This week on the GeekWire Podcast: The NBA suspends former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a year and hits the Clippers with $30 million in fines and five lost draft picks over allegedly sham endorsement deals for Kawhi Leonard, drawing comparisons to the Microsoft antitrust era.
A new Redfin report says San Francisco’s housing market is booming on AI wealth while Seattle slumps, with the Bay Area-to-Seattle migration pipeline nearly dried up.
And the Seahawks sale to the Khosla family officially closes, ending the Paul Allen era, with two familiar Seattle tech names surfacing in the new ownership group.
Plus, the return of the GeekWire Trivia Challenge.
Editor’s note: Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 16 for a live recording of the GeekWire podcast. Co-hosts John Cook and Todd Bishop will discuss the week’s news and interview Zillow’ Senior Vice President of engineering, Toby Roberts, about how AI is changing the real estate business. Details and tickets here.
Tesla’s Cybercab, a distinctive two-seater without a steering wheel or brake pedals, is set to start picking up members of the public in two states. But the vehicle is already under investigation by the US federal government, which is probing whether it meets federal safety standards.
The investigation comes just hours after the electric automaker welcomed hundreds of fans to downtown Austin to ride in the driverless Cybercabs. Tesla plans to deploy the vehicles on its Robotaxi ride-hail network, which is currently operating in a handful of cities in Texas and Florida.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place.
It’s officially the Ternus era at Apple. Tim Cook stepped down as CEO this week, handing the company to former hardware chief John Ternus, whose first memo promised a “huge launch next week” — timing that puts Apple’s next iPhone event on his desk before he’s even settled in. Cook isn’t going far, though: he’s staying on as Executive Chairman, focused on the kind of policy […]
The Seahawks open the 2026 season at Lumen Field on Sept. 9 against the New England Patriots. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
The sale of the Seattle Seahawks to the Khosla family officially closed on Thursday, completing a historic ownership transition for the NFL franchise. But a small surprise emerged in the final paperwork.
Nestled among a newly revealed co-owner lineup were a couple familiar names for the Pacific Northwest tech community: former Apptio CEO and longtime Seattle entrepreneur Sunny Gupta, and Nader Naini, managing partner at Seattle-based healthcare private equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners.
Under the final transaction terms announced by the team, Vinod Khosla — the billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist who founded Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures — will serve as chair, while his wife Neeru Khosla steps in as controlling owner and president of the Seahawks Charitable Foundation. Their son Neal Khosla takes on the role of vice chair.
The conclusion of the sale brings to an end an era of ownership under the estate of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, while keeping the franchise’s deep ties to the technology sector intact.
Gupta and Naini appear on a list of co-owners that spans prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists, global private equity firms, institutional sports investors, and international business dynasties. They include:
Sunny Gupta, left, and Nader Naini. (LinkedIn, Frazier Healthcare Photos)
Mark Stevens, former Sequoia Capital partner and longtime Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was an early investor in Nvidia, Google, and PayPal.
Samir Kaul, founding partner and managing director at Khosla Ventures, leading investments across deep tech, sustainability, and health.
Penny Pritzker, former U.S. Commerce Secretary, founder of PSP Partners, and former Hyatt Hotels executive.
Sixth Street, global investment firm with extensive growth equity and tech investment practices.
Carlyle and Dynasty Equity, major private equity firms, including sports-focused investor Dynasty Equity.
Aramburuzabala Family, prominent Mexican investment family behind Tresalia Capital.
Gonzalo Hevia Baillères, Mexican business leader who is currently the CEO and founder of HBeyond.
Val Blavatnik, investor associated with global holding company Access Industries.
Sheryl Sokoloff and Jesse van der Werf, private investors with backgrounds across industry and machinery services.
When news of the Allen estate’s decision to sell the team first broke, speculation ran rampant — including on GeekWire — about which deep-pocketed tech titan with Seattle ties might step up with almost $10 billion.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, MacKenzie Scott, Satya Nadella, Rich Barton, Melinda French Gates — the list of mostly Seattle billionaires who took a pass was lengthy. The Khosla family emerged victorious, but at least brought along a couple heavyweights to keep the local tech flag flying.
