2023, is currently the second richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $380 billion, according to Forbes.
Bezos and Amazon transformed the Seattle region. The company now employs roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers in the Puget Sound region, divided between its primary headquarters in Seattle and its growing operational footprint in Bellevue.
And his recent comments come at a key moment for Washington state, where voters will decide on Initiative 645 — a high-profile ballot measure aimed at repealing the state’s recently enacted high-earner tax and prohibiting future income taxes.
Bezos, along with other business leaders like former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, have claimed that scapegoating wealthy entrepreneurs risks driving away innovation. Bezos argued that politicians targeting business leaders are misdiagnosing the problem, noting that while affordability and social challenges are real, heavy-handed government interventions often fail to solve them.
“If there’s a politician who’s picking villains and pointing fingers, that probably means they don’t have a solution,” Bezos said. He noted that executives who relied on blame-shifting inside his own companies “wouldn’t be in our company for long.”
Watch the full interview below where Bezos also discusses the impact of AI on jobs, the need to beat China in the race to the moon and orbital data centers in space. The portion of the interview where Bezos notes that “success is not villainy” starts in minute 16.
NASA is advancing American leadership in space by taking the next step toward a future where commercial space stations lead the way in low Earth orbit. On Friday, the agency released its final Request for Proposals inviting industry to submit plans for the next generation of commercial space stations.
“In alignment with the President’s National Space Policy, NASA is committed to maintaining a sustained American presence in low Earth orbit long after the International Space Station retires,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We will continue to need a place to conduct research, develop technologies, train crews, and prepare for missions to the Moon and Mars. Commercial space stations may provide that capability while creating new opportunities for American industry and allowing NASA to concentrate more of our resources on the near-impossible missions ahead.”
Building on the agency’s Ignition event earlier this year, NASA regularly has engaged with private industry to shape the agency’s future direction in low Earth orbit. This included publishing two Requests for Information in March to gather industry’s perspective on low Earth orbit destinations and transportation. The agency also published a draft Request for Proposals in July, followed by an industry day and one-on-one meetings that allowed interested companies to review and comment on the planned acquisition approach.
“We’ve made it clear that NASA will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit,” said Isaacman. “Since Ignition, we have spent a lot of time listening to industry and working through what it will take to make this transition successful. The opportunity is significant, but the economics ultimately have to work. We want to see credible plans, strong technical execution, and companies prepared to invest in destinations that can serve NASA while developing additional customers and markets of their own.”
Proposals are due Tuesday, Dec. 8, with contract awards expected in spring 2027.
Under the solicitation, NASA outlines requirements for companies interested in designing, building, testing, certifying, and operating commercial low Earth orbit destinations capable of providing end-to-end destination and transportation services for human spaceflight use.
NASA intends to award firm-fixed-price, multi-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts supporting development, certification, and services for continued low Earth orbit research and exploration. This will allow NASA to select two or more contractors through early development, followed by a competitive task order for final design, test, and evaluation, as well as certification and services from one or more contractors.
Learn more about NASA’s missions on the agency’s website:
City of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson set up a new task force to bolster the economy. (Photo via Katie Wilson for Mayor)
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is bringing together leaders from Amazon, Spotify, the Port of Seattle, organized labor, technology, cleantech, small business and other sectors as part of a new task force focused on rebuilding and diversifying the city’s economy.
Wilson on Wednesday announced 18 members of the Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force, which will look for ways to remove barriers to business growth, attract and retain companies and improve the process of starting and operating a business in Seattle.
“I’m charging this task force with identifying where the City can make connections, remove barriers and provide support within individual industries and across our economy,” Wilson said. “We need to diversify our economy while expanding opportunities for local entrepreneurs and young people.”
The effort builds on the city’s recently released Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy report, which called for Seattle to diversify beyond its heavy reliance on large technology companies and focus on sectors including artificial intelligence, cleantech, maritime, life sciences and space.
That report found that companies with at least 100 employees accounted for 74.5% of net job growth in the Seattle metro area from 2014 to 2023, while mid-sized companies accounted for just 16.6%.
