The magazine said there was "no turning back or opting out' of AI's massive influence in 2025."

The 300-person startup hopes bringing designers aboard will give it an edge in an increasingly competitive AI software market.

The factories live on; the joint venture will not.

Now in its third year, GeekWire’s “Uncommon Thinkers” — in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners — recognizes the inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world.

We met six innovators this year who are leading startups that address such things as the design of drug candidates; a throwback idea for phones for kids; a new approach to social media; elimination of harmful chemicals; spacecraft propulsion; and AI that performs computer tasks on your behalf.

Their colleagues call them “creative,” “mission-driven,” “laser-focused,” “incredibly low-ego,” and “brilliant.”

The honorees will be celebrated as part of Thursday’s GeekWire Gala in Seattle.

Catch up on our profiles of each winner below:

Anindya Roy, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Lila Biologics

• Anindya Roy’s path from a village in rural India to co-founding Seattle’s Lila Biologics is a story of persistence, curiosity, and boundary-pushing science. After training in top U.S. research labs, including the Baker Lab at the University of Washington, Roy now helps turn advanced protein-design concepts into real drug candidates — from cancer therapies to long-acting injectables — using cutting-edge computational tools. His journey highlights how unconventional thinking can drive the next wave of biotech innovation. Read more.

Chet Kittleson, co-founder and CEO of Tin Can

• Chet Kittleson is on a mission to bring back something rare in 2025: screen-free, voice-to-voice connection for kids. Tin Can‘s bright, WiFi-enabled landline phones are designed to let kids call each other or trusted contacts — no apps, no social media, no distractions. After raising $3.5 million and selling out its first two batches, Tin Can now has customers in all 50 states and across Canada. For Kittleson, every ring is a sign that parents are craving simpler, more meaningful ways for their children to connect — and that this retro-inspired hardware could be the antidote to screen overload. Read more.

Brian Pinkard, co-founder and CTO of Aquagga

• Brian Pinkard went from “flipping rocks” on trail crews in the Colorado Rockies to engineering a solution to one of the most stubborn pollution problems we face: “forever chemicals.” Now, at Tacoma, Wash.-based startup Aquagga, he’s using advanced chemistry to destroy PFAS contamination at its source. From hazardous-waste research to modular PFAS-destruction systems that have already been tested in Alaska, firefighting-foam cleanup, and municipal wastewater projects, Pinkard and his team are proving that impact-focused engineers can tackle environmental problems others call unsolvable. Read more.

Jeff Thornburg, co-founder and CEO of Portal Space Systems

• Jeff Thornburg is pushing the boundaries of what satellites can do by building a spacecraft that literally rides on sunlight. Through its flagship design, Supernova, Portal Space Systems plans to use solar-thermal propulsion to give future spacecraft dramatic, “science fiction”-style maneuverability: rapid orbital shifts, long mission lifetimes, and flexibility for both defense and commercial missions. Backed by a $17.5 million seed round and building out a large manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash., Portal is transforming from startup vision to production-ready aerospace player — and Thornburg’s journey from SpaceX and Project Kuiper alum to leading a next-gen space venture shows just how far ambition and real engineering can take you. Read more.

Kiana Ehsani, co-founder and CEO of Vercept

• Kiana Ehsani is building AI platforms at Seattle-based Vercept not just to optimize workflows, but to give people back their time to live. With Vercept’s flagship tool Vy, her team has created a system that “sees” computer screens like a human, records workflows once, and then lets users automate tasks with a natural-language command. That means no more juggling dozens of apps, remembering shortcuts, or writing code — and more freedom to hike trails, ski mountains, or simply step away from the screen like Ehsani herself does when she’s out in nature. Read more.

Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky

• Jay Graber is steering Bluesky not as a traditional social-network boss, but as a “pragmatic idealist” building a decentralized digital world that puts power back in users’ hands. Instead of locking content and social graphs behind proprietary walls, Bluesky is built on the open AT Protocol — meaning people can carry their posts, followers, and identity across platforms, even if the original app disappears. Graber envisions Bluesky as less a product and more a living “collective organism,” one that could become the foundation for a more open, flexible social internet. Read more.

