Bill Gates
Bill Gates is the Founder of Breakthrough Energy, Co-founder and Co-chair of the Gates Foundation, and Co-founder at Microsoft and TerraPower. He founded Breakthrough Energy, Gates Foundation, Microsoft (which went public), and TerraPower, and remains active in all. His expertise includes leadership in technology, philanthropy, and energy innovation.
Elon Musk's Starlink swagger, SpaceX vs. the cloud giants, and Seattle’s tech universe revisited
This week: SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company, and Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver a majority of the world's internet within a decade, leveraging production facilities in Redmond. Musk also explains the company's data center ambitions, calling terrestrial infrastructure a trivial problem next to reusable rockets. Plus: we bring two Washington tech universe posters into the studio, 17 years apart. The 2009 original turns up gems including Boeing's unlikely connection to Classmates.com, a 1990s forerunner to Facebook. The 2009 poster also brings back memories of Teledesic, the Craig McCaw venture backed by Bill Gates that tried…
Anthropic acquires Vercept, the AI job crisis scenario, and Microsoft's past Epstein connections
Anthropic acquired Seattle startup Vercept on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about the impact of early exits on the broader Seattle startup ecosystem, and the question of whether AI startups can compete long-term against the giants of the field. We dig into the deal, the public feud between two of the company's early investors on LinkedIn, and why one co-founder's prior departure to Meta may have been worth more than the entire acquisition. Plus, a new research paper envisions a 2028 "global intelligence crisis" driven by AI-fueled white collar job losses, and we're already seeing early signs in the news. Then…
Microsoft's private OpenAI emails and Satya Nadella’s new AI catchphrase
Newly unsealed court documents reveal the behind-the-scenes history of Microsoft and OpenAI · including a surprise: Amazon Web Services was the Silicon Valley AI lab's original partner. Plus, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella debuts a new AI catchphrase at Davos, startup CEO Dave Clark gets attention for his "wildly productive weekend," Elon Musk talks aliens, and the latest on physical AI startups in the Pacific Northwest, including Overland AI and AIM Intelligent Machines. With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Building an AI-first company: What these two business leaders learned from top experts in the field
Our guests this week: Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, co-authors of the book AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand. Brotman was Starbucks’ chief digital officer and later co-CEO of J.Crew. Sack is a founder, investor, and longtime advisor to tech leaders. Together, they run Forum3, a company that helps brands rethink loyalty and customer engagement. For their book, they interviewed experts including Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and Ethan Mollick, and spent time with companies that have had early success with AI implementation. We talk about their "holy sh*t" moment with Sam Altman, how Moderna…
Stargate, OpenAI and Microsoft; BlueSky in Seattle; and Madrona's big new funds
This week, we delve into the Project Stargate announcement by OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, in conjunction with President Trump, and assess the implications for OpenAi's relationship with Microsoft. We explain what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella really meant with his CNBC zinger about the Stargate investment, and consider how Elon Musk's involvement in the new administration could play out in the tech industry. PLUS, we discuss Madrona's big new funds and the potential impact on startup activity in the Pacific NW, and find a revealing piece of Microsoft history on an old CD-ROM. Related stories: Microsoft and OpenAI tweak the terms…
Anoop Gutpa - CEO and Co-founder at SeekOut
Anoop Gupta is the CEO and Co-Founder of SeekOut, an AI-powered Talent Intelligence Platform helping organizations recruit, retain, and grow talent. Anoop started SeekOut after an 18-year career at Microsoft. During his tenure, Anoop was the Corporate Vice-President of the multibillion-dollar Unified Communications Group (Skype + Exchange). He was TA to Bill Gates, advising on technology and product strategy, and as a Distinguished Scientist at MSR, he led work on AI, Natural User Interfaces, and Telepresence. Prior to Microsoft, Anoop was a tenured professor at Stanford University and he holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. See…
What the heck happened at Convoy?
