Washington and 35 other states reached a settlement with Hyundai and Kia in which the automakers will provide restitution to consumers and fixes to millions of eligible vehicles nationwide that lacked industry-standard, anti-theft technology.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office announced details of the settlement Tuesday, in which Hyundai and Kia have agreed to:

• Equip all future vehicles sold in the U.S. with engine immobilizer anti-theft technology;
• Offer free zinc-reinforced ignition cylinder protectors to owners or lessees of eligible vehicles, including vehicles that previously were only eligible for the companies’ software updates;
• Provide up to $4.5 million in restitution to eligible consumers whose cars are damaged by thieves; and
• Pay $4.5 million to the states to defray the costs of the investigation. 

Eligible car owners can receive up $4,500 for a total loss or up to $2,250 for a partial loss, according to compensation details on the settlement website. The claim deadline is March 31, 2027.

An engine immobilizer prevents thieves from starting a vehicle’s engine without the vehicle’s “smart” key, which stores the vehicle’s electronic security code. The lack of the necessary tech on cars resulted in “an epidemic of car thefts and joy riding” across Washington and the country,

“Security is a key piece for families looking to buy a vehicle, but Hyundai and Kia spent years selling people cars that lacked the industry’s standard protections,” Brown said in a statement. “Year after year, consumers have been easily victimized because of the automakers’ failure here.”

In late 2020, teenage boys began posting videos on social media describing how to steal the cars simply by removing a plastic piece under the steering wheel and using a USB cord. Posts with the hashtag “Kia Boys” racked up more than 33 million views on TikTok by September 2022, according to CNBC. The videos included teens engaged in reckless driving of the stolen vehicles.

Despite years of evidence, Hyundai and Kia waited until 2023 to launch a service campaign to update the software on most of the affected vehicles, Brown’s office said. The update was easily bypassed by thieves.

Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison filed a similar lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai in January 2023.

“Kia and Hyundai chose to cut corners and cut costs at the expense of their customers and the public. As a result, our police force has had to tackle a huge rise in vehicle theft and related problems with already stretched resources,” Davison said in a statement at the time.

In May 2023, Hyundai and Kia agreed to a consumer class-action lawsuit settlement worth $200 million over rampant thefts of the Korean automakers’ vehicles. The Seattle City Attorney’s Office said at the time that it was a “good first step for consumers” but that the settlement involving individual owners “does not include the litigation brought by the City.”

We reached out to the City Attorney for comment on Tuesday and will update when we hear back.

Under the new multistate settlement, eligible consumers will be notified by the companies that they will have one year from the date of the notice to make an appointment to have the zinc-reinforced ignition cylinder protector installed at their local Hyundai or Kia authorized dealerships. Consumers are urged to schedule the installation of the zinc-reinforce ignition cylinder protector as soon as possible.

Consumers who previously installed the software update on their vehicles (or were scheduled to do so) but nonetheless experienced a theft or attempted theft of their vehicle on or after April 29, 2025, are eligible to file a claim for restitution for certain theft and attempted-theft related expenses.  For more information about eligibility and how to submit a claim visit these sites for Hyundai and Kia.

Don’t take your eyes off the road to read new research from the University of Washington.

In partnership with Toyota Research Institute, UW researchers are exploring how modern touch screens in cars affect driving now that dashboard knobs and buttons are increasingly a thing of the past. The results could help auto manufacturers design safer, more responsive screens and in-car interfaces.

The team’s study, which was presented this fall at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Busan, Korea, adds to what we already know about the dangers of distracted driving when it comes to phone use.

Participants driving a vehicle simulator and interacting with a touch screen (see video above) were given memory tests that mimic the mental effort demanded by traffic conditions and other distractions, the UW reported. Sensors tracked their gaze, finger movements, pupil diameter and electrodermal activity.

While driving, participants had to touch specific targets on a 12-inch touch screen, similar to how they would interact with apps and widgets. They did this while completing three levels of an “N-back task,” a memory test in which the participants hear a series of numbers, 2.5 seconds apart, and have to repeat specific digits. 

Researchers found that when people try to multitask behind the wheel, their driving and their ability to use a touch screen both suffer. The simulator car drifted in its lane, and speed and accuracy using the screen declined while driving.

“Touch screens are widespread today in automobile dashboards, so it is vital to understand how interacting with touch screens affects drivers and driving,” said co-senior author Jacob O. Wobbrock, a UW professor in the Information School. “Our research is some of the first that scientifically examines this issue, suggesting ways for making these interfaces safer and more effective.”

Popular Mechanics wrote about the mental bandwidth and finger precision that many modern infotainment screens require in cars.

Based on the UW/Toyota findings, researchers suggest future in-car touch screen systems might use simple sensors in the car — eye tracking, or touch sensors on the steering wheel — to monitor drivers’ attention and cognitive load. Based on these readings, the car’s system might adjust the touch screen’s interface to make important controls more prominent and safer to access.

They may not have been arriving to “buy a fat pig,” but Lime riders definitely headed “to market, to market” in 2025, making Seattle’s Pike Place Market the No. 1 end location for trips in North America this year.

According to Lime’s “2025 Ride Replay,” released Monday, electric scooter and bike-share riders took 9.7 million trips in Seattle — a 61% jump from 2024’s total.

Areas around the Market proved to be a popular spot to end trips for residents and tourists alike. Other highlights included:

• The highest Lime ridership month in Seattle was August, with more than 1.3 million rides. 
• The single highest ridership day was Sept. 27, with just under 60,000 trips.
• In May, Seattle was the first city in the world to launch the new LimeGlider. More than 1.8 million trips have been recorded since then.

Lime, along with Bird, is part of the City of Seattle’s e-bike and scooter-share micromobility program that allows people to rent the devices for short trips.

The Seattle Department of Transportation said this fall that it is adding more than 200 new bike and scooter “corrals” downtown and in other parts of the city to encourage proper parking and alleviate sidewalk clutter.

Lime offers its Ride Replay experience as a recap for users’ year of riding. This year’s theme is celestial, and riders who opted in to receive Lime emails will get their “ride-dentity” based on how, when and where they moved in 2025. Riders who explored multiple cities may find they’re an “Expert Explorer,” while loyal locals might earn the title of “Local Legend.”

San Francisco-based Lime is privately owned. The company took over the Jump bike-share business and was backed by a $170 million investment round led by Uber, Alphabet, Bain Capital and GV in 2020.

Plenty of people wear their heart on their sleeve. Yerjasn (Jason) Ait wore his resume on his chest.

Smartly taking advantage of an event attended by more than 750 members of Seattle’s tech community, Ait showed up at the GeekWire Gala Thursday night sporting a white T-shirt with his resume printed on the front.

For those who missed the fine print, a larger notice across his back read, “Internship Wanted. CV’s on the front.”

