Week in Review: Most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 16, 2026

Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Aug. 16, 2026.

Sign up to receive these updates every Sunday in your inbox by subscribing to our GeekWire Weekly email newsletter.

Most popular stories on GeekWire

How an AirTag planted by a reporter led to a secret Amazon site where old books are cut apart and scanned

404 Media put an Apple AirTag in a rare book and tracked it to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, where a team cuts the bindings off books and scans the pages. The reporting method has roots in a Seattle non-profit group. Read More … Read More

We’ve entered Seattle’s Third Act

A year after GeekWire asked where Seattle’s superstar AI startups were, two local venture capitalists offer an answer: they’re here, but they build rockets, geothermal plants and autonomous off-road vehicles rather than software. A guest opinion from Ascend’s Nate Bek and Plug and Play’s Ben Eisinger. Read More … Read More

Qualtrics cuts jobs in Seattle, Utah and overseas as it absorbs $6.75B acquisition

Qualtrics laid off employees across Seattle, Provo and international offices Wednesday, three months after closing its $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. The company declined to disclose how many jobs were cut, but a WARN notice reviewed by GeekWire indicates at least 50 cuts were made at its Seattle headquarters. Read More … Read More

Anduril exits Seattle shipyard following canceled Navy program and omission from new warship list

After the U.S. Navy abruptly canceled a key unmanned warship program, defense giant Anduril quietly vacated its shipyard site on Seattle’s Lake Washington Ship Canal—even as its broader regional footprint continues to surge toward 1,000 local engineers. Read More … Read More

Internal memo: Eight execs out at Expedia Group in AI-driven shakeup

Expedia Group is parting ways with at least eight vice presidents and senior vice presidents as it reorganizes its product and technology organization around AI, according to an internal memo obtained by GeekWire. The memo from the company’s product and technology chiefs also names five leaders who were promoted. Read More … Read More

GitHub outage disrupts developers worldwide in latest setback for Microsoft coding platform

GitHub was down for more than three hours Monday morning, breaking the website, code review tools, automated build systems and Copilot. It’s the latest reliability problem for a platform whose capacity planning has been outrun by AI coding tools. Read More … Read More

Tech Moves: AWS data leader jumps to Oracle; Seattle Children’s names new CIO; Zillow’s new legal chief

An AWS director who ran the launch of Oracle Database@AWS has joined Oracle. Also in this edition: Seattle Children’s names a Stanford informatics leader as CIO, Zillow fills a newly created chief legal and policy role and a former Convoy executive is Uber Freight’s new product chief. Read More … Read More

Inside Anduril’s AI warfighting buildup: Defense giant sees a path to 1,000 Seattle-area engineers

GeekWire toured Anduril’s unmarked Bellevue office, where the defense company is building augmented reality glasses, digital night vision and edge computing hardware for the U.S. military. Senior vice president Tom Keane says the regional engineering workforce could easily grow from 560 people to 1,000 in the not-too-distant future. Read More … Read More

Go inside Endurance Energy, the Seattle startup tapping underwater volcanoes for geothermal power

Endurance Energy is running full-tilt in its cavernous new Seattle facility as it prepares to deploy a 100-kilowatt generator to an oceanic volcano off the coast of Oregon. The company is betting that the technology can one day electrify entire cities. We got a look inside. Read More … Read More

North America’s biggest book sorter just opened in the Seattle area

The King County Library System opened a $5.2 million sorting installation in Renton that handles the 25,000 items moving through its 50 libraries each day. Robotic arms destack totes every 15 seconds and route materials into 186 delivery chutes. Read More … Read More