Modern Hydrogen — a clean energy startup with technology that at one time seemed to delight Bill Gates and attracted his investment — has now laid off most of its employees and left contractors and vendors anxious about unpaid invoices.

The Seattle-area company has not publicly offered an explanation for the downsizing or said how many workers were impacted. In a recent email to business partners, officials referenced recent funding changes and said it was undergoing a “broader restructuring effort.”

Modern Hydrogen raised $125 million since launching a decade ago. It developed a device for cracking natural gas molecules, producing hydrogen as a climate friendly fuel and a material known as solid carbon that has a variety of industrial uses, including as a key ingredient in asphalt.

Gates explored that application during a visit to Modern Hydrogen last year. The Microsoft co-founder grabbed a wheelbarrow and shovel to fill a parking lot pothole with the carbon-trapping asphalt.

The layoffs hit as the company was preparing to finish its first commercial unit for a customer in Texas and had performed two successful pilot projects with utilities in Portland, Ore., and Miami.

In January, Modern Hydrogen announced a memorandum of understanding with Puget Sound Energy, a major Seattle-area utility, to collaborate in identifying industrial customers interested in the clean hydrogen technology. That was expected to include steel and cement makers and pulp-and-paper manufacturers that use processes requiring ultra-high temperatures that could be met by hydrogen.

Given that the company had seemingly solved the new technology’s technical hurdles and was building commercial momentum, employees and business partners were surprised by the layoffs.

“A lot of folks were rooting for us,” Michael Jung, Modern Hydrogen’s former government affairs and public policy lead, told GeekWire. “I think we would have solved some key problems in the energy transition.”

On Oct. 30, Amir Moftakhar, Modern Hydrogen’s chief financial officer, sent an email to some of its subcontractors and vendors disclosing the change of course.

“We wanted to inform you that, due to recent changes in our funding situation and a significant reduction in company operations, we must terminate our engagement with you effective 10/30/2025,” stated the email, which was shared with GeekWire by one of its recipients.

“This decision is part of a broader restructuring effort which is being developed and does not reflect on your work,” Moftakhar continued. “We want to sincerely thank you for the professionalism, dedication, and quality you’ve shown throughout our collaboration and for your understanding.”

It is unclear if the company is closing entirely, what will happen with the machinery and technology, and if some component of the effort will continue in a different form.

GeekWire reached out to Modern Hydrogen CEO Tony Pan for an official comment and will update the story if he responds. We contacted a Gates’ representative for a comment as well.

One subcontractor, who asked not to be named, said that until the email went out, “things were cooking along” in their collaboration with Modern Hydrogen. Now the company is anxious about if and when it will get paid for outstanding invoices that total tens of thousands of dollars.

Modern Hydrogen got its start in 2015 at Intellectual Ventures, an innovation hub created by former Microsoft researcher Nathan Myhrvold with backing from Gates. The startup, which was originally called Modern Electron, initially focused on devices that paired with home furnaces and hot water tanks to capture the appliances’ wasted heat and turn it into electricity.

In 2023 it pivoted to focus on hydrogen and changed its name. The company’s most recent round was $25 million raised a year ago. It had approximately 80 employees at the time, according to an analysis of LinkedIn data. Modern Hydrogen co-founder and former CTO Max Mankin left the company in January.

Gates has in the past been an enthusiastic supporter of hydrogen fuel. In June 2022, he posted a Gates Notes touting the so-called “Swiss Army knife” of clean energy given its versatile applications. He was a prominent investor in the company, whose other backers included NextEra Energy, one of the world’s largest utilities; Miura; National Grid Partners; IRONGREY; Starlight Ventures; Valo Ventures and Metaplanet.

Hydrogen saw a surge of interest during the Biden administration, which created hydrogen hubs around the U.S. to bolster the technology. That support has been curtailed under the Trump administration, which canceled funding for hubs in the Pacific Northwest and California, while the remaining five hubs appear to be at risk of losing support.

And on Oct. 28, Gates posted a memo on his personal blog that dampened his earlier excitement around climate efforts.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote. “People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”

Editor’s note: Information added Dec. 4 to provide detail on the hydrogen hubs.

The battery recycling and cathode production company, founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, has started using recycled battery materials to create energy storage solutions for AI data centers.