During a time of mass layoffs and a tough labor market, when many tech job seekers are having an unusually difficult time landing their next gig, Ait’s fashion choice was a prime example of reading the room — or having it read him.

“I was wondering how I can stand out in a crowd, because I’m an international student, my English is not perfect, and I’m still learning a lot of things,” Ait told GeekWire.

He grew up in Kazakhstan in the city of Almaty and moved to the U.S. a year and half ago to get his Master’s in Communication at the University of Washington.

“It was a big dream when I was a kid to study abroad, especially in the best university,” he said.

Ait is due to graduate in June, and, like the T-shirt says, he’s looking for an internship or early career role that would utilize his skills in people management, product development, problem solving, and more.

The T-shirt definitely got people’s attention at the Gala, where Ait said 25 or 30 attendees tapped him on the shoulder to compliment his idea or extend a business card. It was only his second time attending an event of that kind, and there was some fear to overcome.

“I was so scared to speak with people who are very successful — they’re professionals, experts — and it was like imposter syndrome at the beginning,” he said. “Somehow I overcame this fear and just started talking with people. And that’s fun.”

Ait was especially frazzled because he was still getting the T-shirt printed two hours before the event, and a QR code linking to his digital resume was supposed to be part of the design but didn’t make it. Then he had to sit in Seattle traffic getting south to the Showbox SoDo.

The struggle to find work is a real one for people who have far fewer obstacles to overcome than some of the ones Ait has faced. Indeed recently reported on how tech-related job postings remain stuck well below pre-pandemic levels in Seattle. Macroeconomic headwinds and a climate of change in the artificial intelligence era add to increased uncertainty.

“I had everything in my home country. I had a nice job, nice house. It was a great comfort zone,” Ait said. “But I challenged myself to be here in a new country with a total new environment, new language, new people. And sometimes I felt kind of insecure, unsure what I’m doing. But right now, I can see I’m on the right direction. Maybe someday I’ll find my dream job.”

The morning after the Gala, Ait wrote a post on LinkedIn about some of the insights he gained from wearing the shirt. He offered it up as a “small playbook for international students” who are also looking for work or an internship.

Among what he learned: “Go to more events like this. It’s a muscle. You train it. Each time, I get better — more confident, more sharp, more clear.”

The halls have officially been tech’d.

Humans and robots rubbed shoulders and partied Thursday night at the 2025 GeekWire Gala as our annual holiday extravaganza drew more than 750 members of Seattle’s tech community to the Showbox SoDo.

The geeky event — presented by title sponsor First Tech Federal Credit Union — featured games, karaoke, dancing, food, drink, networking and plenty of good times.

• A Selfiebot roamed the floor capturing images of attendees and two Portraitbots drew quick caricatures.
• Robots raced at another station while people also had their pictures snapped in a robot photo booth.
• There was an espresso martini printer, specially printed macaroon cookies, a candy bar, a walking oyster bar and much more.

For the third year, GeekWire and Greater Seattle Partners once again recognized the region’s “Uncommon Thinkers,” the groundbreaking innovators who are changing the way we work, live and play. The honorees included: Anindya Roy, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Lila Biologics; Chet Kittleson, co-founder and CEO of Tin Can; Brian Pinkard, co-founder and CTO at Aquagga; Jeff Thornburg, CEO of Portal Space Systems; Kiana Ehsani, co-founder and CEO of Vercept; and Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky.

Special thanks to our gold sponsors, Greater Seattle Partners, Pilot, and Astound Business Solutions; and silver sponsors, MeeBoss, Tito’s, The Baldwin Group, Wilson Sonsini, ALLtech, IDA Ireland, Microsoft for Startups, gone.com, Prime Team Partners, and Regence.

Go here to see photos from the The Social Production’s robotic roaming photo booth, sponsored by Pilot.

Thanks again to everyone for making our party your party. Happy holidays!

Keep scrolling for more photos from the 2025 GeekWire Gala:

Ridwell, the Seattle startup that collects plastic and other hard-to-recycle items from consumers, keeps growing its footprint across the U.S.

The company recently expanded beyond the home pickup bins where it got its start with a new mail-in service that has already attracted about 20,000 users in recent months.

It is also reeling in more investment. A new SEC filing reveals the company has raised $15 million in fresh cash. Ridwell CEO Ryan Metzger declined to comment on the filing.

Metzger, a former director at Madrona and Zulily, told GeekWire that the mail-in service has grown “remarkably,” helping Ridwell extend its reach to 130,000 customers in all 50 states.

Customers can recycle multi-layer plastic such as bags for chips or candy wrappers, as well as plastic film, which includes grocery bags and bubble wrap, by packing it all in a bag provided by Ridwell. They schedule a home pickup through Ridwell’s integration with the U.S. Postal Service and then track their garbage’s recycling journey online.

There’s no monthly subscription like there is with Ridwell bin pickups. Customers pay $30 to start and about $9 for each return, spaced out however often they need the service.

Metzger has been promoting the new offering at nearly 200 community meetups throughout the country. “It’s a great way to get the word out and really build adoption amongst people who are most passionate,” he said.

Ridwell’s traditional pickup service still operates across eight metro areas in seven states: Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Georgia, Minnesota and Texas. Customers pay $20 for that monthly service in which plastics and other add-ons such as Styrofoam or batteries are collected by Ridwell drivers.

Metzger said that as adoption grows in a certain region, that region can be turned into a pickup area, with a Ridwell facility, drivers and other workers. The new funding will facilitate that growth. All of the materials from pickup and mail-in are routed to 10 Ridwell-run processing facilities around the country.

Ridwell, which employs about 250 people, sorts, bales, and ships materials such as multi-layer plastic to a variety of partners, who give the material a second life. For instance, Trex makes composite decking materials; Hydroblox makes water drainage material; and ByFusion makes construction-grade building blocks.

Metzger called the mail-in service’s integration with the Postal Service a unique user experience. Through the Ridwell website, customers can schedule a pickup for a carrier who will grab a bag of recycling during a typical mail drop.

Because the practice of recycling and whether it actually works or makes a difference environmentally has been called into question in recent years, Metzger said it’s important to show customers the journey of their materials.

“We try to do some of what e-commerce has built over decades, and bring that to the reverse side of things,” he said of Ridwell’s package tracking. “So when you give us stuff, you see where it goes, the fact that it actually made it there, and what it gets turned into.”

Metzger launched Ridwell in 2018 after he and his then-7-year-old son were trying to get rid of dead batteries and realized it wasn’t that easy.

During his talks with community members — from Port Townsend, Wash., to Concord, Mass. — Metzger likes to demonstrate the physical result of recycling, showing off a piece of Trex or Hydroblox.

“I can say, ‘Here’s all this stuff that you can put in that bag, and then here’s what it turns into,'” Metzger said. “There is a trust barrier that we’re overcoming, so it’s important to meet people and look at them face to face and show them what happens to it.”

