Amazon is experimenting again. This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we dig into our scoop on Amazon Now, the company’s new ultrafast delivery service. Plus, we recap the GeekWire team’s ride in a Zoox robotaxi on the Las Vegas Strip during Amazon Web Services re:Invent.
In our featured interview from the expo hall, AWS Senior Vice President Colleen Aubrey discusses Amazon’s push into applied AI, why the company sees AI agents as “teammates,” and how her team is rethinking product development in the age of agentic coding.
In a rare move for a streaming service, Fubo announced today that it’s lowering the prices for some of its subscription plans.
Fubo is a sports-focused vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor, or a company that enables people to watch traditional TV channels live over the Internet). Disney closed its acquisition of Fubo in October.
The former headquarters of PayScale — which has relocated to Boston — now houses interactive experiences, including a winter wonderland-themed Elf Bar pop-up this month. (GeekWire Photos / John Cook)
Looking for a dose of festive cheer this holiday season?
You might just find it in an unexpected corner of Seattle, where the spirits of the tech past linger.
The former headquarters of PayScale, the compensation data company that once called the historic Palmer Building in SoDo home, has been completely transformed into a winter wonderland that includes a family-friendly daytime experience called Kringle’s Inventionasium and an adults-only evening Elf Bar pop-up.
It’s an unusual metamorphosis of a fancy high-tech office space, one that received recognition at the 2017 GeekWire Awards as one of the region’s Geekiest Office Spaces. But time moves on, and so has PayScale.
The 22-year-old software company — which in 2019 was valued at $325 million after a private equity infusion — moved its headquarters to Boston in March. The Puget Sound Business Journal reported the news earlier this week.
Now, where software geeks once wrote code and executives debated corporate strategy, elves and Santa’s reign.
It’s all the magical dream of LIT Immersive founders Jason DeLeo and Jen Matthews, two theater geeks with a flair for immersive experiences. They took control of a portion of the former PayScale space about 18 months ago, and since then have created a wide array of themed experiences across the 18,000 square feet of space directly west of Lumen Field.
The transformation from corporate office to immersive playground was made possible by the fact that the tech company had virtually abandoned the space, leaving most of the infrastructure — not to mention TVs, power cords and other gear — intact.
“Almost everything is still here from (PayScale),” DeLeo said. “The microwaves are still the microwaves that they used. Their dishwashers. They had a kegerator, we have the kegerator … it’s all here.”
LIT Immersive founder Jason DeLeo.
This allowed DeLeo and Matthews to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on the buildout of the space. The former PayScale sports bar — a highlight of the former office space — was easily repurposed (which DeLeo and Matthews happily open on game days for fans of the Seahawks and Mariners). The second floor break rooms are now used as a green room for the actors who perform in the various shows.
“We knew that PayScale was here, and that’s what turned us onto the space because it was fully networked,” said DeLeo.
The Elf Bar concept was also a stroke of luck. DeLeo and Matthews had already been cooking up a holiday-themed cocktail bar concept called Elf’d Up this year, when they were approached with a licensing deal from the creators of Elf Bar. Pop-up holiday-themed cocktail bars started gaining momentum about a decade ago, with organizations like Miracle now operating dozens of locations internationally, including four spots in Washington state.
Beyond its festive cocktails, Elf Bar offers a host of activities for 21+ crowd: holiday-themed trivia; karaoke lounge; a snowball fight club; and games. Reservations for three evening time slots are available, and tickets range from $15.50 to $18.50. The Elf Bar is open through Dec. 21, though DeLeo said they may extend the pop-up based on demand.
The day-time, kid-friendly Kringle’s Inventionasium — inspired by a long-running show in Cleveland, Ohio — has been a hit with families and school groups. Cost of that experience ranges from $24 to $63 per guest, with the daytime shows running through December 24.
Next up for DeLeo and Matthews? With the FIFA World Cup coming to Seattle next summer — including six matches across the street at Lumen Field — they are already planning for the next immersive experience or ways to rent the space to a team, corporate sponsor or broadcast company.