HP Inc. said that it will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees in favor of AI deployments, claiming it will help save $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of its fiscal 2028.

HP expects to complete the layoffs by the end of that fiscal year. The reductions will largely hit product development, internal operations, and customer support, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during an earnings call on Tuesday.

Using AI, HP will “accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and boost productivity,” Lores said.

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HP will cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2028 as it doubles down on AI, betting automation and AI PCs can boost productivity despite chip cost headwinds.

The post HP Announces Up to 6,000 Layoffs in Massive AI Restructuring Plan appeared first on TechRepublic.

HP will cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2028 as it doubles down on AI, betting automation and AI PCs can boost productivity despite chip cost headwinds.

The post HP Announces Up to 6,000 Layoffs in Massive AI Restructuring Plan appeared first on TechRepublic.

Jonathan Duncan was laid off from Microsoft in May after more than two decades at the tech giant. Since then, he’s applied to roughly 200 jobs. The response has been silence.

“Not a squeak,” Duncan told GeekWire. He’s tried adapting resumes for each role, subscribing to job alerts, networking with peers, and internal referrals. Nothing has worked.

He’s not alone. Experienced tech professionals across the industry are learning they’re not immune to widespread layoffs — and that finding a new job isn’t as easy as it used to be.

For years, tech workers were told there was a talent shortage. Recruiters chased them. But in 2025, leaders who built their whole careers on growing headcount and mastering organizational processes are getting “mowed down right now in stunning numbers,” said Laura Close, CEO of Close Cohen, a job search and executive coaching firm.

Close said some “super high-value professionals” she works with are taking 12-to-18 months to find a new job.

“The golden age of the quick turnaround is over,” she said.

And in an industry that “equates youth with innovation and stamina,” Close said longtime workers are finding that their previous success metrics are no longer valued — decades of expertise have become liabilities, not assets.

“What we’re seeing right now is ageism on steroids,” Close said. She noted that in tech, age-related bias often begins as early as 40 — earlier than many assume.

A cooling market

Allison Shrivastava, an economist with Indeed, said it’s difficult for anyone trying to get hired — from new college grads to more veteran workers.

“If you’ve been trying to get a job or change jobs in a tech-related field, you’re probably really, really struggling,” she said.

While unemployment broadly remains low, the amount of time that people remain unemployed is increasing, Shrivastava said.

More than 114,000 tech workers have been laid off this year so far, compared to nearly 153,000 workers in 2024 and nearly 265,000 in 2023, according to Layoffs.fyi. The pace has slowed from 2023’s peak, but the cuts continue.

Seattle-area tech giants Microsoft and Amazon have announced major workforce reductions in 2025. Both companies are investing heavily in AI infrastructure while emphasizing efficiency.

As a senior manager at Microsoft, Duncan said budgets were recently slashed across the board — training, travel, morale-building. When people left, they weren’t replaced. Every quarter brought new demands to return unspent funds.

He also noticed what he calls “underleveling” — senior director roles being posted at lower levels than before, manager positions offered at what used to be individual contributor levels.

“I think the days of high-paying tech jobs are drying up,” he said.

Shrivastava said the current layoffs are likely a “shedding” from a massive over-hire during the post-pandemic tech boom, not necessarily an AI restructuring story.

But at the same time, as The Wall Street Journal reported, many companies are betting that AI can help them grow — without growing headcount.

‘Who am I?‘

For many of these workers, the timing couldn’t be worse with aging parents, kids heading to college, and retirement on the horizon.

“I consider this the most expensive time of my life,” Duncan said. His eldest son is a sophomore in college, and his youngest starts next fall. He’s also pricing out family plans for insurance for the first time.

And then there’s the stock compensation. When Duncan was laid off, he had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of unvested Microsoft shares.

“That was the kids’ college funds,” he said.

Nancy Poznoff, an executive coach at Close Cohen, said financial pressure is compounding an identity crisis for many laid-off executives.

“They’ve been high performers their whole career,” Poznoff said. “They’ve followed all the rules. They’ve done what they were supposed to do. And now they’re suddenly having this identity crisis on top of it, because a lot of them have been at their company for so long, they have this fear around, ‘How do I operate when I’m not at Amazon?’ Like, ‘Who am I?'”