The economic challenges have also put a spotlight on Seattle’s tax structure. As GeekWire recently reported, Seattle lost roughly 24,000 jobs between March 2020 and March 2025 even as city tax collections continued to grow, shifting more of the tax burden onto businesses.
Wilson has responded in part by freezing JumpStart tax rates in her proposed 2027 budget, citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector.
The new task force will initially focus on downtown revitalization, business attraction and retention, cross-sector collaboration, and making it easier to open and operate a business. The task force also comes as Seattle’s business community has pressed City Hall for action on public safety, with dozens of regional CEOs recently calling for a 100-day plan with measurable goals and progress reports.
“Seattle is open for business,” said Beto Yarce, director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development.
The task force will hold industry-specific roundtables and listening sessions this year, with initial findings due in February 2027 and a final report expected in November 2027. Here’s a look at the task force members:
Taxes have outpaced population, employment and other other factors in Seattle (Image via ECOnorthwest)
Seattle’s tax collections have nearly tripled over the past decade, soaring from $900 million in 2013 to a projected $2.8 billion in 2026. But who pays those taxes, and how the tax revenue is collected, looks vastly different today than a decade ago.
A new report released by ECOnorthwest, commissioned jointly by the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA) and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, show city tax revenues far outstripping population and job growth, driven by targeted corporate taxes on a small pool of major employers.
Between 2013 and 2025, Seattle’s tax revenues jumped 172%, outpacing population growth (31%), job growth (23%), and local inflation (50%). During that period, real tax growth grew 5.6 times faster than population and 7.5 times faster than employment.
The findings come as city leaders, major tech employers and regional business groups grapple with shifting post-pandemic work patterns and a political climate that has frequently placed large technology companies like Amazon in its sights.
According to the report, broad-based core taxes, such as property, sales, utility, and general Business & Occupation (B&O) taxes, comprised 83% of city tax collections in 2013. By 2026, those core broad taxes are projected to drop to just 52% of the total revenue.
Replacing them are narrow, targeted tax levies:
The JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax (2021): Paid by fewer than 500 companies, with the top 10 taxpayers footing 73% of the total bill.
The Social Housing Tax (2025): Paid by roughly 220 entities, with its top 10 taxpayers covering 66%.
Combined, two taxes that did not exist five years ago now account for nearly a third of all business tax dollars collected by the city. Overlap among top taxpayers means fewer than 20 companies account for roughly $356 million in annual City of Seattle revenue.
“Seattle’s tax collections are growing far faster than its population, jobs or inflation. Employers are carrying more of that burden. That trajectory is not sustainable,” said Seattle Metro Chamber president & CEO Joe Nguyen. “The question cannot always be how to collect more money. It must be how to deliver better results with the money we already have and build a tax structure that helps our economy grow.”
The heavy pivot to business revenue coincides with divergent employment trends between Seattle and its neighboring Eastside hubs.
Between March 2020 and March 2025, Seattle lost approximately 24,000 jobs, while the remainder of King County added 21,000. The report notes that Seattle lost 18,000 jobs in the single year leading up to March 2025 alone. And that figure that does not yet capture the full impact of major remote work policies and tech layoffs announced across the region.
However, in a sign that Mayor Katie Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns, she proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget that would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.
A display at the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual event. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
Seattle’s economic engine is stalling, and downtown is taking the brunt of the hit.
Between 2024 and 2025, Seattle shed 18,065 total jobs, with a staggering 70% of those losses—13,000 jobs—coming directly from the city’s downtown core, according to a new report released by the Downtown Seattle Association.
In some ways, it’s a tale of two cities.
While Seattle proper shrank, neighboring Eastside tech hub Bellevue gained 5,375 jobs over the same timeframe, highlighting a shifting center of gravity within the Puget Sound region.
A lot of that growth in Bellevue, and decline in Seattle is coming from one company: Amazon.
The online retail and cloud computing powerhouse employed 15,700 workers in Bellevue at the end of 2025, making it the largest employer in Bellevue at 9.85% of the total workforce, according to the city’s Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. That’s up from just a few hundred employees in Bellevue nearly a decade ago.