Previously:

• Ridwell starts collecting more difficult types of plastic as recycling startup grows to seven states
• Behind the recycling scenes at Ridwell: Seattle startup growing as fast as piles of plastic and more

Tonight’s the night for the GeekWire Gala, our annual holiday extravaganza in Seattle, featuring food, drinks, music, dancing, karaoke, games and the best chance to network with more than 700 fellow tech community members.

There are still a few last-minute tickets available, so grab one now for yourself or wrangle some co-workers for a festive night on the town. Make our holiday party your holiday party!

For those attending, here’s a rundown of what to expect. If you have questions, please email us at events@geekwire.com. Big thanks to First Tech Federal Credit Union, the GeekWire Gala title sponsor.

When: Thursday, Dec. 11., from 6 to 10 p.m.

Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Ave S., a few blocks from T-Mobile Park.

Parking: There are several pay lots within a 2-minute walk of the venue. There is also additional parking information here.

Do I need to bring a physical ticket? No. If you are registered, we’ll check your ID at registration, and provide your name badge. 

Is there assigned seating at tables? No. The Gala is an open floor plan and a free-flowing party, with a number of activities. It is not a sit-down dinner, and there are no assigned tables.  

Are tickets still available? Yes. If you have friends or colleagues who’d like to attend, please encourage them to pre-register on the event site here. 

Festivities: The festive night includes food, drinks, DJ, karaoke, custom printed macarons, candy bar, giant LED games, giveaways and more.

Attire: You have the rare license to don cocktail attire in Seattle. Or wear whatever you want. Tuxedos? Sure. Geeky T-shirts? Yep. Even better, break out your fiercest festive fashion. See fashion photos from past GeekWire Galas here. 

Food: The tasty appetizers will be heavy, but it’s not dinner. And drinks will include coffee, beer, signature cocktails and more.

Age limit: The GeekWire Gala is a 21+ event. Attendees must have valid ID to enter.

Social media: The official hashtag of the 2024 GeekWire Gala is #GWGala on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

In addition to the party atmosphere, GeekWire and Greater Seattle Partners will once again use the Gala to recognize the region’s “Uncommon Thinkers,” the groundbreaking innovators who are changing the way we work, live and play. Read our profiles of the six honorees.

Our gold sponsors are Greater Seattle Partners, Pilot, and Astound Business Solutions; and silver sponsors include MeeBoss, Tito’s, The Baldwin Group, Wilson Sonsini, ALLtech, IDA Ireland, Microsoft for Startups, gone.com, and Regence.

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.

Bananas, blackberries, limes and more — Amazon’s same-day delivery of perishable grocery items has expanded across the U.S. to more than 2,300 cities and towns, the company announced Wednesday.

Amazon launched the expanded offering earlier this year, allowing customers to integrate items such as fresh produce, seafood, milk and more into their regular shopping orders of electronics, books, clothes, and household essentials.

And customers have responded.

Fresh groceries now make up nine of the top 10 most-ordered same-day items, according to Amazon, with a 12-pack of toilet paper rounding out the bunch.

Analysts say Amazon’s rapid expansion of same-day delivery for fresh groceries marks a meaningful escalation in its long-term push into perishable food — a category where it has historically lagged.

The company’s scale and logistics reach allow it to serve both small towns and large metro areas without relying on third-party platforms, according to Wedbush, which noted in a report Wednesday that the expansion ramps up competitive pressure on Instacart, whose business relies heavily on grocery delivery subscriptions.

Analysts also say the stronger grocery offering makes Amazon Prime’s $139 annual membership more attractive, while weakening the value of Instacart+, which recently scaled back key subscriber benefits. Amazon is also increasingly competing with the grocery efforts of Uber Eats and DoorDash, according to Wedbush.

In most areas, the same-day deliveries are free for Amazon Prime members for orders that cost more than $25. If the purchase is below that amount, the cost is $2.99. For shoppers without a Prime membership, the delivery tacks on a $12.99 fee.

Since this summer, Amazon has expanded the fresh grocery selection available for same-day delivery by more than 30%, including offerings from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Grocery, the company’s new private brand, which now includes over 1,000 items, with most priced under $5.

Amazon is also seeing a shift in shopping patterns as customers who add fresh groceries to their orders shop about twice as often as those who don’t.

GeekWire tested the same-day service in June, placing a late-night order that arrived in the morning and included apples, cucumbers, and blueberries alongside non-perishable items.

Amazon says it plans to expand same-day perishable grocery delivery to more cities and towns in 2026.

The expansion of same-day perishable delivery comes as Amazon is also testing a new ultra-fast option called Amazon Now, which promises delivery in 30 minutes or less. GeekWire tested this service earlier this month, and received a frozen pizza, hummus, bread and more in 23 minutes, from order click to delivery drop-off in Seattle.

Amazon has for years been expanding and experimenting in the grocery space. In 2007, it started offering grocery deliveries in Seattle through Amazon Fresh, then offered Amazon Fresh grocery pick-up sites and eventually started opening Amazon Fresh grocery stores beginning in 2020. It acquired Whole Foods Market in 2017.

The ticket clock is ticking ahead of Thursday’s GeekWire Gala. Don’t miss out on the Seattle tech community’s biggest holiday party — grab a last-minute ticket now!

The Gala is a great chance to make our annual holiday event a celebration for you, your friends and co-workers.

The festive night includes food, drinks, karaoke, games, and plenty of surprise moments. Party alongside the region’s top innovators and entrepreneurs.

It all takes place at Showbox SoDo at 1700 1st Ave S., not far from T-Mobile Park. The event from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. is 21+ and all attendees must have valid ID to enter. Dress to impress, bust out your holiday flair, or just keep it geek chic.

In addition to the party atmosphere, GeekWire and Greater Seattle Partners will once again use the Gala to recognize the region’s “Uncommon Thinkers,” the groundbreaking innovators who are changing the way we work, live and play. Catch up on our profiles of the six honorees:

• Anindya Roy, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Lila Biologics
• Chet Kittleson, co-founder and CEO of Tin Can
• Brian Pinkard, co-founder and CTO at Aquagga
• Jeff Thornburg, CEO of Portal Space Systems
• Kiana Ehsani, co-founder and CEO of Vercept
• Jay Graber, CEO of Bluesky

Big thanks to the GeekWire Gala title sponsor, First Tech Federal Credit Union; gold sponsors Greater Seattle Partners, Pilot, and Astound Business Solutions; and silver sponsors MeeBoss, Tito’s, The Baldwin Group, Wilson Sonsini, ALLtech, IDA Ireland, Microsoft for Startups, gone.com, and Regence.

Strong software engineers who combine their foundational skills with fluency in rapidly emerging AI tools are more valuable than ever. And while AI boosts overall productivity by 34% on average, its widening the gap between top engineers and those considered weaker.