“So you’ve got this financial pressure, and then you’ve got this ego bomb,” she added. “It’s a really tough time.”

Duncan still talks to his former teammates at Microsoft. The stress inside, he says, is brutal. He’s not sure he’d want to go back — even if he could.

Angus Norton, a former Microsoft and Amazon exec, recently wrote about the toll of perpetual layoffs on those who remain.

“It creates a hierarchy of fear. Everyone becomes a potential target. Everyone knows someone who was let go despite stellar performance,” he wrote. “The message is clear: no one is safe.”

The job market is grim, but experts disagree on whether AI is the culprit or the scapegoat.

Verizon is laying off approximately 165 employees in Washington state, including analysts, engineers and retail workers.

The layoffs were disclosed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed with the state’s Employment Security Department. The jobs are slated to end Jan. 23.

“Verizon is consolidating and restructuring its operations to maximize the utilization of company facilities and resources,” Eboni Gregoire, Verizon’s director of HR operations, said in a WARN letter.

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that New York-based Verizon was planning to cut 15,000 workers, primarily through layoffs. That includes shifting about 200 of its stores into franchised outlets, which removes employees from the telecom’s payroll.

The WARN letter states that five facilities — in Redmond, Renton, Woodinville, Spokane and Bellingham are “being divested to an agent” and will no longer be operated by Verizon. It was unclear if the sites would close or become a franchise.

Approximately 22 of the workers being laid off are based at a corporate office in Bellevue, Wash., that Verizon took over from rival T-Mobile last year. T-Mobile, headquartered in Bellevue, sublet 32,682 square feet of space to Verizon at 90 North, a building located at 3255 160th Ave. SE., the Puget Sound Business Journal previously reported.

The layoffs come as Verizon lost 7,000 phone subscribers in the most recent quarter, while AT&T and T-Mobile have been adding customers, WSJ reported. On Thursday, T-Mobile announced a “Switching Made Easy” initiative launching next month to help Verizon and AT&T customers switch to T-Mobile in as little as 15 minutes.

Editor’s note: The number of workers impacted by the layoffs was off by three in the original story and was corrected Nov. 25.

Battelle Memorial Institute, the government contractor operating Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), is laying off 68 workers based primarily in Washington state.

The layoffs were disclosed in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed with the state’s Employment Security Department. The jobs are slated to end between Nov. 18 and Dec. 1.

In the WARN letter, Battelle stated that “due to unforeseen business circumstances” the company was not able to provide 60-days notices to impacted workers.

“As a result of funding uncertainties and evolving federal mission priorities, Battelle made great effort to avoid layoffs by reassigning work, reducing work hours and retaining staff on furlough status in the hope that additional funding would be realized,” the letter explained. “However, Battelle determined it is necessary to restructure our workforce and reduce staff in both research and operations.”

Forty-two of the roles are based at PNNL’s main campus in Richland, Wash.; three are located in Seattle; three in Oregon; and 20 are remote.

PNNL is a 60-year-old institution managed by the U.S. Department of Energy and last year employed roughly 6,400 people. The labs perform basic research in areas including energy, chemistry, data analytics and other science and technology fields.

“Battelle and PNNL are grateful for the contributions of each impacted employee and remain committed to delivering on vital missions in science, energy, and national security,” said PNNL spokesperson Dawn Zimmerman, via email.

Battelle told workers this summer that job reductions were coming given uncertainty in the federal budget, the Tri-City Herald reported. In September the company laid off an undisclosed number of PNNL employees and it has reduced medical benefits for retires, according to the Herald.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., reported in February that “a handful” of PNNL employees were let go in the Trump administration’s initial wave of government layoffs. The cuts were driven by efforts including the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was previously led by Elon Musk, and executive orders eliminating work associated with climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion.

According to the WARN filing, affected workers in the latest cuts held titles including national security specialist; software, mechanical, nuclear or systems engineer; cyber security researcher; data scientist; project manager; administrative coordinator and other roles.

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.

From humanoids to hyper-TPUs, the week's biggest headlines prove automation is moving faster than management manuals can keep up.

The post Batteries, Bots, and Broken Neck Bolts: The Best of Daily Tech Insider (Nov. 10–14) appeared first on TechRepublic.

