Tech news today

The Anchor Community Initiative team with A Way Home Washington captured their reaction to Spokane’s significant decline in youth and young adult homelessness, as revealed through their data analysis. (A Way Home Washington Photo) A Washington state organization is using data and analytics to help solve a crisis that is both unconscionable and has seemed intractable: the challenge of kids and young adults experiencing homelessness. The nonprofit A Way Home Washington recently announced dramatic reductions in the number of young people who are homeless in the Eastern Washington city of Spokane and it’s hoping to essentially eliminate youth homelessness by the end of the year in Walla Walla. If they reach that goal, it will be a first in the U.S. for this demographic. While the initiative is currently being deployed in a limited number of communities, its tech-driven approach could be applied and yield success statewide, said Julie Patiño , executive director of A Way Home Washing

HDT Bio CEO Steve Reed. (HDT Bio Photo) Seattle startup HDT Bio will develop a nasal spray designed to counteract a wide range of respiratory viruses with a nearly $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Army. “We hope to address not only disease progression, but transmission,” chief operating officer Christopher Pirie told GeekWire. HDT Bio’s platform involves a proprietary nanoparticle that delivers an attached RNA into cells. The technology is being harnessed to develop cancer treatments and vaccines. A COVID-19 RNA vaccine based on the company’s tech was recently approved in India. HDT’s nasal spray will be based on the same approach. The spray will consist of a nanoparticle attached to a special RNA derived from the Hepatitis C virus. The RNA was developed by University of Washington immunology professor Michael Gale , who co-founded the company in 2019 with Pirie, chief scientific officer Darrick Carter , UW professor André Lieber , and immunologist and biotech veteran Steve

From left: Daniel Li, CEO and co-founder, and Daniel Kim, CTO and co-founder. (Marble Photo) Marble , a Seattle startup building software-enabled rental management systems for smaller landlords, raised $2 million. The company was co-founded in 2020 by Daniel Li , a former software engineer at Facebook, and Daniel Kim , a former senior engineer at Adobe. Li said that the idea to build Marble came from an experience in college, when it took his landlord more than 18 months to fix a leaky roof. “The only time they responded was when we started to threaten legal action,” he said. Marble, which went through Y Combinator’s accelerator program last summer, works with property owners to locate and place tenants, collect rent payment, and handle maintenance requests. The goal is to replace as many of the jobs typically done by landlords or property managers with software components. It makes its money through a subscription-based service; users pay $50 per month. “We realized there’s

This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we play highlights and offer our thoughts on the recent earnings calls of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Alphabet, seeking to better understand what’s next for the tech economy. A few of my thoughts after listening to all of the calls last week: “Uncertainty” is the watch word. Big tech companies are adjusting to the potential for a recession, with job cuts and other belt-tightening moves, but generally aren’t seeing the extreme realities of an actual downturn. One exception is the advertising market, where a pullback in marketing spending was evident for companies including Microsoft and Alphabet, which saw slower growth than expected; and for Facebook parent company Meta, which posted its first-ever revenue decline for the quarter. Amazon is faring better than most in this regard. Perhaps more than ever, many of the big tech CEOs are in full “pitch” mode on these ostensibly level-headed financial calls, touting their latest initiatives as

Seattle-based Devang Thakkar is the global head of Christie’s Ventures. (Christie’s Photo) Legendary auction house Christie’s got a front-row seat to the NFT craze. In March 2021, the 256-year-old art merchant facilitated the sale of a collage of the first 5,000 pieces made by digital artist Beeple, which sold for a mind-boggling $69.3 million . By the end of the year, Christie’s sold more than $150 million worth of NFTs . Not surprisingly, the auction house is now doubling down on its bet on the Web3 space, announcing a new venture capital arm. The auction house did not disclose the size of the fund, but said it will primarily fund early-stage tech startups building either a Web3 platform, a fintech company that focuses on the art market, or virtual or augmented reality tech that enhances the art viewing experience. The venture arm will be led by Christie’s executives, including CEO Guillaume Cerutti and COO Ben Gore, along with Seattle-based tech vet Devang Thakkar , who wil