Those are among the findings from Karat, the Seattle-based technical talent evaluation startup, which released its new “AI Workforce Transformation” report on Wednesday, detailing how artificial intelligence tools are changing the way software is developed and what types of workers are most impacted by the technology.

The findings come from Karat’s survey of 400 engineering leaders across the U.S., India, and China. And the report coincides with the release of Karat NextGen, an AI-enabled talent evaluation solution designed to evaluate software engineers in an era of increased human and AI collaboration.

Among the report highlights:

• 73% of leaders now believe a strong engineer is worth at least 3x their total compensation.
• 59% of leaders say weak engineers deliver net zero or negative value in the AI era.
• The top AI use cases for day-to-day work are code generation (83%), and testing, QA, and code review (61%).
• Agentic AI/autonomous engineering agents are highlighted by the majority of leaders as having the highest return on investment.
• Despite cost pressure, 85% of leaders expect engineering headcounts to stay flat or increase over the next three years, signaling that AI isn’t leading to massive job cuts in the near term.
• China is outpacing the U.S. and India in AI adoption and readiness.

Tech companies and workers are still adjusting to the shifting landscape of an AI-fueled industry that has traditionally relied on coders to help build and maintain the backbone of digital platforms.

When Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate employees from its global workforce in October, among the 2,303 impacted Washington state workers, mostly in Seattle and Bellevue, more than 600 were software development engineers.

That trend mirrored layoffs at Microsoft earlier this year, as companies reassess their engineering needs amid the rise of AI-driven coding tools. 

At Amazon’s re:Invent event last week in Las Vegas, AWS executive Colleen Aubrey went beyond discussing how human employees will leverage AI tools, and said instead that it’s time to consider agentic teammates “as essential as the people sitting right next to you.”

According to Karat’s report, beyond foundational skills such as problem-solving, communication, and product sense, engineers need to be assessed for new AI-native abilities, including familiarity with agentic AI; using AI for coding; integrating 3rd-party AI APIs; prompt engineering; and evaluating and mitigating AI-related risks.

Karat’s report found that nearly 70% of engineering leaders plan to strengthen their AI capabilities through strategic hiring. Yet, almost two-thirds of companies still prohibit AI use in interviews, and less than 30% are updating assessments and training interviewers to identify AI-ready talent.

The startup’s NextGen talent evaluation platform features a human + AI interview format where candidates tackle complex, multi-file projects with an integrated AI assistant while collaborating live with Karat’s expert interview engineers, who probe reasoning, trade-offs, and judgment in real time to reveal genuine engineering ability.

Sagnik Nandy, CTO at DocuSign, a Karat customer, said in a news release that while AI is transforming engineering, “the real breakthroughs happen when human judgment and AI capabilities work together” and a way to measure that combination reliably is what’s been missing.

“A human-led, AI-native interview is exactly the kind of solution organizations need to understand who can truly excel in this new model of development,” Nandy said.

Founded in 2014 by Mo Bhende and Jeff Spector, Karat became one of Seattle’s highest-valued startups after it raised $110 million in a Series C round in 2021, which brought its total valuation at the time to $1.1 billion. Total funding to date is $151.6 million.

Karat currently ranks No. 15 on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top startups in the Pacific Northwest.

Microsoft is pouring $17.5 billion into India — its largest investment in Asia — to boost the country’s AI infrastructure and diffusion, the company announced Tuesday.

The funding, planned over four years between 2026 and 2029, comes after an earlier $3 billion commitment announced earlier this year.

Microsoft’s aim is to help advance India’s cloud and AI infrastructure, skilling and ongoing operations. The tech giant said the partnership will help India make the leap from “digital public infrastructure to AI public infrastructure in the coming decade,” toward “a future that is more equitable and uniquely Indian in its scale and impact.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is in the country this month as part of a multi-city “India AI” tour. He met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday and will deliver a keynote address on Wednesday: “Leading in the New Age of AI.”

The investment will target three primary areas:

• Scale: A key priority is building hyperscale infrastructure to enable AI adoption in India. Microsoft said significant progress is being made at the India South Central cloud region, based in Hyderabad, that is set to go live in mid-2026. Microsoft will also continue to expand its three existing operational data center regions in Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune.     
• Skills: Microsoft is doubling its January commitment to equip 20 million Indians with essential AI skills by 2030. The company said it has already trained 5.6 million people since January, and its programs have helped more than 125,000 people gain work or entrepreneurial opportunities.  
• Sovereignty: Microsoft is introducing Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Private Cloud for Indian customers, designed to give Indian organizations more control over data, compliance, and operational sovereignty. In security terms, these offerings will address data residency, regulatory compliance, governance, and operational isolation.

Microsoft also announced that 310 million informal workers in India will benefit from advanced AI capabilities being integrated into two key digital public platforms of the Ministry of Labour and Employment — e-Shram and the National Career Service.

Microsoft employs 22,000 people across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurugram, Noida and other cities, representing numerous company business lines.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Microsoft President Brad Smith announced new commitments to Canada, adding $5.4 billion over the next two years to its continued investment in building out digital and AI infrastructure in the country.

Smith highlighted many of the same goals the company outlined for India, including boosting skills training and digital sovereignty in Canada.

Founder Institute, the global business incubator and pre-seed startup accelerator, is getting up and running again in Seattle.

Tech veteran Aniket Naravanekar, co-founder and CEO of Skillsheet, is one of the program directors working to rekindle the effort. Naravanekar previously led product at Seattle startups avante and CHEQ, and spent more than 11 years at Microsoft.

He’s joined by Nicole Doyle, founder and CEO of Aspir; Jewel Atuel, a technical program manager at Averro; and Angie Parker, executive director of the Alliance of Angels.

“I think the Seattle ecosystem has such a large amount of talent that it deserves more opportunities for aspiring founders to turn their ideas into a real business,” Naravanekar told GeekWire. “I’ve been going through this process as a founder myself and I want to provide more options to those that are still on the fence or want to build but not sure how.”

Founded in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2009, Founder Institute operates across across six continents and more than 200 cities, and has had more than 8,100 graduates, according to its website.

Naravanekar believes a lack of community and leadership derailed Founder Institute’s in-person efforts in Seattle and applicants were directed to remote/virtual cohorts starting around 2021.

“We’re now bringing back the local community — local mentors, local partners, sponsors, investors and in-person meetups and events,” he said.

Naravanekar said Founder Institute is using a new approach in which the Seattle leadership team is empowered to run things instead of being treated as a “satellite.”

“We’re still using the same FI tooling and branding but have a lot more leeway in decision making to suit the unique needs of the Seattle ecosystem,” he said.