Tracking down a far-flung team for a 40-year reunion isn’t easy. But the people who worked on Windows 1.0 got some help from their younger selves: a mischievous Easter egg they hid long ago in the software that would become the foundation of the world’s dominant PC platform.

Back in the mid-1980s, before the product launched, they secretly inserted credits in the code, listing their names, to be revealed through a specific combination of keystrokes. 

As the story goes, Bill Gates inadvertently found the list by slamming his fists on the keyboard in frustration over the system’s sluggishness, a discovery that only made things worse. The fix: make the sequence more obscure. It worked. The credits went unnoticed by the public until 2022, when a researcher who was reverse-engineering old Windows binaries found them.

So when members of the Windows 1.0 team decided to hold a 40th anniversary reunion this year, that roster became their starting point. It was a time capsule that doubled as a guest list.

A core group from that original Windows team reunited over dinner at Steve Ballmer’s offices in Bellevue on Tuesday evening — trading memories, correcting the historical record, and marveling at what they accomplished back then under nearly impossible circumstances.

“Today, developers have all these tools, drag and drop,” said Rao Remala, an early Windows developer, adding that he would challenge anyone today to build a functioning PC operating environment under the 64K segment limits and other technical constraints of the era.

“Have you tried it in ChatGPT?” Ballmer joked from across the room. 

This year has been filled with commemorative milestones for the tech giant, from Microsoft’s 50th to Excel’s 40th to the 30th anniversary of the company’s internet pivot. But this one is different. It’s a glimpse into one of Microsoft’s scrappiest projects, from a moment in its history when key resources — including budget and computing power — were far more scarce.

Microsoft’s landmark platform

Windows 1.0, which shipped on a set of 5.25-inch floppy disks, was technically considered an operating environment, not an operating system, because it ran on MS-DOS 2.0.

Microsoft announced that it was developing Windows in November 1983. The release was delayed as the team worked through leadership turnover, technical challenges, and user-interface debates (i.e., tiled vs. overlapping windows), giving rise to industry accusations of peddling “vaporware.” Windows 1.0 finally debuted on Nov. 20, 1985.

By the time Windows launched, Apple’s Macintosh had set the standard with its elegant interface (at least by 1980s standards), and other DOS-based alternatives were also on the market. Critics favored the Mac’s polish, but Microsoft bet on broad PC compatibility, and that approach ultimately paid off.

Microsoft would later get sidetracked temporarily by its ill-fated OS/2 partnership with IBM, before Windows 3.1 became a breakout hit and Windows 95 set the global standard.

But none of it would have been possible without Windows 1.0. The intense, multi-year project was the foundation for the platform that ultimately turned Microsoft into one of the world’s most valuable companies, launching careers that would reshape the tech industry.

For Ballmer, who was tapped to get Windows 1.0 across the finish line long before he became Microsoft’s CEO, the 40-year reunion stirred up old memories and emotions. 

“Of all the things I worked on at Microsoft, in a way, I have the most pride about this project,” he told the group, explaining that he truly felt part of the team.

Figuring things out on the fly

As the night went on, the stories came out, some of them for the first time.

Working out of Microsoft’s Bellevue offices, before the company moved to Redmond, the team was largely in their 20s and even their teens in some cases. Ballmer, in his late 20s at the time, was one of the older people in the office. That helps to explain the culture at the time. 

“Work and social life — there was no difference. It all sort of blended together,” said Scott Ludwig, who worked on the Windows 1.0 window manager, the core system that handled windows, input, events, menus, and dialog boxes.

In many cases back then, they were figuring things out on the fly. For example, when Lin Shaw started in August 1984, months before the original ship date, not a single printer driver existed. She built the banding architecture — a way of imaging one strip of a page at a time to work within memory constraints — that would last through Windows 95.