DeLeo said they are “praying” that Seattle gets some big-name teams during the World Cup draw today. Their holiday wish may have come true, with the U.S. Men’s National Team slated to play Australia — known as the “socceroos” — on Friday, June 19 at Lumen Field.
The bidding war is over, and Netflix has been declared the winner.
After flirting with Paramount Skydance and Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has decided to sell its streaming and movie studios business to Netflix. If approved, the deal is set to overturn the media landscape and create ripples that will affect Hollywood for years.
$72 billion acquisition
Netflix will pay an equity value of $72 billion, or an approximate total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, for Warner Bros. All of WBD has a $60 billion market value, NBC News notes.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my personal homebrew Steam Machine, a self-built desktop under my TV featuring an AMD Ryzen 7 8700G processor and a Radeon 780M integrated GPU. I wouldn’t recommend making your own version of this build, especially with RAM prices as they currently are, but there are all kinds of inexpensive mini PCs on Amazon with the same GPU, and they’ll all be pretty good at playing the kinds of games that already run well on the less-powerful Steam Deck.
But this kind of hardware is an imperfect proxy for the Steam Machine that Valve plans to launch sometime next year—that box will include a dedicated GPU with 8GB of dedicated video memory, presenting both benefits and possible pitfalls compared to a system with an integrated GPU.
As a last pre-Steam Machine follow-up to our coverage so far, we’ve run tests on several games we test regularly in our GPU reviews to get a sense of how current versions of SteamOS stack up to Windows running on the same hardware. What we’ve found so far is basically the inverse of what we found when comparing handhelds: Windows usually has an edge on SteamOS’s performance, and sometimes that gap is quite large. And SteamOS also exacerbates problems with 8GB GPUs, hitting apparent RAM limits in more games and at lower resolutions compared to Windows.
A newly proposed payroll tax would add new costs for large businesses in Washington state. But Rep. Shaun Scott, a Seattle Democrat sponsoring the bill, argues it would protect the basic services that help companies recruit and retain talent.
“People are looking to the state legislature for leadership on protecting the programs that make our state actually a healthy climate to do business in,” Scott told GeekWire this week.
House Bill 2100, pre-filed this week in Olympia, would create the “Well Washington Fund” and levy a 5% payroll expense tax on “large operating companies” for employee wages above a $125,000 threshold. The bill defines a “large operating company” as one with more than 20 employees and more than $5 million in gross receipts or sales, among other criteria. Employers with total employee wages under $7 million in the prior year would be exempt.
Scott is pitching the bill as a state backstop against federal cuts hitting Medicaid, higher education, housing and other programs. He said it would generate more than $2 billion annually and impact the about 4,300 businesses — including Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant Microsoft and telecom behemoth T-Mobile, headquartered in Bellevue.
Seattle-based companies such as Amazon that already pay the city’s JumpStart payroll tax would be exempt.
Scott said there is a “corollary effect” on corporations from policies that benefit “everyday people.”
“My sense of it is that the public is on our side on this issue,” he said. “They understand that when you have very well-funded higher education, what that means is a well-trained workforce that could seek employment at a place like Microsoft or Amazon — and the company would benefit as a result.”
“When you have people who have very good housing options, that makes Washington that much more of a competitive place to come and do business,” he added.
Business groups are wary of the proposal. Rachel Smith, the new CEO of Washington Roundtable, called it a “tax-first, plan later” idea. She also cited the state’s recent tax increases impacting businesses — passed in part to help address a $16 billion budget shortfall — and broader economic uncertainty.
Washington Roundtable CEO Rachel Smith. (Washington Roundtable Photo)
“If a job is cheaper somewhere else, and a company has an operational environment that allows them to deploy that job somewhere else, of course that’s going to be something they consider,” Smith said in an interview with GeekWire.
Lawmakers tried to pass a similar statewide payroll tax this year, but the bill did not advance. In March, Microsoft President Brad Smith criticized that tax proposal and said it would increase prices for consumers, reduce jobs, and hurt the tech industry.