Amazon employs about 49,000 people in Seattle proper, though the Puget Sound Business Journal noted this week that the company has shed office space in downtown Seattle and dramatically slowed employment in the city.
A major shift is happening in tech employment as Bellevue’s tech employment grows, while Seattle’s shrinks. (Graphic via the DSA)
Other key findings from the Downtown Seattle Association report:
Tech Leads the Drop: Seattle’s sharpest sector declines were concentrated in Information and Technology, Professional Services, and Construction.
National Lag: Out of the top 30 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, the Puget Sound region ranked 20th in job growth between 2019 and 2025. Total regional nonfarm growth rose just 1.7% over six years, vastly underperforming peer markets like Austin (25.2%), Dallas/Fort Worth (14%), and Nashville (14%).
Stagnant Commuter Foot Traffic: Inbound commuter visits to downtown Seattle remain stuck in the low 60% range compared to 2019 baselines, sliding 38% since the pandemic — a steeper loss than Bellevue (-21%), Austin (-23%), or Chicago (-32%).
Intra-Region Tech Shift: While Seattle’s tech headcount dropped from its 2023 peak, Bellevue’s tech job totals surged upward between 2024 and 2025, regaining momentum.
A new report shows weakness in Seattle’s economic growth from 2019 to 2025. (Graphic via the DSA)
The latest findings build on a growing chorus of criticism regarding the city’s fiscal climate. A June analysis by the DSA argued that Seattle’s controversial “JumpStart” payroll expense tax—passed in 2020 and targeting major employers like Amazon—is backfiring by driving business across Lake Washington.
The June report highlighted that since 2020, downtown Seattle lost roughly 30,000 jobs and saw office building values plummet 48%, while Bellevue—which levies no comparable head tax—gained jobs and expanded commercial values by 7%.
Though JumpStart projects $388 million in revenue this year, about 70% of that relies on just 10 major companies, underscoring how heavily Seattle leans on a handful of tech giants.
City of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has consistently pushed back against blaming downtown’s struggles on any single tax, pointing to broader post-pandemic remote-work trends, high interest rates and national tech restructurings that affect cities nationwide. She credited JumpStart with saving the city from drastic service cuts during the pandemic and noted that Seattle’s recovery remains resilient.
However, in a sign that Mayor Wilson is paying close attention to tech-sector headwinds and shifting job patterns in the region, she last week proposed a $9.1 billion 2027 budget, which would erase a $175 million general fund deficit and cut nearly $50 million in spending while freezing JumpStart tax rates.
Citing “seismic shifts” in the technology sector, the mayor’s freeze leaves the payroll tax untouched to offer big employers a period of tax stability, even as she continues directing JumpStart revenues beyond their original intent to cover core general fund operations.
“These were a set of taxes that may have provided some short-term gain to the city coffers, but are inflicting long-term pain,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes told GeekWire in an interview in June. “We predicted that at the time, and were sort of dismissed and ignored.”
Shield AI’s new X-BAT autonomous fighter jet is designed to take off and land vertically. Rendering via Shield AI.
Traditional military air operations rely heavily on fixed, vulnerable targets: long concrete runways and aircraft carriers.
Shield AI’s new X-BAT autonomous fighter jet is designed to bypass that infrastructure entirely, utilizing a vertical takeoff mechanism and a mobile launch trailer that can operate from highways, remote outposts or standard cargo ships.
Operated without a human in the cockpit, the aircraft relies on aboard algorithms to navigate and execute strike missions where GPS and satellite communications are jammed. The X-BAT has yet to make its maiden flight, but Shield AI and GE Aerospace cleared a critical milestone this summer by completing ground engine tests and integrating the jet’s F110 thrust-vectoring nozzle.
With news that the X-BAT will be mass produced in the Seattle area — bringing 4,000 jobs to the region by the early 2030s — we decided to take a closer look at this groundbreaking aircraft.
Takeoff/Landing Style: Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL)
ObjectiveCombat Radius: About 1,000 nautical mile combat radius (out and back), topping the roughly 590 nautical miles of the Air Force’s F-35A.