Gupta brings deep roots in the region’s software ecosystem. He co-founded Bellevue-based enterprise software maker Apptio, guiding it through a public listing, a private equity buyout, and an eventual $4.6 billion sale to IBM in 2023. Gupta served as executive chair at Bellevue-based Smartsheet through its recent $8.4 billion private equity acquisition and launched enterprise AI startup Thira earlier this summer with $21 million in seed funding led by Madrona.
Naini grounds the group in local healthcare private equity and regional sports governance. He joined Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare Partners in 1991 and has led the firm since 1995, helping scale it to manage more than $11 billion in institutional capital globally. Based in Seattle, Naini serves on the board of the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers baseball team and is active with regional community organizations, including Bellevue-based senior living developer Aegis Living.
The Seahawks will formally introduce the Khosla family via press conference next Wednesday at 11 a.m. PT at Lumen Field. The team opens the 2026 season and defense of its Super Bowl title that night against the New England Patriots.
Waymo argued that fully autonomous vehicles aren't possible without using a mix of sensors and warned that pure end-to-end AI systems aren't safe enough.
Tesla looks set to bring support for some new streaming services to its in-car entertainment system, dubbed Tesla Theater after a number of major streaming services appear to be working in full-screen Theater mode.
Einride plans to deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers. (Tesla Photo)
Amazon is quietly accumulating a stake in Einride, the Swedish electric trucking company that said Tuesday it will deploy 500 Tesla Semis for Amazon and other customers.
Einride’s SEC filings show Amazon holding warrants for 25.2 million shares — about 12% of the company — that vest as Amazon buys freight services. The company’s financial report Tuesday, its first since going public in June, has the warrants on its books for the first time.
An Einride spokesperson confirmed that a “warrant contract asset” of 1.5 billion Swedish kronor (roughly $160 million) on the company’s balance sheet represents the Amazon warrants. It is the largest single asset on Einride’s books, worth more than its trucks and more than its cash.
At the same time, Einride is relying heavily on Amazon for growth, forecasting a 60% to 73% year-over-year revenue increase in the second half, “fueled by the Amazon ramp and other deployments in the U.S. and Europe,” as the company said in its earnings release.
Amazon announced in April that Einride would deploy 75 electric trucks with charging at five U.S. sites in its middle-mile network, the leg between warehouses and delivery stations.
Tesla Semi rollout: Einride also said Tuesday it will deploy 500 Tesla Semis across North America, calling it the largest deployment of Tesla’s electric big rigs in the world to date. The trucks will serve Amazon and other Einride customers on freight corridors in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia, rolling out in phases over two years beginning in September, financed by third parties.
Tesla Semis are already hauling some Amazon freight. Nevoya, an all-electric trucking carrier based in Southern California, says it runs Amazon loads using Tesla Semis.
Amazon’s electric semis: Amazon has been turning to other manufacturers to electrify its freight network beyond the last-mile delivery vans it buys from Rivian. It deployed nearly 50 Volvo electric semis at Southern California ports and ordered more than 200 electric big rigs from Mercedes-Benz for Europe, part of a pledge to reach net-zero carbon across its operations by 2040.
Einride, for its part, doesn’t sell trucks. It buys and finances them, hires the drivers or contracts carriers, builds the charging infrastructure, and hauls a customer’s freight for a fee — using its own software, called Saga AI, to plan routes around charging windows and battery range.
The pitch to a shipper like Amazon is that it gets electric trucking capacity without purchasing vehicles itself or creating electric charging infrastructure.
Long-term autonomy: Einride is also one of a small group of companies running fully driverless trucks in commercial service in the U.S., with Level 4 autonomous vehicles operating in Ohio and more than 5,400 driverless hours logged for customers as of June 30.