From humanoids to hyper-TPUs, the week's biggest headlines prove automation is moving faster than management manuals can keep up.

The post Batteries, Bots, and Broken Neck Bolts: The Best of Daily Tech Insider (Nov. 10–14) appeared first on TechRepublic.

Seattle-based electric-bike maker Rad Power Bikes, which grew into the leading e-bike seller in North America during the pandemic, is fighting for survival as it faces “significant financial challenges,” the company confirmed on Monday.

Rad filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the Washington state Employment Security Department on Friday. A company spokesperson told GeekWire the filing was part of “advance written notice of a potential cessation of operations that could occur as early as January 2026.”

The closure would spell the end of the company and mark a stunning collapse for Rad Power Bikes, which was once Seattle’s highest-profile consumer hardware startup, riding pandemic-era e-bike demand to unicorn status.

According to the WARN filing, a shutdown would impact 64 jobs at Rad’s headquarters location in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Affected positions include the company’s CEO, CFO, multiple director-level roles, customer service reps, and bike mechanics. Rad also operates retail locations in nine cities in the U.S. and Canada.

“No final decisions have been made, and these notices are precautionary,” the Rad spokesperson said. “Rad’s leadership is actively pursuing all viable options to keep the company operating.”

Those options include funding to keep the company moving forward or an acquisition of Rad, which has raised more than $329 million to date. One “very promising deal” was close to completion and appeared likely to close, but did not “come to fruition.”

In a letter to employees (below), the company said that it “did not anticipate the sudden drop in consumer demand from Covid-era peaks” and that in addition it was dealing with challenges “in the form of tariffs and the macroeconomic landscape.”

According to the letter, a collective mantra has emerged at the company: “Save Rad.” For years, the slogan of choice has been “Ride Rad.”

The company is still selling bikes on its website and promoting deals for Black Friday.

The filing with the state is in compliance with Washington’s Mini-WARN Act, which went into effect July 27, and “requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees in the state to provide 60 days’ advance written notice for mass layoffs or business closures impacting 50 or more employees.”

Rad was conceived in 2007 by co-founders Mike Radenbaugh and Ty Collins, who met as students at Humboldt State University in Northern California and built their first e-bike together. After years of doing custom conversions of traditional bikes to electric, they launched their company as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2015.

Rad saw big demand amid the pandemic as more people bought e-bikes. Its sales and workforce surged and it raised more than $300 million from investors in 2021. The company was valued at $1.65 billion that year, according to PitchBook, making it one of a handful of “unicorn” startups in the Seattle region at the time.

Rad operates out of a headquarters and flagship retail location on NW 52nd Street in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

The company is currently led by CEO Kathi Lentzsch, who previously ran Bartell Drugs as CEO before the company sold to Rite-Aid in 2020. She also led companies including Gump’s and Elephant Pharmacy, and held exec roles at Enesco, Pottery Barn and World Market.

Lentzsch replaced Phil Molyneux, the former Sony president who stepped down earlier this year after leading Rad for more than two years.

Seattle entrepreneurs Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon, who helped grow online retail giants Blue Nile and Zulily, invested in Rad in 2019.

The company raised $25 million in 2020, led by Vulcan Capital and Durable Capital Partners LP, and by May of that year as the pandemic took hold, Rad was fielding a 297% increase in demand due to rapid changes in consumer transportation and exercise habits.

As the global electric bike market exploded, Rad took on another $150 million in 2021 from big-name investors such as Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Fidelity Management & Research Company, The Rise Fund, the global impact investing platform managed by TPG, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.

Later that year, as ridership surged, Rad raised another $154 million.

In April 2022, the company began a series a layoffs, slashing 100 jobs from its 725-person workforce as part of what it described as a restructuring. Another 63 employees were cut in July, and more followed in December.

Radenbaugh stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Molyneux, who was hired as president and COO earlier in 2022. Collins had resigned in 2021.

Layoffs continued into 2023 and 2024, and the company stopped selling its bikes to customers in the United Kingdom and European Union.

Rad’s struggles come amid a broader cooling of the e-bike market. Europe’s VanMoof filed for bankruptcy in 2023, while Belgium-based Cowboy and other rivals have struggled to find sustainable footing after pandemic-era highs. Rising costs, tariffs and other factors have forced several electric-bike makers to downsize or seek buyers.