Total Range: 2,000 nautical miles.
Internal Payload Bay Capacity: Up to 2,000-pound class weapons.
Engine: GE Aerospace F110
Software: Shield AI Hivemind autonomy system.
Primary Propulsion & Flight Control: Autonomous AI agent, replacing human onboard pilot.
Logistics & Mobility: Road-transportable via dedicated Launch and Recovery Vehicle (LRV) trailer; highway-mobile and ship-deployable (destroyers, LHA/LHD amphibious assault ships, expeditionary bases). Tagline: “Earth is our runway.”
Target Production Rate: ~150 aircraft per year by early 2030s
Key Operational Milestones: First vertical flights expected in 2026. Production is set to start in Des Moines in mid-2027. The first jet is projected to be built in early 2028 and fly by that summer. The Navy could start using it by the end of 2029. Full production is planned for the early 2030s.
The X-BAT autonomous fighter jet will be built at a new facility in Washington state. Renderings and images via Shield AI.
DES MOINES, Wash. — Defense tech powerhouse Shield AI is establishing a massive advanced manufacturing hub in Washington state, tapping the Seattle region’s deep aerospace and tech roots to build a next-generation autonomous fighter jet called the X-BAT.
The project could transform the regional labor market: Shield AI says it expects to have 4,000 workers in the region by the early 2030s as it ramps up mass production of the AI-piloted, 26-foot long aircraft.
It marks a major expansion of advanced aerospace manufacturing in the Seattle region, bringing autonomous military aviation directly into Boeing’s backyard and cementing the state’s position at the center of the AI-defined defense era.
The San Diego-based company, valued at $12.7 billion following a $2 billion venture capital round earlier this year, is looking to complete construction on a 420,000-square-foot facility in Des Moines, Wash., just south of Seattle, next spring.
That physical footprint is expected to grow quickly. Armor Harris, senior vice president of aircraft at Shield AI, told GeekWire that the company is actively looking to add another 1 million square feet in the region to support its long-term manufacturing push.
Named X-Forge 3, the initial facility will serve as the primary manufacturing and engineering center for the X-BAT. It’s now under construction about 15 minutes south of Sea-Tac airport in the Des Moines Creek Business Park West, at 1800 S 216th St.
Developed by Panattoni, the site was selected by Shield AI midway through construction. The company is now taking it to completion, with Harris noting that they are “putting the roof on right now.”
Shield AI’s new X-Forge 3 facility south of Sea-Tac airport is currently under construction with an opening date slated for next Spring.
Unveiled last year, the X-BAT is an AI-piloted strike fighter that takes off and lands vertically, carries up to 2,000-pound class weapons in internal bays, and is designed for a 1,000-nautical-mile combat radius — which, when it takes flight, would top the estimated 590 nautical mile combat radius of the Lockheed Martin F-35A.
An economic analysis released by the company estimates Shield AI’s X-BAT program will inject roughly $73 billion into Washington state’s economy over the next two decades as production scales toward full capacity. Projections provided by the company say up to 27,000 direct and indirect jobs — including suppliers — will be generated by the expansion by 2046.
“This is a large program,” said Harris in an interview with GeekWire. “Building a next generation fighter jet is no small endeavor, and with the amount of interest that we’ve seen, both from our U.S. government customers and from international customers, we could be looking at building these at rates greater than fighter jets have been built in a really long time.”
Harris said he expects the first X-BAT aircraft to roll off the line in Des Moines in 2028, with full production ramping up to about 150 aircraft per year by the early 2030s.
The company evaluated more than a dozen sites for the facility, and chose the Seattle area for a simple reason: talent.
Harris cited the region’s robust aerospace legacy, as well as technology giants like Amazon and Microsoft and a burgeoning space and satellite industry which has taken shape in recent years. A number of fast-growing and heavily funded defense tech companies — including Anduril, Armada and Nominal — have also established beachheads in the region in recent years.
He described the X-BAT as a “modern sixth-generation fighter jet” that’s essentially a “flying sensor suite,” ingesting information in real time in order to make lightning-fast decisions.