The first cohort in Seattle begins in March. An open house on Dec. 12 at AI House in Seattle will serve as an official launch event and will feature two panels: “Building in Seattle” and “Scaling & Leverage.” Panelists include Evan Poncelot of Venture Black; Loti founder Luke Arrigoni; AI2 Incubator’s Jacob Colker; Nick Hughes of Founders Live; Taylor Black of Microsoft AI Ventures; Brooks Lindsay of Light Legal; Sarah Studer of the University of Washington’s Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship; and moderator Louis Newkirk of Venture Black and Founders Live.

Levi Reed, a former managing director at Seattle Founder Institute, is now an entrepreneur-in-residence at Startup425, a non-profit funded by six Seattle-area city governments, which announced a new accelerator last year. The 15-week program is modeled after the Founder Institute curriculum.

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.

The startup was co-founded by CEO Devin Miller, CTO Bassam Saliba, and TV personality and best-selling author Suze Orman.

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.”

Miller pitched SecureSave during the 2022 season of GeekWire’s “Elevator Pitch” series.

Seattle-based startup Otto announced the wide release Thursday of its AI-powered travel assistant — Otto the Agent — in a bid to bring a concierge-level experience and personalization to business travelers.

The platform has been in closed beta for nine months. GeekWire first reported about its stealthy operations in August 2024.

Founded by longtime travel industry veterans, Otto was incubated and spun out of Seattle-based Madrona Venture Labs, the former startup studio associated with Madrona.

“The goal here is to mimic or create as good or better an experience than the best ever executive assistant, to help you book your business travel,” said founder and CEO Michael Gulmann, who spent nearly a decade at Expedia Group in various leadership roles, and also worked at business travel management giant Egencia.

Steve Singh, managing director at Madrona who co-founded business expense software giant Concur, is executive chairman of Otto.

Otto is built to learn and understand an individual’s travel habits — airline and hotel preferences, seat choices, loyalty programs, and even nuanced needs like finding rooms that avoid train noise or finding hotels with rooftop bars. Gulmann said Otto uses that knowledge to instantly surface the best flights and hotels without the the typical endless-scroll experience.

And unlike general-purpose AI tools that send users to external booking sites, Otto handles the entire transaction end-to-end, from booking to cancellations to rebooking and credit management, all within the same interface.

Otto can also connect to a traveler’s calendar and proactively detect upcoming trips and suggest itineraries before the traveler asks.

Barney Harford, former CEO of Orbitz Worldwide and former COO of Uber, called Otto “a glimpse into the future,” saying that after using it for several months it knows his business travel preferences “and has simplified the shop and book process down to just a couple of minutes.” Harford is an investor in Otto.

Beyond flights and hotels, a clear next step in Otto’s development will be the addition of car rentals and dinner reservations — things an executive assistant “back home would be helping with when you’re on the road,” Gulmann said.

“The reality is, most people don’t have an EA,” he added. “A little bit of the genesis of the company was, I was fortunate enough to have an EA at Expedia for a long time, once I got to a certain level, and it was amazing.”

Otto is available for free to individual business travelers as well as small and mid-sized businesses for the next 12 months. The startup makes money on commissions. Through a partnership with travel management company Direct Travel, Otto is also launching upcoming pilot programs with two companies Gulmann could not yet name.

The company is competing with other startups, as well as incumbents that are developing their own AI-fueled tools.

Direct Travel, which was acquired by Madrona and others in April 2024, invested in Otto’s seed round.

Singh is also executive chairman at Direct Travel. Since departing Concur a few years after its $8.3 billion acquisition to SAP in 2014, Singh became executive chairman at Spotnana, a travel-as-a-service technology platform; at Center, a corporate card and expense management platform; and Troop, a group meetings and events company.

Gulmann said innovating around travel again was the “last thing he thought he’d get back into” but a lot has changed since Expedia and others came along to displace human travel agents in the 1990s. Otto is like going back to the personalization aspect of travel agents but with the tech twist added in.

“It’s insanely faster to develop and to build the product,” he said. “We’re doing it with, including myself, a 10-person team. So, not tiny, but nowhere near the developer and engineer horsepower that Expedia or Booking.com have. But yet, I think we’re going a lot faster than they are now.”

Related:

• The new AI executive assistants: Smarter, faster, still not as good as the real thing

Govstream.ai, a Seattle-area startup building AI-native permitting tools for local governments, raised $3.6 million in funding, the company announced Thursday.

The seed round was led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based 47th Street Partners, with participation from Nellore Capital of Palo Alto, Calif., Seattle-based Ascend, and angel investors including Socrata founder Kevin Merritt and First Due co-founder and CEO Andreas Huber.

Govstream.ai’s platform sits on top of the systems cities already use and acts as a conversational “copilot” for permit techs, planners, and reviewers. The company says the technology answers questions, checks documents, compares plan sets, and helps move applications through review faster.

The first public deployment is with the City of Bellevue, where Govstream.ai’s smart assistant has been helping Development Services staff with internal permitting and zoning questions since this summer.

“Cities are under intense pressure to add housing, support small businesses, and keep development sustainable, all while working inside permitting systems that were never really rethought for this moment,” said Safouen Rabah, founder and CEO of Govstream.ai.

In Washington, for example, state projections show that roughly 1.1 million additional homes will be needed by 2044 to keep up with population growth, and about 650,000 of those will need to be affordable for low-income households.

Rabah said permitting has been digitized in pieces but not truly modernized end to end. AI can reason over hundreds of pages of plans and regulations and surface what matters.

“That’s how cities move more homes and critical infrastructure from ‘submitted’ to ‘approved’ without burning people out on either side of the counter,” Rabah said. “Every month of delay we eliminate reduces costs of a new housing unit by about $5,000 on average and makes more projects economically pencil out.”

In July, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell issued an executive order intended to speed the permitting process for housing and small businesses in the city, using AI software from Boston- and Chicago-based CivCheck to aid permit applicants and city reviewers. Other cities, including Los Angeles, Austin and Honolulu are using AI to improve their processes.

In Bellevue, Govstream.ai is targeting and seeing signs of results including:

• A roughly 30% reduction in the burden of routine inquiries, including fewer “Where do I start?” and “Do I need a permit for this?” calls and emails.
• Up to 50% fewer re-submittals by catching missing or incorrect items before an application is formally filed.
• Up to 2X faster starts to first review on many project types, because reviewers start with context instead of a 200-page PDF.

Beyond Bellevue, the startup is gearing up to deploy in additional U.S. cities. Rabah declined to share financial metrics, but said revenue is growing as Govstream.ai converts design partners into production deployments.

A veteran of government-tech companies including Socrata and Tyler Technologies, Rabah started Govstream.ai in July 2024. The company currently employs five people and the new funding will fuel growth to 10 to 12 people over the next 12 months with the addition of engineering and AI roles in the Seattle area.

Govstream was previously featured in GeekWire’s Startup Radar series.