Copy of the letter the company sent to Rad Power Bikes employees: 

As you are aware, Rad Power Bikes Inc. (“Rad”) has faced economic challenges following the pandemic impacts. Like other companies in the traditional and e-bike industry, Rad did not anticipate the sudden drop in consumer demand from Covid-era peaks. Rad has made significant progress in selling down the substantial excess inventory of finished goods built up during Covid and has been working to minimize its liabilities for raw materials purchased during or shortly after Covid. However, Rad continues to face significant financial challenges, including in the form of tariffs and the macroeconomic landscape.  

For the past several months, executive leadership has explored different ways to continue Rad’s business, including strategic partnerships with other companies that could acquire the company or provide funding so the company could keep moving forward. Until recently, one such option seemed very promising and appeared to be likely to close. Unfortunately, that did not come to fruition. Leadership is still working to find other viable options to keep the Rad brand alive. The collective mantra has been and will continue to be, “Save Rad.” 

Rad is nothing without its people and wants to ensure that all employees are taken care of and provided for to the fullest extent feasible. Executive leaders are hopeful that a viable solution will be found to ensure that Rad team members remain gainfully employed for the foreseeable future. However, to be fully transparent, despite our collective efforts, it is possible that this may not happen, and Rad may be forced to cease operations. In the event that occurs, Rad is providing this notice to you to satisfy any obligation that may exist under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and the State of Washington’s “mini-WARN” Act (collectively “the WARN Acts”). While Rad hopes this notice is ultimately unnecessary and does not concede that the WARN Acts apply or that notice is required, the company nonetheless wishes to provide as much notice of the potential closure as possible.

To be clear, Rad’s leaders are still fighting to find ways to continue and emphasize that the cessation of Rad’s operations is not a foregone conclusion. What we do now as a team can impact the mission to Save Rad. Rad needs every team member to keep providing excellent service to keep fighting. 

In the event the company is forced to close, Rad would be required to cease operations on January 9, 2026 or within 14 days thereafter.  In that case, Rad expects that any cessation of operations will affect all locations and departments, will be permanent in nature, and that all employees will be terminated effective January 9, 2026.  The cessation of Rad’s operations would not be the result of relocation or contracting out the company’s operations or the affected employees’ positions.  The affected Washington state employees (listed below) are not represented by any union and there are no bumping rights applicable to the affected employees.

Pursuant to the WARN Acts, this notice is applicable only to those employees assigned to the Seattle office located at 1121 NW 52^nd Street, Seattle, WA 98107, or remote employees reporting to the Seattle office. However, Rad has elected to notify all employees, regardless of location, and provide the same information regarding Rad’s financial situation and potential next steps. All other locations employ less than 50 individuals and are not subject to the WARN Acts’ formal notice requirements.

Rad’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification:

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IBM is cutting thousands of jobs as it pivots toward AI and software. The tech giant’s restructuring highlights a major shift in Big Tech’s new priorities.

The post IBM Confirms Layoffs Impacting Up to 5,000 Workers as It Shifts Focus to AI appeared first on TechRepublic.

Editor’s note: This column was written by Robert Trumbull, a Seattle-based author who writes about the ethics of tech.

It’s clear that Amazon and Microsoft are operating from the same playbook. 

While surely a number of factors are at play here for both, it’s equally clear their recent layoffs are, at least in part, a direct consequence of their embrace of AI. 

The layoffs this year were, Microsoft ultimately acknowledged, intimately related to its “capital investments” in this area. Amazon, for its part, has claimed its layoffs are not AI-driven yet, but it is reportedly making longer-term strategic decisions regarding staffing with the benefits of “advanced technology” in mind. 

The current workforce reductions then appear to presage the ways in which Microsoft’s own AI products and its stake in OpenAI, taken together with Amazon’s adoption of AI and robotics, will quite simply enable employers across industries to employ and pay fewer human workers.

Thus, the question of Big Tech’s role in a broader displacement of workers due to the rise of AI is now coming up perhaps even earlier than we anticipated. 

The question before us, then, is what exactly ought we to expect of these companies in this transition? What ought we to ask of them in this process, in terms of what would be right in their relationship to their community — here at home in the Seattle area specifically — insofar as it’s this same community that enabled them to become what they are in the first place?