Legalpad CEO Todd Heine. (Legalpad Photo) Legalpad , a Seattle startup that helps companies apply for visas on behalf of international talent, has been acquired by Deel , a San Francisco company that sells software to facilitate hiring and paying of employees on global teams. Founded in 2018, Legalpad helps American businesses automate and simplify the process of submitting work visa applications for foreign-born employees. Deel is a 3-year-old Y Combinator company backed by Andreessen Horowitz. It reportedly raised a $50 million round earlier this year at a $12 billion valuation. “As work becomes more distributed and global, together we can solve the immigration challenges employers face when building a global workforce,” Deel said in a blog post about the deal. The two companies first intertwined after Deel co-founder and CEO Alex Bouaziz used Legalpad to get a visa. Legalpad then used Deel when it hired its first contractor outside the U.S. Legalpad CEO  Todd Heine wro

(iRobot Photo) Amazon is set to make another major acquisition. The Seattle tech giant said Friday it will scoop up iRobot , the Boston-area company known for its Roomba vacuum, in a $1.7 billion deal. The news comes just two weeks after Amazon announced it will acquire primary care company One Medical for $3.9 billion. This would be Amazon’s fourth-largest acquisition ever, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods, the $8.45 billion deal to buy MGM, and the One Medical acquisition. The iRobot deal signals Amazon’s large appetite for acquisitions amid the economic downturn and despite increasing U.S. antitrust scrutiny. Amazon will acquire iRobot for $61 per share, about a 22% premium from the company’s stock price at market close Thursday. Shares of iRobot were up nearly 20% in pre-market trading Friday. The deal marks Amazon’s latest investment in the smart home. The company is working on its own home robot, Astro , which debuted in September, and has an array of sm

The City of Seattle has used PayByPhone for parking since 2013. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) A company registered to a virtual mailbox in Seattle’s University District, which four months ago acquired a trio of parking technology patents that predate the iPhone, is using one of those patents as the basis for lawsuits against the cities of Seattle and Sacramento over their use of mobile parking and payment technology from Vancouver, B.C.-based PayByPhone Technologies Inc. RanaVerde Tech Initiative LLC, incorporated in Washington state in February 2021, filed the nearly identical lawsuits July 30 in federal courts in Seattle and Sacramento , alleging that each city is using technology covered by multiple claims in U.S. Patent No. 7839302 , “Vehicle parking assistance electronic timer system and method.” John T. Staniszewski of Staten Island, N.Y., is listed as the inventor on the original patent application in October 2006. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office granted the patent i

Paul Allen with one of the vintage warplanes at the Flying Heritage Combat and Armor Museum he started in Everett, Wash. ( Flying Heritage Instagram Photo ) The Flying Heritage Combat and Armor Museum , an extensive collection of aviation and military artifacts started by Paul Allen in 2004, has been sold by the late Microsoft co-founder’s estate. News of a proposed sale to entrepreneur and philanthropist Steuart Walton , the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton, was first reported in April and became official on Thursday. The Everett, Wash.-based museum’s assets are being acquired by Walton’s Wartime History Museum, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that launched earlier this year with a mission to preserve and restore wartime historical artifacts. The organization wants to continue to make warplanes and armor available through live exhibitions, museum properties and public spaces. “It has been my honor and privilege to help develop and care for this amazing collection, share it with the p

Rendering of the UW’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building by KieranTimberlake. The University of Washington is breaking ground next month on its Interdisciplinary Engineering Building. The new facility should help the UW’s College of Engineering better serve its growing enrollment: since 2009, the annual number undergraduates earning degrees from the college has doubled to 1,300 while the square footage of student facilities has not kept pace. “This building is going to help us prepare more engineers. It creates a future of opportunity. It’s a pipeline of local talent,” said Nancy Allbritton , dean of the College of Engineering, in an interview. The $90 million building is being funded in part with a $10 million donation from Boeing. The aeronautics giant with Seattle roots made its first gift to the UW in 1917, the year after Boeing launched. That original $6,000 check from founder Bill Boeing helped the UW pay for the construction of a wind tunnel. The new gift, the company