Amazon’s new “Amazon Now” ultra-fast delivery for household essentials and fresh groceries passed the speed test on Tuesday.

During a trial of the newly launched service, it took 23 minutes from the click of the order button on the Amazon shopping app to the drop of the items at my house. That time easily meets Amazon’s promise of 30-minutes-or-less delivery.

Amazon Now is rolling out to eligible neighborhoods in Seattle and Philadelphia. Customers using the Amazon app or website can browse a curated selection of fresh produce, meat and seafood, pantry staples, frozen foods, beverages, household supplies and more.

Customers are able to track their order status and tip their driver within the Amazon Now feature. Prime members pay discounted delivery fees starting at $3.99 per order, compared with $13.99 for non-Prime customers, with a $1.99 “small basket” fee on orders under $15.

GeekWire reported last week that Amazon was building out a new rapid-delivery hub at a former Amazon Fresh Pickup site in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. (That site did not fulfill the order I placed on Tuesday.) Amazon this week revealed more details about Amazon Now.

Permit filings detail how employees pick and bag items in a back-of-house stockroom, stage completed orders on front-of-house shelves, and hand them off to Amazon Flex drivers, who are expected to arrive, scan, confirm, and leave with a package within roughly two minutes. The operation is slated to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, “much like a convenience store,” according to the filings.

Keep reading for details on how the process works.

The shopping

My wife prefers to do all the shopping for our household and she does so at several different stores including Trader Joe’s, Fred Meyer, Town & Country, and Costco. Our neighborhood, Ballard, isn’t exactly a food desert, and prior to conducting my Amazon Now test, I passed a Safeway en route to stops at Walgreens and Metropolitan Market within a few blocks of my house.

But for the sake of speed and convenience and this test, I browsed the Amazon Now selection looking for a few items we could use. I chose a Red Baron frozen pizza ($4.37); 365 by Whole Foods Market multigrain bread ($2.85); a 4-pack of Duracell AA batteries ($5.47); Saltine crackers ($4.05); Sabra classic hummus ($3.95); and a 6-ounce pack of blackberries ($2.17).

The six items totaled $22.86, plus the $3.99 delivery fee, 64 cents in tax, and a $3 tip for the driver — $30.49 total.

There’s either a reason why my wife does all the shopping or groceries really are very expensive these days, because $30 feels like a lot for six items. Although, $7 of that does include delivery fee and tip — the price of on-demand convenience!

The tracking

I placed the order at 12:38 p.m. and the Amazon app and a confirmation email both immediately estimated that delivery time would be 1:05 p.m.

A status bar in the app showed where my items would be in the chain of events: ordered, packed, out for delivery, and delivered.

Within just a few minutes the status changed from ordered to out for delivery, and I watched as a small Amazon vehicle icon made its way west across Seattle toward my house. The delivery estimate time dropped a couple minutes to 1:02 p.m.

When a white van showed up in front of my house in less than 10 minutes I was sure this story was going to go in a different direction about just how speedy Amazon Now is. But my neighbor was getting a bunch of stuff delivered from IKEA — no one shops in stores anymore, I guess.

For what it’s worth, transportation software company INRIX released its annual Global Traffic Scorecard this week, with details on how much time people lose sitting in traffic. INRIX says Seattle congestion is climbing again, especially in last-mile corridors that delivery fleets rely on.

“The [Amazon Now service] may end up distributing demand more evenly across the transportation network, rather than concentrating congestion via larger hubs,” Bob Pishue, transportation analyst at INRIX, told GeekWire.

The delivery

I watched via the app as the Amazon vehicle icon neared my house and I stepped onto my front porch at 1 p.m. to see my driver arrive. Wearing his blue Amazon vest, the driver placed a brown paper Amazon Now bag in my hand for what amounted to a 23-minute process from start to finish.

The driver said he made his pickup from an Amazon Now-specific facility that is located near a Whole Foods location at Roosevelt Way NE and NE 64th Street — roughly 3.5 miles or 15 minutes from my house.

The driver had not heard anything about the planned Amazon Now delivery hub just down the road from my house in Ballard, at 5100 15th Ave. NW.

The groceries

The six items I ordered were packed as neatly as you’d expect, even if the loaf of bread did get a little smooshed.

The frozen pizza was still cold, and so was the hummus. The blackberries looked like any random, small pack of blackberries I might find in the fridge and finish off in one sitting.

The batteries were really the only thing I needed at the moment, and I’d have preferred to be able to buy a more economical pack of 12 or 20, but a four pack was the only option. Maybe four batteries is all anyone needs from their fast-delivery convenience store.

Final thoughts

I’m old school-ish. I like going to the grocery store. I like seeing people, browsing aisles, and talking to the cashier (if they haven’t all been replaced by self-checkout). We’re not in Covid times. No part of me really needs or wants a bag of six random grocery items quickly delivered to my front porch in the name of convenience.

I’m clearly not the target audience for Amazon Now. My 18-year-old watched me as I stood at the window waiting for the driver and asked, “What is it, like DoorDash?”

“I guess so,” I said.

But if I was sick on my couch and wanted soup, Saltines and a ginger ale in 30 minutes or less, and didn’t want to move to go get it, I might use the service again.

Or if I’d already been to the store that day and forgot some items that were needed for dinner, I could see biting the bullet. Especially if the drive back to the grocery store was not so quick.

While at Met Market earlier that morning, I watched a woman in self-checkout pull at her receipt and the whole roll of tape fell out of the machine and rolled across the floor unspooling.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it!” said the human employee monitoring self-checkers. “I need to show I’m essential.”

Amazon has agreed to pay more than $3.7 million to settle claims with the City of Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards (OLS) over allegations that it violated ordinances protecting gig and app-based workers during the pandemic.

OLS said in a news release Wednesday that Amazon only provided premium pay and paid sick and safe time (PSST) to workers when they performed deliveries for Amazon Flex’s food or grocery business lines — but not to workers who performed package deliveries from Amazon’s warehouses.

Amazon Flex uses independent contractors that drive their own vehicles to deliver items for Amazon business lines.

Amazon denied the allegations, but will pay $3,777,924.10, consisting of settlement payments and credits to 10,968 affected workers and $20,000 in fines to the City of Seattle.

The alleged violations cover three city ordinances: Gig Worker Premium Pay, Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time, and App-Based Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time.

OLS alleged that in violation of the Gig Worker Premium Pay ordinance, between Aug. 27, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2022, Amazon failed to provide premium pay to Amazon Flex gig workers for deliveries with a pick-up and/or drop-off in Seattle that were not for its food/grocery business lines.

OLS further alleged violations of the Gig Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time and the App-Based Worker Paid Sick and Safe Time ordinances between Jan. 31, 2021, and Jan. 12, 2024. The agency said Amazon Flex failed to establish an accessible system for gig workers to request and use PSST for workers that were not delivering for its food/grocery business lines, and it failed to provide correct monthly PSST notification to workers that were not delivering food/grocery.