Now, even apart from their corporate philanthropy activities, the contributions Microsoft and Amazon have made to the region up to now are no doubt considerable. As they have grown and flourished, so too have wages earned by employees made their way into innumerable schools, community organizations, and charities in the Seattle area, enabling them to thrive. 

And it’s not just wages earned we ought to factor in here. As local people, culture, and compensation expert Matt Shaw of Headwall Solutions pointed out to me recently, Microsoft and Amazon’s success has also benefited many in our region who hold shares in the companies (a large number of which, naturally, would have been employees at some point). Stock market success for both, then, has equally contributed to securing admirable outcomes in the Seattle area. 

Following this general line of thinking, one might be tempted to simply draw the conclusion that they are already contributing everything they ought to. By doing what’s best for business even when that involves painful workforce reductions, so the logic would go, it is actually serving many, many people in the larger web of entities connected to it. 

This would be the essentially libertarian view one sees being advanced in discussions in Silicon Valley at the moment (that is, when the discussions aren’t just completely off the rails and about the Antichrist). On this view, everything works out best when a company acts completely independently in a free market. And to be sure, it would not be hard to find philosophical justifications for this view. 

To take just one, particularly salient and well-known example, the American philosopher Robert Nozick offers an exposition of this position by developing what he calls an “entitlement theory.” Writing in the 70’s, Nozick argued that the only principle of economic justice that truly respects freedom is one in which “whoever makes something, having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process…is entitled to it.” It follows, then, that they are equally entitled in turn to whatever that something is worth. 

The example he uses to illustrate this principle is that of a famous basketball player: if one player gets paid significantly more than their teammates because they are of much higher value, well then that is just what they are entitled to by virtue of their acquired skill, popularity, and so on. Something like a teamwide, socialist distribution of generated wealth would unnaturally trample on the star player’s entitlements. And while Nozick is talking about an individual’s earnings, it’s not much of a leap to extend this principle to a conglomeration of individuals organized in a business, which we call a corporation.

This view is the one, by all apparent evidence, Amazon embraces. After the city of Seattle tried to implement new taxes on large employers meeting a certain payroll threshold, Amazon later moved employees to the Eastside and designated Bellevue as part of its “Puget Sound HQ.” 

But up until now, Microsoft has cultivated a slightly different position. Consider its “Microsoft Elevate Washington” initiative aimed at providing free access to AI tools and training to public schools and community and technical colleges. The program stems, according to Microsoft President Brad Smith, from a commitment to the company’s home base: “A big part of what we’re doing,” he has said, “is investing in our home.” This commitment to investing locally represents a tacit acknowledgement from Microsoft of just how much external entities and communities support and facilitate corporate success.

But at a moment when Microsoft is quite possibly more profitable than it has ever been, it may actually be quite fair to ask for, even to expect, more — the view Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell recently endorsed. 

Notably, as the state has taken measures to increase taxes, Microsoft, through Smith himself, has pushed back, threatening between the lines to move elsewhere if that can decrease its tax burden. But it’s not just through Smith that Microsoft is fighting increased contributions to state coffers — it also donated more than $1 million to a political action committee aimed at killing precisely such measures. This push represents a marked departure from Microsoft’s general ethos under Bill Gates, who advocated for increased taxes for the wealthiest Washingtonians and businesses. 

Thus, we have in hand some sense of what more Microsoft and Amazon could do (particularly as it relates to payroll and wealth taxes) and the knowledge that there is at least some precedent for a serious willingness to pitch in even more. This is the view that, by most measures, the majority of Washingtonians hold. 

Viewed from this angle, the “investment” in the region referenced above — which seems to set Microsoft apart — begins to appear in a slightly different light. Because this investment will equally produce a return for Microsoft. Widespread AI education preps the next generation of Microsoft workers in Washington to contribute to the company’s success in precisely the ways it believes will serve it. 

But if we take seriously the contention that the public sphere in the region has, in holding up its end of the “making the region hospitable to tech workers” bargain (most obviously through providing quality public education), enabled Microsoft and Amazon to achieve success over time, then we also ought to take seriously the idea they ought to contribute to broader collective efforts in which the real ROI is just the flourishing of the region and its communities full stop. It deserves serious consideration at a moment when the precise degree to which Washingtonians will continue to share in Big Tech’s success in the region is increasingly unclear.