Aaron Blank’s Mustang, parked at a charging station during his recent West Coast electric vehicle road trip. The Fearey CEO dealt with a host of problems keeping his car sufficiently juiced. (Aaron Blank Photo) Aaron Blank set out for a West Coast road trip with his son to see some baseball and more between Los Angeles and Seattle and back down. He came away from the drive with some hard lessons learned about the realities of traveling long distance by electric car. Blank is CEO and president of Seattle-based public relations firm Fearey , and he’s been splitting his time between Seattle and L.A. since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Already the owner of a Tesla Model X, Blank purchased a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E this spring. He left L.A. on July 16 for a two-week trip with his 10-year-old son, Ermias. The plan was to take Ermias to basketball camp in the Bay Area, work in hotels along the way and visit some major and minor league ballparks. Aaron Blank, his son Ermias an

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship rises from its Texas launch pad. (Blue Origin via YouTube) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture sent six more crew members on a suborbital space ride, including the first Egyptian and Portuguese citizens to reach the final frontier. Thanks to today’s flight from Launch Site One in West Texas, Blue Origin’s list of spacefliers has grown to 31 over the course of a little more than a year. Bezos himself went on the first crewed flight in July 2021, and Florida investor Evan Dick bought two tickets to space. The lineup for NS-22 — the 22nd mission for the New Shepard suborbital launch system, and the sixth crewed flight — set a couple of precedents. Portugal’s first spaceflier is Mario Ferreira, an entrepreneur, investor and president of Porto-based  Pluris Investments . The first from Egypt is Sara Sabry, a mechanical and biomedical engineer who founded a nonprofit called Deep Space Initiative . Sabry was the second Blue Origin crew member spo

Jennifer Carlson, Apprenti’s director and co-founder, accepts the award for Geeks Give Back at the GeekWire Awards 2019 event in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) The  Apprenti  apprenticeship program run by the  Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) was awarded a $23.5 million grant to help train more tech workers across 11 states. The funding comes from the U.S. Department of Commerce and is part of the $500 million Good Jobs Challenge funded by the American Rescue Plan. Apprenti, also known as the WTIA Workforce Institute, was among 32 projects nationwide to be awarded a grant out of more than 500 applications. Launched in September 2016, Apprenti provides free training and apprenticeships for candidates looking to work in the tech sector. It focuses on providing economic mobility to underrepresented groups. The program says 85% of its participants are women, underrepresented racial minorities, military veterans or a combination of these categories. It has

An example of a multifamily housing in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. (Sightline Institute Photo / Creative Commons ) Real estate tech startups are making it easier for people to invest and manage property. But critics argue that these software companies and their business models are gobbling up the limited amount of available housing in the process, driving up costs and pushing out first-time buyers.  These investing services encourage users to invest in multiple properties, taking away already scarce housing inventory, said Tram Tran-Larson, a community engagement manager for the Housing Justice Project, a Seattle-based legal aid clinic that provides eviction defense for low income tenants and is part of the King County Bar Association. This drives up costs for available housing, she added. But researchers argue that the lack of affordable housing has more to do with the limited supply, not the proliferation of tech-enabled real estate investing platforms. Sheharyar Bokhari.

The crowd at the 2022 GeekWire Rooftop BBQ + Sounders Day in Seattle on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photos / Kurt Schlosser) Beautiful weather. Cold drinks. Tasty food. Meeting old friends. Making new ones. Sounders Day 2022 was epic! We had a blast at our annual party with more than 500 people coming together on a picture-perfect 72-degree day at the First Mode rooftop deck in Seattle. After the beers and BBQ, we headed across the street to Lumen Field and watched the Sounders get a big 1-0 win over FC Dallas. A huge shoutout to our presenting sponsor  First Mode , as well as gold sponsor  WaFd  for bringing the community together for this fun event. First Mode is a Seattle engineering company that helps power the world’s largest zero-emission vehicle . “The problems we’re trying to fix are big,” First Mode CEO Chris Voorhees told the crowd. “We need all the help we can get.” And a big thank you to Sounders legend Steve Zakuani, who joined us for a conversation with GeekWire co-fou