She routinely stayed up all night and considered it the best job in the world. “It was just like college,” she told the group during the reunion dinner, “except I got paid really well.”

Gates got involved, at times, down to the smallest details. Mark Taylor, who wrote the calculator and other early Windows apps, recalled Gates asking him to remove a timer delay in the Reversi game — not to make it faster, but to make Windows look faster. Years later, chips got so fast that the move flashed by too quickly to see, turning the fix into a bug.

Joe King, who worked on the Windows Control Panel, had an office across the hall from Ballmer with remarkably thin walls. He watched a parade of people come for their “SteveB meeting.” The pattern was always the same: quiet conversation at first, then Ballmer would start pacing, getting louder, gesturing emphatically, and reaching a crescendo before it was over.

“The door would open, a guy would sheepishly walk out, and Steve would greet the next person with full energy and enthusiasm,” King recalled. “I would see that all day long.”

Tandy Trower reminisced about joining the team in 1985 despite being warned that it was a dead end by another product manager, Rob Glaser, later of RealNetworks fame. 

“I came to Microsoft with this vision of bringing software to the people,” Trower said, explaining that Ballmer pitched the Windows project to him as a way of accomplishing that goal. 

He took the job, only to discover the head development manager was already gone. Ballmer offered reassurances that the product was “virtually done.” It wasn’t. 

When Trower suggested changes — overlapping windows, proportional fonts — he got the same response: “You want to ship this year?” The answer was yes. Trower ended up working on Windows through Windows 95, part of a Microsoft career that ultimately spanned 28 years.

Marlin Eller, a programmer and musician, was interested in building a music notation editor. At the end of his first year, Gates asked what he wanted to work on. Eller pitched his idea. Gates engaged enthusiastically, then asked: “How big is the market?” Eller realized it was very small.

Gates had another idea. For music notation, Eller would need to build a graphics package — lines, ovals, curves, etc. An operating system needed that foundational technology to support spreadsheets and charts. And that’s how Eller ended up working on Windows. 

“The thing the world does not know,” Eller joked before the dinner, “is that Windows was written so I could do music notation. All those other people were working for me.”

Pulling pranks and checking facts

And then there were the pranks. A month or two before Windows 1.0 shipped, for example, developer Mark Cliggett decided to have some fun. He wrote a program that gradually turned off bits on a computer screen, and installed it on Ballmer’s machine when he wasn’t there.

“Multiple bad decisions right there,” Cliggett acknowledged: putting malware on a colleague’s computer, giving it to the future CEO, and missing the irony given the security challenges that would consume the industry years later. Marlin Eller wasted an hour debugging the problem before realizing what had happened. Ballmer, to his credit, didn’t hold a grudge.

GeekWire was invited to cover the Windows 1.0 reunion and document all this history. To prepare, I pulled together a 16-page report using Google’s NotebookLM to mine for information about Windows 1.0 in a variety of historical documents, books, and articles.

After I mentioned this to Ballmer, he suggested I open the evening by reading some colorful anecdotes from the research. It turned into an impromptu fact-checking exercise. 

Did Ballmer really call a meeting at 9 a.m. on Easter Sunday 1985 and take down the names of anyone who didn’t show? Yes, he called the meeting. No, he didn’t take names. “I wouldn’t call it exactly a loyalty test,” Ballmer explained, saying it was more about setting a tone. 

Did the team really blow off steam by making bombs and rockets with sugar and saltpeter, drawing police to the building when a security guard smelled explosives? Actually, that happened when making a later Windows version, according to someone who was there. The security guard joined them to blow up traffic cones in the parking garage. The police came later, when they were hiding in the library. (The details are a little fuzzy, but you get the idea.)

And finally, turning to a canonical story about the Windows 1.0 project: was the pivotal 1983 Comdex demo really just a videotape flashing graphics on the screen — classic smoke and mirrors to freeze the market? No. “This was real code,” Remala insisted. 