“Gig workers served on the frontlines throughout the pandemic, providing critical services like grocery and food delivery to our vulnerable neighbors and elders,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement. “These workers remain a valued part of our workforce today and deserve fair pay and protections.”

The Gig Worker Premium Pay and Gig Worker PSST ordinances were temporary ordinances enacted during the pandemic to allow gig workers access to extra pay and sick leave benefits. With the lifting of the mayor’s emergency order on Oct. 31, 2022, the two ordinances are no longer in effect.

The settlement with Amazon Flex is the second largest in OLS history, according to OLS Director Steven Marchese.

In August, Uber Eats agreed to pay $15 million to more than 16,000 delivery workers in Seattle over allegations that the tech giant violated laws regulating how workers are paid. A majority of that settlement was related to the city’s Independent Contractor Protections (ICP) Ordinance, which passed in 2021 and aims to ensure pay transparency. 

Affected Amazon Flex workers can expect settlement payments starting around Jan. 1, according to OLS.

Update: Amazon provided the following statement to GeekWire on Wednesday:

“The Puget Sound region is our home, and we’re proud to serve customers here while supporting the community through good job opportunities, support for local small businesses and organizations, and hundreds of millions in local investments. We’ve always complied with Seattle laws relating to providing paid sick and safe time to delivery partners — including when the City Council enacted emergency measures during the pandemic for food delivery app-based workers, and following the 2024 expansion of the rule to include all app-based workers. While we strongly disagree with OLS on the facts of this matter, we’re pleased to put it behind us and remain focused on continuing to improve the experience for our customers and the drivers who deliver to them.”

Editor’s note: This series profiles six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized Dec. 11 at the GeekWire Gala. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.

Plenty of startup founders and product builders envision what they’re making as something that will simplify processes or improve workflow for customers. Kiana Ehsani sees her creation as a means to spending more time outdoors.

Certainly there’s much more to it than that, but when Ehsani — the co-founder and CEO of Seattle AI startup Vercept — is running an ultramarathon, climbing up a mountain or skiing down one, she can’t help but consider how her technology makes it all the more enjoyable.

“I’m just the happiest when I’m in nature, when I’m not behind my computer, letting my mind be present in the moment, listening to the steps of my foot on the trail, or on snow or ice,” Ehsani said.

It’s what motivated her and her colleagues at Vercept to build Vy, an AI product that “sees” and understands computer screens like a human would. It records a user performing tasks across different software or websites — and then autonomously runs the same workflow from a natural language command.

The idea is to use AI to automate repetitive tasks, like entering data, producing video content, organizing invoices, and more. And Ehsani said Vy makes it so not everyone needs to know how to work so many specialized software programs.

“I don’t want to become skilled in every single dimension that exists out there,” she said. “The more time you’re not spending on repetitive work that is not using your brain power, then the more time you have to be creative.”

Ehsani’s goal is to be able to send emails or check code and Slack messages when she’s somewhere in nature without good internet service. Vy handles the tasks on its own and reports back about what it completed.

“I am most creative when I’m on a hike,” she said. “If I could just have that more often, to be able to have that creative mind, flowing and producing more, and I didn’t have to be stuck behind the desk, then the world would be my playground.”

‘Repeatedly transformed herself’

Ehsani’s journey to AI innovator and Seattle startup founder started in Iran, where she lived until she graduated from Sharif University. She ranked 64th in the country’s University Entrance Exam.

“I was a geek,” she said. “I was publishing papers as an undergrad, and I would go and give talks at conferences internationally, and I was so proud of what I was doing.”

She came to the U.S. in 2015 to get her Master’s and PhD in computer science at the University of Washington.

“Within the first year I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of possibility in AI and I want to get more involved,'” Ehsani said.

After internships at Google and Meta, she joined Seattle’s Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) where she spent four years, overseeing the Ai2 robotics and embodied artificial intelligence teams as a senior researcher.

At the end of 2024, Ehsani launched Vercept alongside Oren Etzioni, the longtime AI specialist and UW professor who was founding CEO of Ai2. They were joined by Matt Deitke, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick.

Etzioni said that while some people are “all heart” — good people with high emotional intelligence — or “all brain” — smart, sharp and cerebral — it’s rare to find someone who is both. Ehsani, who he called brilliant, dedicated and intuitive, is that person.

“One uncommon thing about Kiana is how she has repeatedly transformed herself,” Etzioni said via email. “From a brilliant theoretician in Iran to a creative and award-winning vision and robotics researcher at UW and Ai2, to kick-ass founder and CEO now. And the best is yet to come!”

Competing with fewer resources

Ehsani remembers being frustrated and bored by the challenges that AI was being tasked to solve, such as simple image classification, just 10 years ago. She wanted to solve real problems and show that AI could interact with the real world.

That mindset drove her interest in computer vision and robotics research. But again, she grew frustrated by the slow pace of hardware development and decided she wanted to work with AI models and virtual robots that take actions on behalf of a user.

Growing up in Iran she had become accustomed to limited resources. Working in academia and then in research for a nonprofit, she again had to think outside the box and find ways to compete against big AI labs.

She still embraces a scrappy startup mentality as Vercept competes against OpenAI (Operator), Google (Project Mariner), Amazon (Nova Act), and others with tools that automate tasks across browsers and apps, fueled by advances in generative AI.

“That’s the mindset that made me grow more, and that’s why at Vercept we are training models a lot more efficiently and less resource-heavy than anyone out there,” she said. “We love being scrappy and proving that you don’t need billions and trillions of dollars to make AI work.”

Just this week, Vercept launched a newly built version of Vy that works on both Windows and MacOS. Ehsani said the app is more robust and Vercept’s benchmark results have improved drastically.

The startup has grown to a team of 12 and in June raised a $16 million seed round. In July, Ehsani lost Deitke, one of her co-founders, who was lured by Meta to join its newly formed Superintelligence Lab.

Deitke called Ehsani “an incredible leader and visionary” whose strong background in robotics makes her extremely well suited for working at the frontier of computer use, which he said is really just robotics without many of the challenges of the physical world.

“Working with her is infectious and inspiring,” Deitke said. “She has an incredible work ethic and is constantly energized and comes up with amazing ideas while brainstorming that only become obvious to the rest of us after a while.”

But he said more than anything, Ehsani’s a “tremendous person” who leaves a lasting mark with her kindness and ambition.

“She’s truly an exceptional person,” Deitke said.

Several weeks ago, Ehsani was challenging herself in nature yet again, this time with a 50k ultramarathon that featured 8,000 feet of elevation gain.

Freezing, thirsty, and dragging herself up a hill, she likened the race to running a startup, writing on LinkedIn about how despite everything going wrong and plans changing last minute, she still had to stay flexible and believe she’d make it, even when others seemed ahead.

