$50M to rewire the supply chain. Dave Clark's startup Auger has closed a Series B funding round led by Eclipse, bringing total funding to $150 million. The former Amazon operations chief, pictured above with co-founder Leigh Anne Clark, says companies such as Meta, Fanatics, and Kimberly-Clark are using the platform to make supply chain decisions autonomously.
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Microsoft’s annual sustainability report shows a 25% emissions jump fueled by AI energy demands, testing its 2030 climate goal to become carbon negative. But its chief sustainability officer remains optimistic that long-term investments in carbon reductions and a "portfolio approach" can still rescue their ambitious targets. Read more.
New radar manufacturing hub: Echodyne, the Seattle-area radar-platform company, cut the ribbon on a $40 million production facility designed to meet growing demand for its drone-detection and airspace-monitoring systems. The company says the 86,350-square-foot space in Woodinville, Wash., will eventually be able to produce more than 30,000 radars annually and support up to 200 new jobs. Read more.
Space lasers get a boost: Bellevue-based Pulse Space landed a $40 million U.S. Space Force contract to develop laser-based power beaming and orbital tracking systems. Read more.
Washington state’s complicated business narrative: A new ranking from CNBC of America’s Top States for Business puts Washington at No. 11. That’s a jump of three spots from last year’s list, suggesting that many of the state’s underlying competitive strengths remain intact even as debate over its business climate has intensified. But it’s still a fall from a No. 1 ranking in 2017. Read more.
End of an Un-carrier era: Mike Katz, who helped build T-Mobile from a regional player into a wireless powerhouse over 28 years, is leaving as CEO Srini Gopalan reshapes the leadership team, including adding former AT&T exec Chris Sambar to the C-suite. Read more.
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Starbucks is leveraging AI-assisted coding to build its own in-house software, aiming to replace tools from Microsoft and IBM and cut into its $400 million annual IT budget. (Bloomberg)
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Microsoft is overhauling Windows security to keep pace with AI‑accelerated vulnerability discovery, using multi‑model scanning and faster engineering pipelines to find and fix issues before attackers can exploit them. (Windows Blogs)
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OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Work, a new AI product that can take actions across apps, build documents and apps, and run scheduled workflows, attempting to go head-to-head with Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and others. (OpenAI)
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].