Microsoft declined to comment on Rep. Scott’s proposal when contacted by GeekWire this week.
Rep. Scott said it’s “disingenuous” that critics raise alarms about companies leaving when the state talks about funding the safety net, but don’t ask similar questions when companies cut jobs on their own. He said the relocation question “does not come up when we see large tech firms investing in artificial intelligence, which is designed to divest from human labor.”
Washington is one of a few states without a personal or corporate income tax. Most state revenue comes from sales, property, and B&O taxes — a system critics say disproportionately burdens lower-income residents.
Gabriella Buono, interim president and CEO at the Seattle Metro Chamber, said that “raising taxes in an affordability crisis will mean higher prices on everyday essentials, fewer job opportunities, and more closures in sectors that are already on the edge.”
“Voters across the political spectrum are clear: they want smart spending, transparency, and results, not new taxes that make it harder to live and work in this state,” Buono said in a statement.
Revenue from the proposed bill would initially go to the state general fund in 2026, then split beginning in 2027, with 51% directed to a dedicated Well Washington fund account and 49% to the general fund. A new oversight and accountability board would guide priorities and report annually. Spending from the account would be limited to higher education, health care — especially Medicaid — cash assistance, and energy and housing programs.
Smart Legal Contracts: How Blockchain Automates Agreements, NDAs & Leases
The legal industry is rapidly moving from paper-based processes to fully digital workflows. Yet, digital alone isn’t enough. Businesses, law firms, and startups need smart legal contracts on blockchain that automate agreements, reduce human error, and enhance compliance. ⚡
Duredev, a leading blockchain LegalTech development company, helps organizations implement smart contracts that are secure, automated, and tamper-proof — transforming the way legal agreements are executed.
🔐 Why Smart Legal Contracts Are the Future
Traditional contracts involve:
Manual approvals
Paper signatures
Delays in execution
Risk of errors or disputes
Blockchain solves these issues by enabling smart legal contracts that automatically execute once predefined conditions are met. Key benefits include:
📝 Common Use Cases: NDAs, Leases & Service Agreements
Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)
Activate automatically when all parties sign
Timestamped verification for legal enforceability
Lease Agreements
Rent or payment schedules trigger automatically
Ensures compliance without manual follow-ups
Service Contracts
Milestones release funds directly
Multi-party approvals executed seamlessly
✍️ How Blockchain Secures Digital Signatures
Digital signatures on blockchain go beyond traditional e-signatures by providing:
Cryptographic identity verification
Tamper-proof timestamping
Compliance with GDPR, eIDAS, and global standards
Audit trails for every signing event
Companies integrate secure digital signing integration to ensure signatures are valid, verifiable, and legally defensible. Duredev expertise ensures all digital signatures are seamlessly linked with smart contracts, creating zero-fraud workflows.
🔗 Multi-Party Contract Execution
Many agreements involve multiple parties, witnesses, or lawyers. Blockchain simplifies this by enabling:
Sequential or parallel signing
Automatic verification of all stakeholders
Real-time approval tracking
Audit-ready compliance reports
Using multi-party signing workflow automation from Duredev, platforms can manage complex legal agreements efficiently, reducing bottlenecks and human error.
Smart contracts often reference sensitive legal documents. Storing these documents securely is critical. Duredev combines blockchain with IPFS legal document storage solutions to offer:
Decentralized storage for tamper-proof security
Hash-based verification on-chain
Cost-effective and scalable infrastructure
Full ownership and access control
This approach ensures legal agreements remain immutable, traceable, and accessible while minimizing storage costs.
📊 Compliance, Audit Trails & Legal Certainty
Every contract execution is recorded on-chain, creating:
Transparent and immutable audit trails
Linked identities for all signers
Regulatory compliance and enforceability
Easy tracking for audits or disputes
By integrating blockchain audit trails for legal compliance, Duredev ensures that startups and law firms can rely on automated legal verification without additional manual overhead.