Deep aviation and technology roots
Building that type of aircraft takes a very specialized workforce, one that Harris said is rooted across technology, aerospace, artificial intelligence, materials science and advanced manufacturing. Those are major strengths of the Seattle area workforce.
“We’re able to tap into that existing lineage and not have to necessarily train a workforce from the ground up, which would be hard to do on the timelines we’re trying to execute,” said Harris, who is planning to relocate to Washington state from Dallas.
To support its ambitious production schedule, Shield AI is actively recruiting across both software engineering and specialized aerospace roles. The initial hiring push for the Des Moines facility spans autonomy developers, flight-control software engineers, composite technicians, and shop-floor assembly specialists.
In one job listing for an engineering manager to lead the X-BAT hardware test software team, the company notes that the ideal candidate “has personally built or led the development of automated hardware test systems used in production, manufacturing, qualification, or other high-consequence environments.”
In another Seattle area job listing for a staff fuel engineer, the company says it is looking for a someone with “strong thermofluid fundamentals, engineering judgment, and the ability to understand fuel system behavior across demanding aircraft operating conditions while serving as the focal point between propulsion, vehicle teams, suppliers, and flight operations.”
Pay across those engineering roles ranges from $169,000 to $300,000 annually, according to the company job postings.
The company currently lists more than 110 open roles in the Seattle area, including a dozen or more in categories such as avionics and electrical; mechanical and thermal; software and networks; and aerostructures.
Choosing Washington also allowed Shield AI to buck a pervasive defense industry trend: separating engineering teams from physical factory floors to shave down labor costs.
While shifting assembly lines to lower-cost regions can cut costs, Harris said that remote manufacturing introduces hidden operational friction when building complex, software-defined aircraft like the X-BAT.
“We fundamentally believe in the colocation of engineering and production is the fastest way to bring capability to our customers,” said Harris, adding that combining engineering and production in a common facility is “one of the secret sauces of Shield.”
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) — whose district includes Des Moines — welcomed Shield AI and the X-BAT manufacturing facility to King County.
“This hub will create high-quality jobs, strengthen Puget Sound’s expanding technology and aerospace sectors, and further diversify our local economy,” Smith said. “Reimagining aviation will have a rightful home here in Washington’s Ninth District.”
Katherine Caffrey, the city manager for City of Des Moines, welcomed the new jobs and economic investment in the community.
“Des Moines sits at the heart of the Puget Sound aerospace industry, and these jobs and this investment reflects exactly what we want Des Moines to be, a place where families can build strong careers close to home,” Caffrey said.
The ‘holy grail of deterrence’
Shield AI officially introduced the X-BAT program to the public at an October 2025 event in Washington, D.C., unveiling the aircraft before an audience of military leaders, elected officials and defense industry partners.
At the time, Shield AI co-founder and president Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL, called X-BAT a “transformative, runway-independent aircraft” and noted that “airpower without runways is the holy grail of deterrence.”
That vision quickly gained momentum.
Last month, the U.S. Navy backed the program through an initial $50 million development contract, envisioning the autonomous fighter jets operating directly from destroyers, amphibious assault ships and converted cargo vessels to project long-range airpower without relying on traditional aircraft carriers.
Shield AI recently won a contract with the U.S. Navy for the X-BAT, designed to take off and land vertically.
That momentum grew internationally earlier this month, when Shield AI signed a five-year letter of intent with Polish defense companies PGZ and WZL-2. Under the framework, the companies are exploring plans to help build, supply, and repair the X-BAT, a partnership that could give NATO allies a fighter jet capable of operating even if local airfields and runways are destroyed or non-existent.
The X-BAT launches and lands vertically using a specialized Launch and Recovery Vehicle —a mobile trailer that erects the jet vertically, allowing it to be towed on interstate highways or loaded onto cargo ships to set up a field launch pad in minutes.
Harris noted that while a final site selection for manufacturing the LRV trailers has not been made, expanding production into the Puget Sound region remains on the table given the area’s deep manufacturing base.
In addition to the mammoth manufacturing facility in Des Moines, Shield AI announced that it is expanding its presence in both Texas and Kansas.
