Sunny Gupta's third act: The Apptio co-founder has reunited with longtime colleague Kurt Shintaffer to launch Thira, a Bellevue enterprise AI startup, with $21 million in seed funding led by Madrona. The company is building AI agents to autonomously handle IT support tickets and other back-office work. Madrona's Matt McIlwain — who backed Gupta at both iConclude and Apptio — calls this one the biggest opportunity of the three.
Read more.
An answer to DJI for public safety: Seattle-based 911 drone maker Brinc raised $125 million led by Motorola Solutions, fueling its ambitions to put a drone on the roof of every police and fire station in the country. The funding will support expanded manufacturing and a new Seattle headquarters and factory later this year. U.S. restrictions on new foreign drones, notably those from China’s DJI, are opening more of the market to American companies. Read more.
Tableau sticks with Fremont: The Salesforce-owned data visualization company renewed its lease for roughly 114,000 square feet at the Data 1 office building in the Seattle neighborhood it has long called home. The deal marks the largest office lease renewal in the city this year. Read more.
Fusion keeps drawing investors: General Fusion’s stock is trading up after it became the first fusion energy company to go public, debuting Monday on Nasdaq. The IPO coincided with the release of the Fusion Industry Association’s annual report, which reflected that same investor enthusiasm: private funding totaled $4.5 billion over the past 12 months. Read more.
Mapping business trust: Vieu, a Seattle startup founded by former Microsoft leaders, launched its "Business Graph," a live map of business relationships built from observed signals rather than self-reported connections. The 40-person company has grown to more than 100 enterprise customers including Rubrik, NetApp, and AWS since its 2024 seed round. Read more.
Grunge meets slop: An AI-generated influencer named Roxy time travels to 1992 Seattle to check out the city’s music scene in a social media video that caught our eye. It’s an interesting collision of content separated by more than three decades: the AI hype taking over Seattle in 2026 and the music and bands that ruled the city before tech. Read more.
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Former AWS CEO Adam Selipsky’s newly-formed Helix Digital Infrastructure is among the companies looking to capitalize on massive demand for data centers as one of the potential bidders for a slate of companies that form the backbone of the AI economy. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Bellevue-based cloud ERP provider Acumatica has acquired Vertrax, a leading software vendor for the oil and gas industry, to expand its specialized management tools and drive growth within the fuel and energy distribution market. (Acumatica)
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Seattle-based Madrona rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday to celebrate its 2025 IA40 list — the top private companies building AI applications. (LinkedIn)
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AI-driven job displacement is arriving much faster than societies and institutions are built to handle, leading economists and tech execs — including some with Seattle ties — warned in a signed statement to policymakers. (NYT, We Must Act Now)
Thanks for subscribing, and have a great day. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, [email protected]; reporter Kurt Schlosser, [email protected]; and reporter Lisa Stiffler, [email protected].