“It was a little more smoky than not,” Ballmer added, “but it was all real code.”

Some notable former members of the Windows 1.0 team were missing from the reunion, including the famously hard-to-reach Gabe Newell, who went on to co-found Valve and build Steam into the dominant PC gaming platform.

Scott McGregor, the lead development manager recruited from Xerox PARC, left before Windows 1.0 shipped. McGregor later co-authored the X11 windowing system at DEC and served as CEO of Broadcom.

Other members of the Windows 1.0 team went on to remarkably varied careers. 

For example, user interface developer Neil Konzen worked at Ferrari in Italy and pioneered Formula One telemetry. Ed Mills, who worked on fonts, runs a movement therapy practice in Bellevue and is involved in a nonprofit that operates a roller-skating rink in Issaquah.

Cliggett became a long-distance running coach. Eller (who went on to co-author the book Barbarians Led by Bill Gates) teaches computer science. Trower founded a robotics company and continues to work in the field. Taylor is a Seattle public school teacher.

King still introduces himself in the Seattle tech scene by saying he goes back to Windows 1.0 — sometimes prompting the response: “There was a 1.0?” Yes, there sure was.

For Ballmer, the Windows 1.0 experience led to a management technique he still uses today. On his first day as development manager, he repeated to the team what he’d been told was the schedule for different aspects of the project. He heard laughter in response.

He now calls this the “snicker test” — repeat back what you’ve heard from a project’s leaders, and see how the room reacts. If they laugh, you know you’re not getting the true story.

But the real legacy of Windows is much bigger, he told the group this week. If it had shipped two or three years later, Windows wouldn’t have been a relevant product, he said. The key, he explained, was figuring out how to ship “enough of the right stuff at the right time.”

“You did, and it’s nothing short of amazing,” Ballmer said. “It did change the world.”

Alex Konrad / Upstarts Media:
Worktrace AI, founded by ex-OpenAI product lead Angela Jiang and researcher Deepak Vasisht, launches with a $9.3M seed, and unveils a workflow automation agent  —  Worktrace AI founders Angela Jiang and Deepak Vasisht are launching a workflow automation agent backed by $9M from Conviction, 8VC, OpenAI and prominent alumni.

Maxwell Zeff / Wired:
Cursor launches Visual Editor, a vibe-coding product for designers that integrates professional design controls with natural language editing via Cursor's agent  —  The 300-person startup hopes bringing designers aboard will give it an edge in an increasingly competitive AI software market.

Carlos Garcia / Fortune:
Berlin-based LI.FI, which provides businesses with price comparisons of crypto exchange rates and bridging fees, raised $29M, taking its total funding to ~$52M  —  When businesses decide to engage with crypto, they quickly discover the landscape is fragmented across numerous blockchains.

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
AT&T launches Connected Life, a smart home security system with hardware from Google and Abode, designed to keep working during power or internet outages  —  Connected Life combines Nest and Abode devices with AT&T cellular backup to stay online during outages.

Haas shared his views on the future of factory jobs in the age of agentic AI and robotics during the recent Brainstorm AI live event hosted by Fortune in San Francisco. The Arm executive is confident that human-shaped robots, powered by advanced AI systems, will take over most factory jobs...

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If you’ve been waiting for a proper gaming laptop that can actually push high frame rates without absolutely destroying your budget, this is the kind of deal worth a closer look. The Asus ROG Strix G16 packs an AMD Ryzen 9 HX processor, RTX 5070 Ti graphics, a 16-inch 165Hz FHD display, 16GB of RAM, […]

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Here are seven fitness and audio gifts from HUAWEI, to please the health or sport lover in your life.

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Whether you're interviewing for an Excel-related job or teaching a beginner, using the right terminology is crucial. Above all else, knowing the difference between a range and an array is the key to understanding how Excel processes data, giving you better insight into modern dynamic functions.

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