In Frisco, Texas, the company operates its X-Forge 1 site to handle core prototyping, software integration, and initial engineering for the autonomous fighter. Meanwhile, at X-Forge 2 in Newton, Kansas, Shield AI has expanded its airport footprint to serve as the program’s dedicated flight test, customer acceptance and maintenance hub.
Shield AI expects its X-Forge 2 site in Kansas to support approximately 1,800 regional jobs by the early 2030s, growing to 2,900 positions by 2046 with a projected $5 billion in regional economic impact over that period.
Addressing the cross-country logistics of moving completed aircraft from the Puget Sound assembly line to Kansas for flight testing, Harris explained that the X-BAT can be easily moved via the existing transportation corridors.
“The X-BAT is designed to be road transportable,” he said. “So we’re taking advantage of that.”
Beyond the immediate manufacturing logistics, Harris views the multi-billion-dollar expansion as a major long-term validation of the region’s industrial relevance.
“There’s been a strong narrative of like, ‘Hey, all the jobs are migrating elsewhere,’ and I think this is a big win for the region to capture a major program from a rapidly growing company like this,” Harris said. “This can be the backbone for years of growth in the future.”
That’s a message that Gov. Bob Ferguson is getting behind, saying Washington state is a place where “big ideas take flight.”
“Shield AI’s decision to build its new X-BAT manufacturing facility here is another sign that the future of aerospace is being built in Washington,” Ferguson said in a statement. “We welcome Shield AI and the thousands of good-paying jobs this investment will bring.”
A photo of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft that launched NASA’s Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station.
Credit: NASA
During a news conference at 3 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 28, NASA and Boeing leadership will discuss Starliner’s development and plans for regular crew flights to and from the International Space Station.
Dana Weigel, manager, NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program
Woody Hoburg, NASA astronaut
John Mulholland, vice president and program manager, Boeing Commercial Crew
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The Ravel team at its Seattle pilot facility in March 2025, from left: Forest Davis, process development scientist; John Goods, co-founder and chief technologist; Zahlen Titcomb, co-founder and CEO; Zack Wolford, research engineer; and Kristen Albrecht, chief sustainability officer and vice president of operations. Not pictured: Jules Valenti, director of engineering and pilot plant manager. (Ravel Photo)
Seattle startup Ravel announced Thursday it raised $8.2 million to scale its planet-friendly technology for recycling clothing by unwinding the components of synthetic fabric blends.
Ravel has targeted the textile fiber known as elastane, which is also called spandex or Lycra. It’s added to athletic wear, jackets, jeans, underwear, socks, t-shirts, gloves and every other category of apparel. Even in small amounts, elastane makes clothing difficult to recycle.
Ravel has developed a technology for unblending fabrics that include elastane. It turns the recovered ingredient into cost-competitive, recycled plastic pellets that serve as the raw material for making polyester fabrics.
The startup calls its process “purification recycling” and emphasizes that it is energy efficient, uses safe chemicals and does not create added waste or byproducts.
“Even though most of us don’t see it regularly, the ‘behind the scenes’ of materials recovery and valorization is a massive undertaking (and thus massive opportunity),” Ravel CEO Zahlen Titcomb said on LinkedIn.
The investment allows Ravel to transition from its Seattle pilot plant toward commercial-scale operations. It also helps the business validate its solution at production scale with textile partners.
Much of the clothing that is collected for recycling today is downcycled into lower-value uses rather than spun back into new apparel. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has estimated that less than 1% of material used to make clothing is ultimately recycled into new clothing.
As fast fashion accelerates, apparel brands today are making about twice the amount of clothes that were produced in the early 2000s.
Ravel announced in March 2025 that it had raised pre-seed funding, but did not say how much. The company was a finalist for the Sustainable Innovation Award at the 2026 GeekWire Awards.
The seed round was led by One Small Planet with “significant participation” from AP Ventures. Other backers included Overlay Capital and Lichen Ventures, plus existing investors At One Ventures, Collateral Good and BetterWay.
“I’m excited to have found some great folks to roll up the sleeves with,” Titcomb said.
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