Image created by Google Gemini based on the audio of this week’s GeekWire Podcast.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 people in the middle of an AI boom — and is it really a boom at all? We dig into the contradiction at the heart of Seattle’s tech scene, discussing Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s “world’s largest startup” rationale and what it says about the company’s culture and strategy. And we debate whether AI progress represents true transformation or the familiar signs of a tech bubble in the making.
Then we examine the vision of Cascadia high-speed rail — the ambitious plan to connect Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C., by bullet train. Is it the regional infrastructure needed to power the Pacific Northwest’s next chapter, or an expensive dream looking for a purpose?
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop
A life sciences panel at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference Oct. 29, 2025 in Seattle. From left: Marc Cummings, Life Science Washington; Dr. Bonnie Nagel, Oregon Health Sciences University; Dr. Tom Lynch, Fred Hutch Cancer Center. (“PhotosbyKim” Photo)
Leaders in the Pacific Northwest are largely bullish on the region’s continued economic success — but one threat to the region’s fiscal progress worries them in particular.
“What always strikes me, whether I’m in City Hall in Vancouver or Seattle or Portland, is that everybody talks about the same thing — the high cost of housing,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith at this week’s Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference in Seattle.
“It’s become an enormous barrier, not just for attracting new talent, but for enabling teachers and police officers and nurses and firefighters to live in the communities in which they serve,” he added.
Dr. Tom Lynch, president and director of Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center, was more succinct.
“My people can’t find places to live,” Lynch said during a Tuesday panel at the same event.
Those concerns are bolstered by research in a new report on the economic viability of the corridor running from Vancouver, B.C., through Seattle to Portland.
Housing costs were cited as one of the top threats to the region’s success, noting that Vancouver’s housing-cost-to-income-ratio disparity is among the worst in the world, while in Seattle median home prices relative to wages have doubled in the past 15 years. Portland reports a net out-migration as workers move to more affordable areas.
Other concerns include rising business costs and regulations, declining numbers of skilled workers and new restrictions on foreign talent immigrating to the U.S., and clean energy shortages.
Microsoft President Brad Smith speaking at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
“We’ve got to find ways to be able to increase the density of our housing, come up with creative solutions for allowing more families to be able to live close to where the jobs are,” Lynch said.
Smith agreed, adding, “The only way to dig ourselves out of this is to harness the power of the market through public-private partnerships, to recognize that zoning and permitting needs to be put to work to accelerate investment.”
Area tech giants have been pursuing those partnerships to tackle the challenge.
In 2019, Microsoft pledged $750 million to boost the affordable housing inventory and has helped build or retain 12,000 units in the region. Amazon in recent years has committed $3.4 billion for housing across three hubs nationally where it has large operations. The company in September celebrated a milestone of building or preserving 10,000 units in the Seattle area.
Despite the efforts, Smith said the shortage keeps worsening and in 2025, new construction starts are expected to be the lowest since before the Great Recession.
The city of Seattle, for one, is looking to sweeten a property-tax exemption deal for developers that could encourage construction and it’s also applying AI to permitting process in an effort to speed up projects.
Smith also promoted the long-held vision of a high-speed rail line in the Pacific Northwest that would make commutes much faster between growing urban hubs. But a panel Wednesday cautioned that dream is still many years out.
Ten years into a dream to connect Vancouver, B.C., Seattle and Portland via a high-speed rail line, stakeholders and backers of the mega-project said Wednesday that they’re still very much onboard — and to prepare for a long trip.
With a lengthy and uncertain timeline ahead, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, a speaker at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference in Seattle, cautioned many of those in attendance that they likely won’t live long enough to see high-speed rail in the Pacific Northwest.
“When you build big things, they cost big money,” LaHood said. “It took us 50 years to build the interstate system.”
LaHood said the key is to “get on board” now so that “our children and grandchildren” will reap the benefits.
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, left, discusses high-speed rail with Washington State Sen. Marko Liias onstage at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor annual conference in Seattle on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
At Cascadia Innovation Corridor’s annual event this week, much of the focus was on how to strengthen the cross-border partnership between three growing cities and numerous locales in between. Leaders discussed ideas around innovation, housing affordability, sustainability, and economic development. They signed a Memorandum of Reaffirmation to solidify commitments.
And Wednesday was about the enhanced transportation connectivity that could help drive it all, and the work that lies ahead in building a coalition of public and political support across the region, securing funding, jumpstarting planning, and more. Even producing videos like the new one below is part of the massive outreach under way.
Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, Cascadia Innovation Corridor’s chair, said that a decade ago, high-speed rail was just an idea. The next decade can be a defining one.