“That’s the story of my life,” she told GeekWire. “I live that every day.”

Embattled electric bike maker Rad Power Bikes is facing another challenge as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a warning to consumers Monday to stop using some of the Seattle-based company’s bikes because of danger posed by their lithium-ion batteries.

The product safety warning urges consumers to immediately remove and dispose of hazardous batteries that “can unexpectedly ignite and explode, posing a fire hazard to consumers, especially when the battery or the harness has been exposed to water and debris.”

The CPSC said Rad “has refused to agree to an acceptable recall” for the batteries, which are manufactured in China.

The batteries were sold as replacements and with a variety of Rad bikes via Rad’s website, Best Buy stores and independent bike shops. The battery model number (HL-RP-S1304 or RP-1304) is printed on a label on the back or rear of the battery and bike models included: RadWagon 4, RadCity HS 4, RadRover High Step 5, RadCity Step Thru 3, RadRover Step Thru 1, RadRunner 2, RadRunner 1, RadRunner Plus, and RadExpand 5.

The report adds another significant obstacle to Rad’s continued operations. Earlier this month, Rad revealed that it was struggling to survive due to financial difficulties, and the e-bike seller said that it was in danger of shutting down by early January.

On Monday, Rad disputed the CPSC’s findings. “Rad Power Bikes firmly stands behind our batteries and our reputation as leaders in the e-bike industry, and strongly disagrees with the CPSC’s characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe,” the company said in a lengthy statement provided to GeekWire (in full below).

Rad said the significant cost of CPSC’s all-or-nothing recall demand would force Rad to shut down immediately with no way to support its riders or employees.

CPSC Warns Consumers to Immediately Stop Using Batteries for E-Bikes from Rad Power Bikes Due to Fire Hazard; Risk of Serious Injury or Death www.cpsc.gov/Warnings/202…

— U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (@cpsc.gov) 2025-11-24T19:03:26.293Z

Rad said it offered “multiple good-faith solutions” to address CPSC’s concerns over at least 31 reports of fire, including what the agency said were 12 reports of property damage caused by Rad batteries, totaling approximately $734,500.

Rad said the incident rate associated with the batteries in the CPSC’s notice is a fraction of one percent.

“While that number is low, we know even one incident is one too many, and we are heartbroken by any report involving our products,” the company’s statement read.

The company said its batteries were tested by independent third-party labs as part of its typical product testing and again during the CPSC investigation, “and confirmed compliance with the highest industry standards.”

Rad upgraded its bikes to what it calls the Rad Safe Shield battery in early 2024, and the company said it offered to upgrade consumers to those batteries at a substantial discount as part of one of its solutions during the CPSC investigation.

The company stressed in its statement that all lithium-ion batteries, not just in e-bikes, can pose a fire risk if improperly handled or exposed to significant water, and the company promotes proper care and maintenance in its user manuals and customer safety guides.

Rad Power Bikes, headquartered in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, launched as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2015.

The company saw huge 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.

The company has attracted nearly 700,000 riders around the globe, but a series of missteps and macroeconomic challenges in recent years have led to more than seven rounds of layoffs and a remarkable downfall.

A spokesperson told GeekWire on Monday that Rad’s filing of a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the Washington state Employment Security Department earlier this month was due to the company’s financial circumstances and its obligation to comply with state law. It was not related to the CPSC investigation.

Three years ago, Rad issued a recall on its RadWagon 4 electric cargo bikes over an issue with tires and rim strips that created a fall and crash hazard.

In 2023, The New York Times reported on a rise in micro-mobility device fires or overheating incidents caused by poorly made batteries that the CPSC said was particularly acute in densely populated areas like New York City.

The CPSC urged consumers on Monday to immediately remove affected batteries and dispose of them following local hazardous waste procedures.

Rad Power Bikes statement regarding CPSC warning:

Rad Power Bikes firmly stands behind our batteries and our reputation as leaders in the ebike industry, and strongly disagrees with the CPSC’s characterization of certain Rad batteries as defective or unsafe.

We have a long and well-documented track record of building safe, reliable ebikes equipped with batteries that meet or exceed rigorous international safety standards, including UL-2271 and UL-2849. The CPSC proposed requiring these UL standards in January 2025, but has yet to adopt them. Rad ebikes have met these standards for years.

Reputable, independent third-party labs tested Rad’s batteries, both as part of our typical product testing and again during the CPSC investigation, and confirmed compliance with the highest industry standards. Our understanding is that the CPSC does not dispute the conclusions of these tests. It is also our understanding that the battery itself was not independently examined per industry-accepted test standards.   

Context Matters

The incident rate associated with the batteries in the CPSC’s notice is a fraction of one percent. While that number is low, we know even one incident is one too many, and we are heartbroken by any report involving our products.

It is also widely understood that all lithium-ion batteries—whether in ebikes, e-scooters, laptops, or power tools—can pose a fire risk if damaged, improperly charged, exposed to excess moisture, subjected to extreme temperatures or improper modifications to the electrical components, all of which Rad repeatedly advises against in user manuals and customer safety guides. Contrary to the CPSC’s statement, mere exposure to water and debris does not create a hazard; rather, significant water exposure, as warned against in our manuals, can pose a hazard.

These risks apply across industries and exist even in products that are fully UL compliant. Ebike batteries are significantly more powerful than household device batteries, which is why proper care and maintenance are so important and why Rad continues to invest in rider education and safety innovation.

Rad’s Cooperation with the CPSC

Rad hoped this process would be an opportunity to work with the agency and others in the industry to improve rider education and offer clearer, more consistent safety guidance on how to use and store ebikes and their batteries safely. 

Rad offered multiple good-faith solutions to address the agency’s concerns, including offering consumers an opportunity to upgrade to Safe Shield batteries (described below) at a substantial discount. CPSC rejected this opportunity.  The significant cost of the all-or-nothing demand would force Rad to shut its doors immediately, leaving no way to support our riders or our employees. 

A Commitment to Safety and Innovation

Rad has been a pioneer in promoting and advancing energy-efficient transportation, and our efforts to innovate and build safer, better batteries led to the development of the Rad Safe Shield battery. However, a product that incorporates new, safer, and better technology does not thereby mean that preceding products are not safe or defective. For example, when anti-lock brakes were developed, that did not render earlier cars unsafe; it simply meant a better, safer technology was available to consumers. 

That kind of thinking discourages innovation and limits the accessibility that ebikes bring to millions of people. Without the adoption of clear, common-sense standards, no electric bike manufacturer can operate with confidence. 

Previously:

• The rise and fall of Rad Power Bikes: From breakout success to the brink of shutdown
• Rad Power Bikes faces possible shutdown as it tries to survive ‘significant financial challenges’