End-to-end smart contract automation for agreements
Secure digital signature integration
Multi-party signing workflow automation
Hybrid IPFS/Filecoin contract storage solutions
White-label LegalTech platforms for startups and enterprises
Multi-chain support (Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Aptos, Hyperledger)
Our platforms empower businesses to automate complex contracts, ensure compliance, and enhance operational efficiency — all with minimal human intervention.
🏁 Final Thoughts
Smart legal contracts are revolutionizing the way NDAs, leases, and service agreements are executed. With blockchain-powered LegalTech, businesses, law firms, and startups can:
Automate workflows
Secure digital signatures
Ensure tamper-proof notarization
Maintain compliance with audit-ready trails
Duredev provides the technology, expertise, and end-to-end support to make smart legal contract automation a reality. Embrace the future of LegalTech, streamline operations, and deliver trust — all on-chain.
The United States Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal has awarded Allied Metal Tech LLC of Greenville, Wisconsin, a contract valued at $272 million for the production of bomb dummy unit-50 (BDU-50) cast ductile iron devices with material handling pallets in support of the U.S. Air Force and potential Foreign Military Sales (FMS) requirements. […]
PhonePe has shut down its Pincode app over two years after its debut. The company said it will now focus on working with offline retailers by expanding its B2B offerings.
Big Tech has lost its way. At WIRED’s Big Interview event, Techdirt editor Mike Masnick and Common Tools CEO Alex Komoroske announced a manifesto designed to help the industry get back on track.
The cofounder and CEO of Circle says “money as an app platform” is the next step in a digital-based global economic system that’s right around the corner.
AWS CEO Matt Garman, left, with Acquired hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
LAS VEGAS — Matt Garman remembers sitting in an Amazon leadership meeting six or seven years ago, thinking about the future, when he identified what he considered a looming crisis.
Garman, who has since become the Amazon Web Services CEO, calculated that the company would eventually need to hire a million developers to deliver on its product roadmap. The demand was so great that he considered the shortage of software development engineers (SDEs) the company’s biggest constraint.
With the rise of AI, he no longer thinks that’s the case.
Speaking with Acquired podcast hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal at the AWS re:Invent conference Thursday afternoon, Garman told the story in response to Gilbert’s closing question about what belief he held firmly in the past that he has since completely reversed.
“Before, we had way more ideas than we could possibly get to,” he said. Now, “because you can deliver things so fast, your constraint is going to be great ideas and great things that you want to go after. And I would never have guessed that 10 years ago.”
He was careful to point out that Amazon still needs great software engineers. But earlier in the conversation, he noted that massive technical projects that once required “dozens, if not hundreds” of people might now be delivered by teams of five or 10, thanks to AI and agents.
Garman was the closing speaker at the two-hour event with the hosts of the hit podcast, following conversations with Netflix Co-CEO Greg Peters, J.P. Morgan Payments Global Co-Head Max Neukirchen, and Perplexity Co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas.
A few more highlights from Garman’s comments:
Generative AI, including Bedrock, represents a multi-billion dollar business for Amazon. Asked to quantify how much of AWS is now AI-related, Garman said it’s getting harder to say, as AI becomes embedded in everything.
Speaking off-the-cuff, he told the Acquired hosts that Bedrock is a multi-billion dollar business. Amazon clarified later that he was referring to the revenue run rate for generative AI overall. That includes Bedrock, which is Amazon’s managed service that offers access to AI models for building apps and services. [This has been updated since publication.]
How AWS thinks about its product strategy. Garman described a multi-layered approach to explain where AWS builds and where it leaves room for partners. At the bottom are core building blocks like compute and storage. AWS will always be there, he said.
In the middle are databases, analytics engines, and AI models, where AWS offers its own products and services alongside partners. At the top are millions of applications, where AWS builds selectively and only when it believes it has differentiated expertise.
