Climate week gets combative: A fireside chat with Microsoft Chief Sustainability Officer Melanie Nakagawa, moderated by GeekWire's Lisa Stiffler at a PNW Climate Week closing event, was derailed by protesters raising concerns about the company's data center energy use, its Chevron natural gas deal in Texas, and its tech contracts with Israel. Many of the issues raised by the crowd were on the reporter's list of questions for Nakagawa, who defended Microsoft's carbon-negative goal while acknowledging it will be a "hard target."
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Bellevue's newest AI arrival: London-based data center startup Nscale — fresh off a $2 billion Series C and a $900 million credit line — will have room for up to 250 people when the office opens in January 2027. The company picked Bellevue for its concentration of AI infrastructure talent and proximity to major customers. It recently tapped former Microsoft Azure AI leader Nidhi Chappell as president of AI infrastructure, based in the Seattle area. Read more.
From Microsoft to AWS: Rudra “Rudy” Mitra, who led Microsoft's Purview data-security business, is leaving after more than 27 years to become vice president of security services at AWS. He's one of several leaders to exit Microsoft's security group this year under new chief Hayete Gallot. Read more.
“Jimothy” gets a retro video game: Help Seattle’s beloved raccoon raid trash cans, elude the paparazzi, cross the street and climb a tree in an 8-bit NES style game vibe-coded by tech enthusiast Chris Pirillo. “While it’s never been easier to make something, it’s also never been more challenging to get attention,” Pirillo said amid the onslaught of Jimothy art, crafts, merchandise and more flooding social media. Read more.
Uncle Sam’s AI play: With both political parties and top tech labs backing preliminary proposals for the U.S. government to take equity stakes in leading AI companies, AI expert Oren Etzioni warns of the massive regulatory conflicts of interest and permanent industry dependencies that could arise if strict guardrails aren't put in place. Read the latest “Etzioni on AI” column.
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Jeff Bezos is backing CuspAI, a U.K. startup that uses AI to discover newchipmaking materials, which raised $450 million at a $2.6 billion valuation and launched a coalition with Nvidia and Meta to cut the chip industry's reliance on scarce metals. (CNBC)
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Microsoft will deploy AMD's new Helios rack-scale AI systems across Azure to run frontier-model workloads. The news sent AMD shares up roughly 5% days ahead of the chipmaker's Advancing AI conference. (Microsoft; Yahoo Finance)
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Agility Robotics, No. 5 on the GeekWire 200, is opening a training facility in Fremont, Calif. — in the backyard of the Tesla factory set to build rival Optimus robots — as it eyes a public listing on the strength of $300 million in orders for its Digit humanoid robot. (TechCrunch)
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OpenAI's first consumer device will reportedly be a screenless, movable smart speaker pitched as a "humanlike AI companion,” putting the ChatGPT maker on a collision course with Amazon's Alexa and Echo. (Bloomberg)
Thanks for subscribing, and have a great week. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, [email protected]; reporter Kurt Schlosser, [email protected]; and reporter Lisa Stiffler, [email protected].
