Zoom to acquire a Seattle AI standout: Common Room built an AI-powered platform to help sales and marketing teams track buying signals across their customers. The company emerged from stealth in 2021 with $52 million in funding and was the 2022 GeekWire Awards Startup of the Year. Zoom plans to pair the startup's buyer intelligence with the conversation data it already captures from sales calls.
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(Above: Common Room’s co-founders, from left, Tom Kleinpeter, Viraj Mody, Francis Luu, and Linda Lian.)
While some tech giants are looking to the stars for abundant clean electricity, the actual path to commercial fusion energy involves an unexpected down-scaling, an expansion to traditional nuclear power, and a tight 2028 deadline. On this episode of GeekWire’s new Positive Charge podcast, we go inside Seattle-area fusion startups Helion and Zap as they try to harness the reactions that power the sun. Read more.
AI on the front lines: Microsoft is launching Microsoft Frontier Company, a $2.5 billion business that will embed engineers inside customer organizations to build and run their AI systems. The move follows similar efforts by Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic, and expands work Microsoft was already doing through its consulting arm and partners. Read more.
Private AI: Venice.ai, a privacy-focused AI startup led by crypto veteran Erik Voorhees as CEO and Seattle-based president and CTO Jesse Proudman, has raised $65 million in its first outside funding at a $1 billion valuation. The company offers a private alternative to mainstream AI services, saying it doesn't store users' prompts or responses. Read more.
Mining history lessons for tech insights: To mark America’s 250th birthday, Microsoft President Brad Smith is hosting a new six-part video series that explores how historical milestones — from 18th-century steamboats to early privacy rights — can help guide today’s complex debates over intellectual property and AI. Read more.
Fuel for chasing late payments: KredosAI, an Issaquah, Wash.-based fintech startup, has raised $7 million in a Series A round led by BMW’s venture capital arm to expand its AI-driven past-due payment platform deeper into the auto-lending sector. Read more.
No discs, more problems: Sony shocked the gaming world by announcing it will phase out physical PlayStation discs by 2028 — ironically adopting the all-digital strategy that rival Microsoft famously proposed over a decade ago. What will it mean for gamers and the industry? Read more.
Satellite office: California-based satellite startup K2 Space is establishing a new engineering hub in the Seattle area to support its ambitious plans to build massive, high-power "mega-class" satellites for commercial and military networks. Read more.
Hot Links:
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The Seattle region’s commercial office space market recorded its strongest first-half leasing activity since before the pandemic, according to a new report. (Savills)
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EchoMark unveiled its EchoMark Screen technology to provide invisible, forensic watermarks to everything displayed on computer screens. (Business Wire)
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Allen Family Philanthropies announced $5 million for 10 Washington organizations supporting creative youth development and community-led after-school programs. (Allen Family Philanthropies)
Thanks for subscribing, and have a great holiday weekend! — GeekWire editor Todd Bishop, [email protected]; reporter Kurt Schlosser, [email protected]; and reporter Lisa Stiffler, [email protected].