“You would have thought we were thinking of doing something in outer space by the reaction,” she said. “Today, it is much more than an idea, and we are actually moving forward. While we do have a long way to go, as you well know, we’re funding the first phase of planning built on one of the most unique coalitions in North America.”
Envisioning a mega-region akin to Silicon Valley, in which Vancouver, Seattle and Portland are each only an hour apart, Gregoire highlighted the possibilities that could come with high-speed mobility.
“A UW student can intern in Vancouver, a family in Puget Sound can explore a job in Portland, and a cancer researcher in Vancouver can get home for dinner after a shift in Seattle,” she said. “It’s a new way of living, working and connecting, one that expands what’s possible for everyone who calls Cascadia home.”
Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, chair of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, speaks at the group’s annual conference in Seattle on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
The pace to make the dream a reality has been anything but high-speed.
In 2017, Microsoft — which has an office in downtown Vancouver — gave $50,000 to a $300,000 effort led by Washington state to study a high-speed train proposal. In 2021, officials from Washington, Oregon and British Columbia signed a memorandum of understanding to form a committee to coordinate the plan.
Last year, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded the Washington State Department of Transportation $49.7 million to develop a service development plan for Cascadia High-Speed Rail. A timeline on WSDOT’s website points to 2028 for estimated completion of that plan, and for 2029 and beyond it simply says, “future phases to be determined.”
Cascadia is not alone in its quest for high-speed rail.
LaHood, a Republican cabinet member in the Obama administration, recalled the former president’s commitment to rail transportation. He said the Trump administration “clawing back” $4 billion in funding for California’s high-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles should not be considered a “death knell,” despite challenges in that state.
LaHood pointed to Brightline train projects in Florida, connecting Orlando and Miami, and Las Vegas, with a plan to offer high-speed connectivity to Southern California. Another plan in Texas would connect Houston and Dallas. All are evidence, he said, that this mode of transportation is what Americans want in order to avoid clogged highways and airports.
“Once the politicians catch on to what the people want, boom, you get the kind of rail transportation that people are clamoring for,” LaHood said.
Here are highlights from other speakers at the conference on Wednesday:
Chelsea Levy, Cascadia High-Speed Rail project manager for the Washington State Department of Transportation, during the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
WSDOT Secretary Julie Meredith pointed to big Seattle transportation infrastructure projects that transformed the city, including the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and construction of the SR 99 waterfront tunnel, as well as the new SR 520 floating bridge. Even as work will continue for years connecting communities via Link light rail, Meredith said, “I so often describe this program as one I’m most excited about, because it’s an opportunity for us to so fundamentally transform our region up and down the I-5 corridor,” Meredith said.
Chelsea Levy, Cascadia High-Speed Rail project manager, said the region can expect a 25% increase in population, or about 3.4 million more people, by 2050. “This pace and magnitude of growth really requires us to act,” Levy said. Among other things, WSDOT will need to integrate with B.C. and Oregon transportation networks and, Levy stressed, the scale and complexity of the project will require a streamlining of permitting processes across the 345-mile mega-region.
Hana Doubrava, a Vancouver-based corporate affairs director at Microsoft, leads the Cascadia initiative for the tech giant. She said the company’s support is not just symbolic, and that Microsoft believes modern, efficient transit and transportation options are essential for improved quality of life. “Cascadia is all about partnerships and relationships — despite the current geopolitics or baseball scores,” she said in a nod to Canada’s team, the Toronto Blue Jays, denying the Seattle Mariners a trip to the World Series.
Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and Microsoft President Brad Smith at the 2025 Cascade Innovation Corridor Conference. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
It’s rare for a tech executive to cue up a video mocking themselves — but that’s just what Microsoft President Brad Smith did on Tuesday at the Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference in Seattle. Smith played a clip from The Daily Show in which comedian Jon Stewart lampooned his and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s interviews about AI’s impact on jobs.
The segment poked fun at the idea that displaced workers might become “prompt engineers” — a new job Stewart rebranded as “types questions guy.”
It was a self-aware feature of a talk that balanced enthusiasm for artificial intelligence’s potential with sober reflections on its hype and potential pitfalls.
The Microsoft leader called AI the “next great general purpose technology” on par with electricity. He said AI will transform sectors including health, education, biotech, aerospace, agriculture, climate and others.
That was a theme during Tuesday’s event. Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, who leads the Cascadia Innovation Corridor group, kicked off the day by calling AI “a defining technology of our generation.”
Smith, who in his three decades at Microsoft has witnessed tech bubbles and bursts, also offered a “breadth of perspective” on AI that he hinted might be lacking in Silicon Valley.
