‘They just nuked the pad’: Blue Origin blast deals major setback to Jeff Bezos’ launch plans

• "They just nuked the pad,” one observer could be heard saying in a video recorded by Spaceflight Now.

• While no injuries were reported, the catastrophic blast heavily damaged the facility and dealt a serious blow to Bezos' near-term plans for launching Amazon Leo internet satellites and NASA lunar hardware.

• Blue Origin just received FAA clearance after an April launch failure, and its launch schedule appears likely to be put on hold for months. Read more.

As data center backlash builds nationwide, Microsoft is pointing to Quincy, Wash., as Exhibit A in making the case that it’s a company communities can trust. The company celebrated the anniversary of its first data center there on Thursday. But it’s not clear whether the conditions that made things work 20 years ago in the rural community still apply today. Read more.

Seattle's F5 marked 30 years in business by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell in New York this morning. The application-delivery and security company has outlived nearly all the marquee customers and the three investment banks listed in its 1999 IPO prospectus, growing to $3.1 billion in annual revenue. After navigating multiple shifts in the economic and technology landscape over the years, F5 now sees AI as the next driver. Read more.

Doubling down on Bellevue: Cloud infrastructure giant CoreWeave is expanding its downtown office footprint to 36,000 square feet to accommodate dozens of new engineering roles as Bellevue rapidly cements itself as the Seattle region's booming AI hub. Read more.

Hot Links:

• After clashing over taxes, Jeff Bezos is now praising New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his proposed Commission on Government Efficiency (COGE). Bezos said cutting waste should translate into lower taxes for working people, echoing recent remarks the billionaire made on CNBC about the tax burdens for teachers in Queens. (X)

• Madrona co-led a $40 million Series A round in Pittsburgh-based Gray Swan, a cybersecurity spinout from Carnegie Mellon University’s AI safety research team. Used by Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and other frontier labs, Madrona’s Vivek Ramaswami said customers describe the technology as “years ahead of anything else they’ve evaluated.” (Gray Swan)

• Soaring AI usage is leading some tech giants to ration access, steering employees toward cheaper tools and stricter controls as AI token spending spikes. As one example, Amazon this week shut down an internal leaderboard that tracked token usage among employees. (WSJ, Financial Times)