Amazon is “particularly bad” at copying competitors. Garman was surprisingly blunt about what Amazon doesn’t do well. “One of the things that Amazon is particularly bad at is being a fast follower,” he said. “When we try to copy someone, we’re just bad at it.”
The better formula, he said, is to think from first principles about solving a customer problem, only when it believes it has differentiated expertise, not simply to copy existing products.
Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of SecureSave, during the “Elevator Pitch” finale at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong)
Fintech startup SecureSave, a 2020 spinout of Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs, has been acquired by Wisconsin-based HSA Bank.
SecureSave helps employers offer a financial wellness benefit to workers beyond their paycheck in the form of an emergency savings account (ESA). HSA Bank is a division of Webster Bank and Webster Financial Corp. and is one of the nation’s leaders in healthcare savings and spending accounts.
Terms of the deal, completed Thursday, were not disclosed.
SecureSave employs 23 people full time, most of whom are in the Seattle area, and will continue to operate its current platform and serve its clients.
Miller previously led Balance Financial, a Seattle-area startup acquired by Blucora’s TaxAct subsidiary in 2013. He later joined Guidant Financial as executive vice president and later president. Saliba is another longtime entrepreneur who sold Avado to WebMD in 2013 and was a board member/acting CTO at Balance Financial alongside Miller.
SecureSave raised about $28 million to date, with venture backing from PSL, Seachange and IA Ventures, and three banks — Truist, Stearns and Webster.
Miller, who is based in Spokane, Wash., said SecureSave has supported more than 60,000 active emergency savings account holders who have saved more than $100 million to date.
Miller said the company had a strong year of growth and that interest in the category can be evidenced by legislation proposed this week in Congress. U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Todd Young (R-IN) introduced the Emergency Savings Enhancement Act, aimed at helping American workers and families save for unexpected expenses without having to tap into their retirement accounts.
In a post on LinkedIn, Miller wrote about how the HSA deal came together and why it will be “a massive leap forward for ESAs.”
Kohler is facing backlash after an engineer pointed out that the company’s new smart toilet cameras may not be as private as it wants people to believe. The discussion raises questions about Kohler’s use of the term “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE) and the inherent privacy limitations of a device that films the goings-on of a toilet bowl.
In October, Kohler announced its first “health” product, the Dekoda. Kohler’s announcement described the $599 device (it also requires a subscription that starts at $7 per month) as a toilet bowl attachment that uses “optical sensors and validated machine-learning algorithms” to deliver “valuable insights into your health and wellness.” The announcement added:
Data flows to the personalized Kohler Health app, giving users continuous, private awareness of key health and wellness indicators—right on their phone. Features like fingerprint authentication and end-to-end encryption are designed for user privacy and security.
The average person is most likely to be familiar with E2EE through messaging apps, like Signal. Messages sent via apps with E2EE are encrypted throughout transmission. Only the message’s sender and recipient can view the decrypted messages, which is intended to prevent third parties, including the app developer, from reading them.
OnePlus is ready to sell its new flagship smartphone in the US weeks after it made the device official. Having now finally gotten Federal Communications Commission clearance, the OnePlus 15 is available for preorder. It’s currently only live on the OnePlus storefront, but the device will eventually come to Amazon and Best Buy as well.
The OnePlus 15 launched in China earlier this year, and it was supposed to go on sale in the US a month ago. However, the longest US government shutdown on record got in the way. Most of the FCC’s functions were suspended during the weekslong funding lapse, which prevented the agency from certifying new wireless products. Without that approval, OnePlus could not begin selling the phone. Thus, it had no firm release date when the phone was officially unveiled for the US in early November.
Interested parties can head to the OnePlus website to place an order. The base model starts at $900 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This version is only available in black. If you want the Ultraviolet or Sand Storm (with the distinctive micro-arc oxidation finish), you’ll have to upgrade to the $1,000 version, which has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
Lisa Su leads Nvidia’s biggest rival in the AI chip market. When asked at WIRED’s Big Interview event if AI is a bubble, the company’s CEO said, “Emphatically, from my perspective, no.”
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