Philips Ultrasound is laying off 33 employees from its Bothell, Wash., facility, which serves as a hub for the engineering and manufacturing of ultrasound equipment and other healthcare devices.

The cuts were disclosed in a new filing from the Washington Employment Security Department and will take effect Dec. 31.

Production operators, warehouse operators and technicians were affected by the cuts.

The layoff “is part of a limited restructuring of specific Philips Ultrasound activities within an ongoing strategic transition plan that was announced in 2024,” Mario Fante, Philips’ global external relations director told GeekWire via email.  

The Netherlands-based company has around 1,500 employees in the Seattle area, according to LinkedIn.

In a separate incident, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September issued a warning letter to the CEO of Royal Philips citing oversight concerns at the Bothell facility as well as a location in Pennsylvania and another in the Netherlands.

The issues at the Bothell site relate to a lack of documentation regarding the company’s response when ultrasound devices are reported to be defective and either break or perform incorrectly.

“We are not able to determine the adequacy of the proposed corrective actions for your responses for the Bothell and Reedsville facilities. We understand that Philips Ultrasound has revised their complaint procedures and have updated the corresponding complaint records to include additional information and to address the inspectional findings,” states the FDA letter.

The layoffs are “completely unrelated to any regulatory action,” Fante added.

Editor’s note: Story updated to clarify that the FDA warning is unrelated to the reduction in force and to add comment from Fante.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 people in the middle of an AI boom — and is it really a boom at all? We dig into the contradiction at the heart of Seattle’s tech scene, discussing Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s “world’s largest startup” rationale and what it says about the company’s culture and strategy. And we debate whether AI progress represents true transformation or the familiar signs of a tech bubble in the making.

Then we examine the vision of Cascadia high-speed rail — the ambitious plan to connect Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C., by bullet train. Is it the regional infrastructure needed to power the Pacific Northwest’s next chapter, or an expensive dream looking for a purpose?

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop

Related headlines from the week

Amazon layoffs

• Amazon confirms 14,000 job cuts, says push for ‘efficiency gains’ will continue into 2026
• A tale of two Seattles in the age of AI: Harsh realities and new hope for the tech community
• Filing: Amazon cuts more than 2,300 jobs in Washington state as part of broader layoffs
• Amazon layoffs hit software engineers hardest in Washington
• Amazon layoffs reaction: ‘Thought I was a top performer but guess I’m expendable’
• Amazon CEO says massive corporate layoffs were about agility — not AI or cost-cutting

Amazon earnings

• Amazon stock soars 11% after topping Q3 estimates with $180B in revenue, $21B in profits
• Amazon’s Anthropic investment boosts its quarterly profits by $9.5B
• ‘Big Beautiful’ tax benefit: Amazon and other tech giants reap the rewards of new law, for now

Microsoft Azure, earnings and OpenAI

• Microsoft’s Azure reports cloud outage, disrupting global customers including Alaska Airlines
• Microsoft beats expectations, reports nearly $35B in Q1 capital spending amid Azure outage
• Microsoft gets 27% stake in OpenAI, and a $250B Azure commitment

Seattle-Portland-Vancouver

• Slowly but surely, high-speed rail backers believe Cascadia mega-project will become a reality
• Cascadia’s AI paradox: A world-leading opportunity threatened by rising costs and a talent crunch
• The ‘enormous barrier’ that threatens economic growth in the Pacific Northwest
• Beta’s unique electric airplane flies into Seattle to wow state officials and aviation experts

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Inventprise, a Redmond, Wash.–based biotechnology company developing vaccines for infectious diseases, is laying off 76 workers, according to a new filing from the Washington Employment Security Department.

GeekWire has reached out to the company for additional details.

The layoffs impact employees across the company’s Redmond and Woodinville facilities, as well as some remote workers. The first separations are effective Dec. 31.

Job titles affected span a wide range of roles, including manufacturing, quality control, R&D, and technical staff, according to the filing.

The company has nearly 200 employees, according to LinkedIn.

Founded in 2012, Inventprise focuses on addressing global health challenges in low- and middle-income countries. Its pipeline includes lead candidate IVT-PCV-25, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine candidate that is in Phase 2 trials, according to the company’s website.