“In so many ways, the sky is the limit,” Smith said. “That is exciting, but I don’t want to just be another tech bro who says, ‘Hey, great, here it comes. Get ready, get out your wallet.'”
AI-driven employment threats are becoming increasingly real in the tech sector and beyond. Amazon on Tuesday announced a huge round of layoffs, slashing 14,000 corporate and tech jobs. Earlier this year Microsoft laid off 15,000 employees worldwide. The cuts aren’t all tied to AI, but many executives are talking about worker efficiency gains thanks to the tech.
Despite the recent layoffs, many industry and elected leaders in the Cascadia region, which stretches from Vancouver, B.C., through Seattle and down to Portland, see AI as a promising economic engine that can build on the area’s strong tech foundation. That includes Microsoft and Amazon as well as a growing slate of AI startups, plus institutions such as the University of Washington, University of British Columbia, Allen Institute for AI and others.
But Smith — who manages to strike a persona blending tech evangelist, politician and favorite uncle — also acknowledged concerns about disparities in AI access, whether looking locally at rural versus urban divides, or the gap between AI use in affluent and low-income countries that lack widespread electricity and internet connections.
He also tackled the meta questions around the responsible use of AI and encouraged society to get out in front of the technology with appropriate guardrails.
“What are we trying to do as an industry, as a region, as a planet, as a species? Are we trying to build machines that are better than people? Are we trying to build machines that will help people become smarter and better?” he asked.
“If the experience that we’ve all had with social media over the last 15 years teaches us anything at all,” Smith continued, “it is that the best time to ask these questions and to debate them is before technology answers them for us.”
The downtown Seattle skyline. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
A new report exploring the potential for the Pacific Northwest to stake its claim as the global leader in responsible AI offers a paradoxical view. The Cascadia region, which includes Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., is described as a proven, promising player in the sphere — but with significant risks that threaten its success.
“We created companies that transformed global commerce,” writes former Gov. Chris Gregoire in a forward to the document. “Now we have the chance to add another chapter — one where Cascadia becomes the world’s standard-bearer for innovation that uplifts both people and planet.”
The Cascadia Innovation Corridor, which Gregoire chairs, released the report this morning as it kicks off its two-day conference. The economic advocacy group’s eighth annual event is being held in Seattle.
The study is built on an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group that ranks Cascadia’s three metro areas against 15 comparable regions in the U.S. and Canada for their economic competitiveness, including livability, workforce, and business and innovation climate. Seattle came in fourth behind Boston, Austin and Raleigh, while Portland ranked 13th and Vancouver 14th.
Over the past decade, the region’s gross domestic product and populations have both grown significantly, and when combined, their economies approach the 18th largest in the world.
Cascadia’s strengths, the report explains, include tech engines such as cloud giants Microsoft and Amazon in Washington, silicon chip manufacturing in Oregon, and quantum innovation in Vancouver, as well as academic excellence from the University of Washington, University of British Columbia and Oregon State University.
But as time goes on and as business and civic leaders aim for the prize of AI dominance, cracks in the system are increasingly troubling.
Business costs are rising and there are mounting regulatory concerns — but it’s a tricky picture. Seattle, for example, often turns to B&O and headcount taxes to cover costs, while the state struggles to balance budgets in the absence of an income tax.
Housing affordability is continuing to decline for many residents in these metro areas.
Skilled tech workers are leaving Portland, in particular, and Seattle relies heavily on foreign workers receiving H1-B visas, which are less certain under the Trump administration.
The clean, affordable energy that was once abundant in the Pacific Northwest is decreasingly available as droughts reduce river flows that drive hydropower dams and electricity demand increases with rapid data center growth.
The report notes that multiple regions around the U.S. and Canada have created AI-focused hubs with hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funding to bolster their hold on the sector.
New Jersey has a half-billion dollar “AI Moonshot” program including tax incentives and public-worker AI training programs; New York’s “Empire AI Consortium” has an AI computing training center at the University of Buffalo and startup supports; and California has a public-private task force to increase AI adoption within government services and connecting tech leaders with state agencies.
For its part, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a “responsible AI plan” this fall that provides guidelines for the municipality’s use of artificial intelligence and its support of the AI tech sector as an economic driver, which includes the earlier launches of the startup-focused AI House and Foundations.
But what the region really needs to succeed is a collaborative effort tapping all of the metro areas’ assets.
“For Cascadia, the lesson is clear: without a coordinated strategy that links our strengths in cloud computing, semiconductors, and research, we risk falling behind,” states the Cascadia Innovation Corridor report. “Acting together, we can position Cascadia not just to keep pace, but to lead.”
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