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we examine the market forces, debt, and other dynamics that put the digital freight marketplace Convoy out of business, bringing one of the Seattle region's top startups to the end of the road. Related coverage: ‘The markets crushed us’: In tearful farewell to employees, Convoy execs reflect on shutdown Convoy collapse: Read CEO’s memo detailing sudden shutdown of Seattle trucking startup Convoy raised $260 million just 18 months ago, at a valuation of $3.8 billion. Its investor list was a who's who of tech moguls and celebrities, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff…
Investor Spotlight with Jon Turow
Get to know Madrona Partner Jon Turow. Learn why he got into VC, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:39) Jon Turow's background (00:01:19) Why venture capital (00:02:27) Why Madrona (00:03:20) Opportunities in generative AI (00:05:35) What Jon looks for in founders (00:07:02) Jon's book recommendations (00:08:58) What Jon does for fun
Omri Gazitt
Omri Gazitt is the co-founder and CEO of Aserto, an authorization startup and his third entrepreneurial venture. He’s spent the majority of his 30-year career working on developer and infrastructure technology, most recently as the CPO of Puppet. Previously, he was the VP and GM of HP’s Cloud Native Platform, and General Manager at Microsoft with responsibilities for Azure, SQL Server, Application Server, and the .NET Framework. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jane Park on SPACs, the immigrant ethos, and brands in the Amazon era
Jane Park, the CEO of newly public Athena Consumer Acquisition Corp., hadn't imagined herself leading a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, before accepting the job. She decided to consider the pitch from venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim for one reason. “It took some convincing, a little bit. I wasn’t sure if I had the right capabilities. I have always sat on the entrepreneur side. So to be on the acquiring/money side is a new perspective and vantage point for me,” she said. “I don’t think I would have taken the call if it wasn’t the fact that it was an…
Top Stories of 2020
To say that 2020 unfolded in unexpected ways would be an epic understatement. The changes caused by the pandemic promise to impact tech, business and everything else for years to come. And that's just the start. The influence of Seattle's tech and scientific communities rippled throughout the world. The region's life sciences institutions played a key role in uncovering and battling COVID-19, and Bill Gates emerged as a leading voice for science and equity in the pandemic. Enterprise tech companies provided the bedrock for a massive global acceleration of digital technologies. A national reckoning over race, sparked by the killing…
Microsoft (maybe) rescues TikTok; downtown Seattle struggles; micro-schools
Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week. Who would have thought that Microsoft could be the likely white knight to save social video app TikTok from threats by President Trump to ban it in the U.S.? Trump set a hard deadline this week for Microsoft or another entity to buy the company before he'll block all transactions with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. We discuss what might be behind Microsoft's interest in entering the social media sphere. In latest TikTok twist, Microsoft reportedly looking at buying entire social media giant Trump issues executive order banning transactions…
Expedia's lifeline; Bill Gates on life after lockdown; Redfin and Tokki CEOs on pivoting in a pandemic
Here's what we're talking about this week on the GeekWire Podcast. “Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table, and airplanes where every middle seat is empty.” That is what the “semi-normal” next phase of the pandemic will look like, Bill Gates says, offering a starkly pragmatic take that contrasts with predictions from President Trump that the economy will come “roaring back.” But Gates also points to the potential for a new wave of innovation the likes of which hasn’t been seen since World War II. “If there’s life, there’s travel,” says Expedia chairman Barry Diller, expressing optimism…
Special COVID-19 Episode: Ian Morris
Ian Morris is the Co-founder and CEO of Likewise, an innovative startup backed by Bill Gates that’s re-imagining the way that people find great recommendations. Though the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting every business in some way, Ian shares how the stay at home order and closure of recreational facilities has resulted in a tremendous jump in users on Likewise’s platform on this special episode of the What Fuels You podcast. He discusses how they’re up 400 percent on the number of recommendations and saves taking place on the application, the most popular lists and categories on Likewise and how they…
Seattle confronts the coronavirus
Here’s what we’re talking about this week on the GeekWire Podcast. Seattle became ground zero in the U.S. coronavirus outbreak this week and tech firms were trying to adjust. Meetings and conferences were cancelled or moved online and many firms told employees to work from home for the rest of the month. GeekWire was no exception: Our annual awards event has been postponed. How will the virus impact Seattle’s tech scene in the short term and in the long run? Will it change the way many of us work? We discuss … Coronavirus Live Updates: The latest COVID-19 developments in…
Apple acquires Xnor.ai; Microsoft's bold climate plan; Seattle startup trivia
Apple doubled down on artificial intelligence and boosted its presence in Seattle with the acquisition of Xnor.ai, an Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence spinout with roots at the University of Washington, as first reported by GeekWire this week. It was a win for those institutions, and investors including Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, but it's also an example of an ambitious startup selling to a tech giant before it has the chance to become one itself. So how should we look at deals like this? Plus, Microsoft's ambitious plan to go "carbon negative" puts the tech company at the forefront of…
Ian Morris
Ian Morris, the CEO of Likewise, talks about the exciting things that he and his team are building at Likewise to help all of us get better recommendations about what to watch, read, and experience next. Before Likewise, Ian spent 7 years at Microsoft where he helped create and went on to lead Microsoft HomeAdvisor. He then served 10 years as the CEO of Market Leader, the real estate software leader that he took public and later sold to Trulia in 2013. Now, with Likewise, an innovative company which was originally imagined and is funded by Bill Gates’ private office…
Why Arivale failed
Founded in 2015, Seattle startup Arivale aspired to pioneer a new sector called scientific wellness, combining genetic testing with personal coaching to improve the health of its members. Its founder, genomics legend Lee Hood, said the company "really stands a chance of being the Google or Microsoft of this whole arena." But four years later, Arivale abruptly closed its doors this week. We explain what happened with special guest, GeekWire chief business officer Daniel Rossi, an Arivale member whose experience in the program was chronicled in our 2017 series. Plus, Microsoft breaks the trillion-dollar mark, Bill Gates serves as a…
Unicorns, IPOs and the next tech giants
Seattle has a new unicorn, Outreach, the sales and marketing automation company that raised a $114 million funding round this week, pushing its valuation to $1.1 billion. The news sends John and Todd on a startup odyssey, exploring the hidden connections among the new wave of public companies and tech behemoths in Silicon Valley and Seattle, including Uber, Lyft, Convoy and others. Plus, Amazon and Microsoft are preparing to challenge Apple's AirPods,. And on the Random Channel, Melinda Gates has a message for the tech industry, and John is determined to be a "Never Throner." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Organizations
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Breakthrough Energy Ventures Founder 2015–present · current
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Gates Foundation Co-founder and Co-chair 2000–present · current
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Microsoft Co-founder 1975–present, Former CEO · current
Education
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Harvard University 1973–1975
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Lakeside School