The trucks hauling Amazon’s freight, however, have drivers, as will the Tesla Semis, for now. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s July earnings call that self-driving capability for the Semi is about a year away. That timeline would fall inside Einride’s two-year rollout.
Einride’s Amazon deal: Roozbeh Charli, the Einride CEO, said on the earnings call Tuesday that the April announcement with Amazon brought a wave of new business.
The takeaway for customers about Einride was, “If these guys can handle the complexity of Amazon’s network, they can handle ours,” he said, explaining that there was “quite a lot of inbound” following the news.
Charli said customers rarely specify hardware, and that Einride selects truck platforms based on the routes and the data. That would suggest Einride chose the Tesla Semis, not Amazon.
The Amazon warrants did not come up on the call. The terms have been technically public since April, buried in an exhibit to Einride’s merger filings with the SEC, but haven’t been previously reported, in part because Einride’s prospectuses refer to Amazon as “the Specified Party.”
Amazon’s financial arrangement with Einride follows a pattern.
The company struck a similar deal with Plug Power in 2017, taking warrants for up to 55.3 million shares that vested as Amazon bought fuel-cell equipment for its warehouses.
Amazon invested in Rivian in early 2019, then ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from the startup later that year. The company owns about 12% of Rivian today.
Amazon did not respond to questions about the arrangement.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with comment from Einride. It was also corrected to note that Tesla Semis already haul Amazon freight for Nevoya, an electric trucking carrier.
GM will equip every 2027 Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC EV with a native NACS port, making Tesla Supercharger and other compatible fast chargers easier to use.
A field-level view of the real grass that was installed at Lumen Field ahead of World Cup matches in Seattle this summer. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has made a fortune backing things that grow. Whether that will include real grass in the stadium of the Seattle Seahawks — the team he’s on the brink of owning — remains to be seen.
When asked directly on X whether he’d swap Lumen Field’s artificial turf for real grass, Khosla punted. Pledging a hands-off approach to football operations, he made it clear he intends to leave groundskeeping decisions to the team’s front office and the very leadership group that built a Super Bowl champion.
The question carries fresh weight after Lumen Field successfully swapped its synthetic FieldTurf CORE system for natural grass to host 2026 FIFA World Cup matches.
With fans seeing proof that real sod works in the venue, player pressure isn’t far behind.
According to NFLPA player surveys, a massive 92% of players favor playing on natural grass over artificial turf, citing career longevity and a reduced risk of non-contact injuries. That sentiment is shared in Seattle’s own locker room: at the start of training camp, Seahawks veterans Cooper Kupp and Leonard Williams both voiced strong support for transitioning Lumen Field to real sod.
Vinod Khosla speaks at a fireside chat at AI House in Seattle in March 2025. (GeekWire File Photo)
The interaction offers a fresh glimpse into what type of hands-off owner Khosla could be for the Seahawks.
On July 11, a group led by the billionaire and his family agreed to buy the Seahawks from the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for a reported $9.6 billion, which would be the highest price ever paid for an NFL team.
The deal — which names his wife Neeru as controlling owner and gives his son Neal a key executive role — is slated for a formal vote by NFL owners on Aug. 26 before the regular season kicks off.
Khosla is a longtime San Francisco 49ers fan and season ticket holder whose family bought a 3.1% stake in that team last year, which they’ll now have to sell.
In an appearance Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Pod,” he called the Seahawks a “great franchise” and their fan base, the 12s, “one of the best brands in the NFL.”
He doubled down on his non-interventionist style, saying any decision on a future playing surface at Lumen Field will be left to team management.
A big investor in startups and AI, Khosla did say that owning the Seahawks was a chance to diversify away from technology and do something “fun.”
“Live sports will be the one area that will be insulated from any disruption that AI causes, so it’s a great investment area per se,” he said on CNBC (at 19:35 in clip below).
Tesla's 2026 summer software release is just around the corner, and the company has shared details about what the update will bring to Tesla vehicles, including Grok improvements and more.
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