The previous 12 months might go down as one of the vital consequential in know-how historical past, in each the Seattle tech neighborhood and the world. However in some methods, it’s not with out precedent.
As we sat right down to mirror on the previous 12 months, we rewound all the way in which again to January — when, as half of a bigger dialogue with Invoice Gates, we requested the Microsoft co-founder to match the early days of the PC with these early years of AI.
Gates mirrored on the PC period as a second of computing turning into free, successfully.
“Now what’s taking place is intelligence is turning into free,” he stated, “and that’s much more profound than computing turning into free.”
As we seemed by way of GeekWire’s high tales of the 12 months, nearly each one felt like a subplot to that bigger narrative. On this particular year-end episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we reviewed the articles that resonated most with readers, and in contrast notes to make sense of all of it.
Hear under, and proceed studying for episode notes and hyperlinks.
Enigma of success: ‘Brutal actuality’ of tech cycles
- Better of occasions, worst of occasions: Large AI infrastructure spending alongside widespread layoffs.
- Satya Nadella on the Stargate announcement: “I’m good for my $80 billion.“
- The sudden means AI is affecting jobs — not by changing employees straight, however by pressuring firms to chop prices as they pour cash into infrastructure.
- MIT examine: 95% of tasks utilizing generative AI have failed or produced no return.
- Employee stress: Mandates to make use of AI, however no playbook on how.
- One tech veteran’s take: “The enigma of success is a well mannered means of describing the brutal actuality of tech cycles. … The problem, and alternative for management, is whether or not the bets really compound into one thing sturdy, or simply turn into one other slide deck for subsequent 12 months’s reorg.”
- Invoice Radke on KUOW: “The tech business had fairly a 12 months. Amazon ordered their employees again to the workplace. You need to come again to the workplace. Are you right here? Good. You’re laid off. Not all of you. Simply the people.“
A pivotal 12 months for Amazon
- Andy Jassy’s clarification: Not financially pushed, not even actually AI pushed — it’s tradition.
- After fast development, Amazon making an attempt to get again to working like “the world’s largest startup.”
- The brand new motto appears to be: Get small and nimble, sooner.
- Can Amazon discover that subsequent pillar of enterprise, as Jeff Bezos used to say?
Coding is useless, laptop science is just not
- Hottest story of the 12 months: Coding is useless: UW laptop science program rethinks curriculum for the AI period.
- Magdalena Balazinska, director of the Paul G. Allen College: “Coding, or the interpretation of a exact design into software program directions, is useless. AI can do this. Now we have by no means graduated coders. Now we have all the time graduated software program engineers.”
- The problem was explored by the New York Instances in its Day by day podcast on Code.org and the shifting panorama for coding training. See the response from Hadi Partovi of Code.org.
Seattle’s future as a tech hub
- Wall Road Journal report: Seattle, Tech Boomtown, Grapples With a Way forward for Fewer Tech Jobs
- One supply quoted: “Between 2012 and 2022 it was an awesome interval … till every thing flipped.”
- GeekWire protection: Is Seattle’s tech scene in hassle? WSJ report highlights regarding tendencies — with a possible opening for startups
- However: Atlas Van Strains information reveals Washington state nonetheless amongst high 10 locations for movers.
- The strengths stay: Anchor tenants, traders, startups, good individuals, UW, healthcare infrastructure, and so on.
- We’re seeing AI develop from particular person productiveness to enterprise effectivity — an space the place the Seattle area has traditionally excelled.
Sense of place: Extra essential for some, much less for others
- Amazon brings workers again 5 days every week; Microsoft broadcasts three days beginning in 2026.
- Rebooting Redmond: The conclusion of our Microsoft fiftieth anniversary collection explored the brand new campus and what it alerts.
- But many startups are extra distributed and diffuse than ever — typically it’s exhausting to even pin down the place their headquarters are.
- Statsig, fully in-office in Bellevue, acquired by OpenAI for $1.1 billion.
- The perennial query: Why don’t extra of those firms turn into Seattle’s subsequent tech big?
M&A and IPOs: Base hits, not residence runs
- Didn’t see as a lot deal exercise as some predicted for 2025.
- GeekWire offers listing displays smaller acquisitions, not blockbusters.
- One tech IPO from Washington state: Kestra Medical Applied sciences, $202 million in March.
- Advanced alchemy of rates of interest, regulation, and market situations.
AI turns into actual
- Brad Smith at Microsoft’s annual assembly: Requested Copilot’s researcher agent to provide a report on a difficulty from seven or eight years in the past. Fifteen minutes later: 25-page report with 100 citations.
- What’s taking place now: the shift from particular person productiveness to group productiveness, from individuals utilizing AI to organizations figuring it out.
- As firms implement AI brokers, we transfer from desktop/particular person purposes to true enterprise companies, enjoying to Seattle’s strengths.
Quote of the 12 months
“We look ahead to becoming a member of Matt on his non-public island subsequent 12 months.” — Kiana Ehsani, CEO of Vercept, after her co-founder Matt Deitke left to hitch Meta for a reported a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars}.
Stickler of the 12 months
Proud Seattleite and grammarian Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!, correcting a contestant: “Sorry, Dan, we’re sticklers in Seattle. It’s Pike Place — no s.”
Really feel-Good Second of the 12 months
Ambika Singh, CEO and founding father of Armoire, accepting the Office of the 12 months award on the GeekWire Awards: “It’s not a shock to any of you that we’re shedding neighborhood outdoors of those partitions on this nation. However right here, it feels alive and properly.”
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Audio modifying by Curt Milton