Inventprise was founded by Dr. Subhash Kapre, who previously worked on vaccine initiatives with the Gates Foundation. The Seattle-based foundation has provided more than $13 million to Inventprise.

Kapre is currently chairman of Inventprise, which is led by CEO Yves Leurquin, a former Takeda exec who joined the company in 2021.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s latest big round of layoffs — about 14,000 corporate jobs — wasn’t triggered by financial strain or artificial intelligence replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble.

Speaking with analysts on Amazon’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered.

“The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven — not right now, at least,” he said. “Really, it’s culture.”

Jassy’s comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people — and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon’s history.

The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon’s total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI.

But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called “the technology transformation happening right now.”

Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in mid-2021, has pushed to reduce management layers and eliminate bureaucracy inside the company. Amazon’s corporate headcount tripled between 2017 and 2022, according to The Information, before the company adopted a more cautious hiring approach.

Bloomberg News reported this week that Jassy has told colleagues parts of the company remain “unwieldy” despite efforts to streamline operations — including significant layoffs in 2023 when Amazon cut 27,000 corporate workers in multiple stages. 

On Thursday’s call, Jassy said Amazon’s rapid growth led to extra layers of management that slowed decision-making.

“When that happens, sometimes without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work and who own most of the two-way door decisions — the ones that should be made quickly and right at the front line,” Jassy said, using a phrase popularized by Bezos to help determine how much thought and planning to put into big and small decisions.

The layoffs, he said, are meant to restore the kind of ownership and agility that defined Amazon’s early years.

“We are committed to operating like the world’s largest startup,” Jassy said, repeating a line he’s used recently.

Given the “transformation” he described happening across the business world, Jassy said it’s more important than ever to be lean, flat, and fast-moving. “That’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

Jassy’s comments came as Amazon reported quarterly revenue of $180.2 billion, up 13% year-over-year, with AWS revenue growth accelerating to 20% — its fastest pace since 2022.

Amazon said it took a $1.8 billion severance-related charge in the quarter related to the layoffs.

Amazon joins other tech giants including Microsoft that have trimmed headcount this year while investing heavily in AI infrastructure.

Related coverage:

• Amazon layoffs hit software engineers hardest in Washington
• Amazon stock soars 11% after topping Q3 estimates with $180B in revenue, $21B in profits

Software development engineers make up the largest group of employees affected by Amazon’s latest round of layoffs in its home state.

GeekWire reported Tuesday on a new filing from the Washington Employment Security Department revealing that the tech giant is laying off 2,303 corporate employees, mostly in Seattle and Bellevue. The cuts are part of broader layoffs announced Tuesday that will impact about 14,000 workers globally.

A detailed list included with the state filing reveals which roles are impacted by the layoffs. More than 600 software development engineering roles are being cut among the 2,303 affected workers in Washington — more than a quarter of total cuts.

The trend mirrors layoffs at Microsoft earlier this year, as companies reassess their engineering needs amid the rise of AI-driven coding tools. Amazon itself recently introduced its own AI coding tool Kiro in July, and has reportedly explored adopting the AI code assistant Cursor for employees.

The layoffs of software engineers reflect a striking shift for an industry that has traditionally relied on coders to help build and maintain the backbone of digital platforms.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet,” Amazon HR chief Beth Galetti wrote in a message to employees Tuesday, saying it’s enabling teams to “innovate much faster than ever before.”

Amazon’s engineering layoffs are part of a broader industry reckoning with AI’s impact on traditional tech roles and white-collar jobs. A Wall Street Journal report this week detailed how the adoption of AI is contributing to a wave of layoffs across the country. Axios published a story Wednesday on a similar topic with the headline: How an AI job apocalypse unfolds.

More than 500 manager-level titles were also heavily affected by Amazon’s layoffs in Washington, according to the filing — aligning with a company-wide push to use the cutbacks to help reduce bureaucracy and operate more efficiently.

Amazon also made reductions in recruiting and HR roles. Other impacted areas include marketing, advertising, and legal.

The largest single site impact is at SEA40, Amazon’s Doppler office building on 7th Avenue in Seattle, where 361 employees are affected, according to the filing.

More than 100 remote employees based in Washington are also being let go.