Rec Room set to go dark, and Zuckerberg’s yacht is on the move

Last day for Rec Room: The social gaming platform shuts down at noon Pacific today, ending a decade-long run for the Seattle-based startup that drew 150 million players and a $3.5 billion valuation but never made the financial math work. Players are saying goodbye with tribute videos and yearbook-style farewells. It was “a very special place, built by a very special group of people,” says co-founder and longtime CEO Nick Fajt. Read more.

Healthcare technology giant Philips acknowledged plans to put its longtime Bothell, Wash., campus up for sale as part of a multi-year real estate strategy. However, the company emphasizes that the move will not impact Seattle-area operations or its 1,500 local employees, as it plans to secure a new local site and relocate if the property sells. Read more.

Zuckerboat on the move: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht Launchpad quietly left Seattle’s Lake Union, slipped through the Ballard Locks and is anchored less conspicuously in Elliott Bay, closer to the support vessel Wingman. Read more. 

• We talk about the spectacle, and the juxtaposition with Meta’s recent job cuts, on the latest episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Read more and listen here, and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Etzioni on AI: Government debt keeps climbing, but investors are still betting inflation will stay low. Entrepreneur and computer scientist Oren Etzioni says they're really betting on something else: that AI will make the economy productive enough to keep prices in check. Read more.

Hot Links:

• Nvidia's new AI processing chip, dubbed RTX Spark, will debut this fall in laptops and computers from Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo and others. (NYT)

• Microsoft is putting the new Nvidia chip to work in the new Surface Laptop Ultra: a larger, brighter 15‑inch model built to show off the added speed and on‑device AI power. (Windows Blogs)

• Bill Gates' carefully curated image is eroding as he prepares to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, with the fallout now reaching the institutions he built and funds, from the Gates Foundation to TerraPower, Breakthrough Energy, and Microsoft. (WSJ) 

• The rush to build big energy projects to support AI is risky given the mounting data center pushback and canceled projects, says Microsoft's former VP of energy. (Axios)

Thanks for subscribing, and have a great week. Feedback and news tips: [email protected]. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, [email protected]; reporter Kurt Schlosser, [email protected]; and reporter Lisa Stiffler, [email protected].