Catch up on our latest stories and the week's biggest storylines, including a $125M round for Brinc Drones, a Seattle VC reality check, and a mystery aerospace archive rescued from the shredder.
On the pod: What kind of Seahawks owner will Vinod Khosla be? This week's GeekWire Podcast digs into hours of the Silicon Valley legend's talks and interviews to answer the big questions — who he is, why he wants an NFL team, and the blind spot that could get him into trouble. Featuring highlights from his 2015 talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Read more and listen here, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
AI weapons under scrutiny: A coalition of activists plans to rally Sunday morning outside Anduril's downtown Seattle office, protesting the defense tech company's AI-powered military systems and its growing regional footprint. The demonstration comes as Anduril expands across the area — including a new autonomous naval vessel operation at the former Foss shipyard on the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Read more.
Ditch the smartphone: Nearly 40 Seattleites are swapping their phones for flip phones for 35 days, joining the inaugural Month Offline Seattle cohort — part happy hour, part support group. Organizers expected 10 to 20 sign-ups but drew the largest turnout outside D.C. and Brooklyn, propelled by flyers and neighborhood pub conversations during the FIFA World Cup. Read more.
Stardew meets Magic: Seattle indie hit Stardew Valley is joining Magic: The Gathering later this month via a three-set Secret Lair "Superdrop" from Renton-based Wizards of the Coast. Announced Friday at MagicCon Amsterdam, the July 27 release reimagines existing Magic cards with pixel art by creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone, plus a new Stardew Valley land card built for competitive play. Read more.
AWS's Dave Brown is Meta-bound: Longtime AWS exec Dave Brown, who helped build EC2 and rose to lead AWS computing and AI, is joining Meta to work on its data center buildout. Taking his seat at AWS: Dave Treadwell, a longtime Amazon executive who spent 27 years at Microsoft before that. Read more.
Icertis CEO out: Anand Subbaraman is departing as CEO of the Bellevue-based contract management company less than a year after taking the role. CFO Rajat Bahri and board member Jim Moffatt will serve as interim co-CEOs while the search for a permanent leader begins. Read more.
A Seattle VC reality check: Seattle-area startups raised $2.7 billion in the first half of 2026, down 40% from a year ago, even as U.S. venture funding hit a record $412.7 billion. AI mega-rounds are driving the national boom; Seattle's biggest deals were in fusion, space, and cybersecurity. Read more.
Office market turns a corner: The Seattle region posted its first meaningful positive net absorption in years in Q2, as Databricks, DocuSign and Pokémon signed major deals across the region. Read more.
JPMorgan doubles down on Seattle AI: The world's largest bank is building an engineering team in Seattle to run AI on its own terms — controlling costs, protecting data, and avoiding dependence on any single vendor. CIO Lori Beer laid out the strategy during a visit to the bank's Seattle tech hub. Read more.
A tribute at Lumen Field: The Seattle Sounders paused before Thursday's match against the Portland Timbers to honor S. "Soma" Somasegar, the longtime Microsoft executive, Madrona venture capitalist and Sounders minority owner who died in May at age 59. Read more.
Money moves. Several notable Seattle-area fundings and deals landed this week.
- Seattle 911 drone maker Brinc raised $125 million led by Motorola Solutions, fueling plans for a new Seattle headquarters and factory. Read more.
- Apptio co-founders Sunny Gupta and Kurt Shintaffer reunited to launch Bellevue enterprise AI startup Thira with $21 million in seed funding led by Madrona. Read more.
- Seattle spatial AI startup Augmodo raised $21 million at a $350 million valuation, expanding beyond retail into warehouses and factories. Read more.
- Pre-seed startup logcat.ai raised $2.55 million from Founders' Co-op to put AI agents to work on the operating-system code inside phones, cars, and robots. Read more.
- Live-shopping unicorn Whatnot acquired Madrona-backed Seattle startup Shaped to bolster its real-time AI recommendation and search capabilities. Read more.
Aerospace archaeology: A trove of vintage aerospace artifacts — gold-plated prototype chips, silicon architectures under glass, experimental fiber-optic cables — was rescued from the shredder at a Bellevue electronics recycler, and its CEO is now trying to trace the archive's origins. Read more.
As mentioned in the final segment of the podcast this week, we want to hear about the coolest tech discovery you ever made at a thrift shop, estate sale, or wherever else you might have found it. Send your comments, voice memos, and photos to [email protected].
Upcoming events: Tech and startup community gatherings on our radar in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
Check out the GeekWire Calendar for more.
Thanks for subscribing, and have a great weekend. — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, [email protected] and publisher John Cook, [email protected].
(Top Image:
TechCrunch Photo / Flickr /
CC BY 2.0)
