Mark Griffith — Amazon employee No. 1,037 and the third hire for what would become Fulfillment by Amazon — is retiring after more than two decades with the Seattle-area tech giant.
Griffith spent most of his career at FBA, which handles shipping, customer service, and returns for third-party businesses. He was director of software engineering for FBA and then for Amazon payments. His final role was director of seller fulfillment services.
Griffith penned a lengthy reflection on Substack in which he shares his career journey, what he learned from working at the company, and pithy personal and professional advice.
“I have given my ALL to Amazon for 8 hours+ a day for a long time – but I’ve never given it everything – that is too dangerous – I don’t live to work – I work to live. I work hard; I try to work empathetically and smart and help others – but I am ready to let others carry on,” Griffith said.
— DigitalOcean named Vinay Kumar as chief product and technology officer of the infrastructure-as-a-service company. Kumar, based in Seattle, was previously with Oracle for more than 11 years, leaving the role of senior vice president of cloud engineering.
Paddy Srinivasan, CEO of DigitalOcean, highlighted Kumar’s experience building cloud and AI platforms at scale, his “tremendous product strategy acumen” and his understanding of the “operational rigor required for mission-critical workloads.”
— Chris Hundley has joined Seattle RFID tech company Impinj as executive VP of enterprise solutions.
“Impinj has built an incredible foundation as the market leader in RAIN RFID, with strong momentum helping businesses wirelessly connect billions of items across use cases including loss prevention, shipment verification, and asset management,” Hundley said on LinkedIn.
Hundley is the founder and former CEO of the marketing automation startup Siftrock, which was acquired by Drift in 2018. He was also chief technology officer and president of AudioEye, which aimed to make digital technology inclusive for people with disabilities.
— Lindsay Bayne is now senior director of advocacy at UiPath, a New York-based company that helps businesses automate repetitive, complex tasks.
Bayne was previously at Microsoft for more than a decade, leaving the role of director of the Growth Innovation and Strategy Team.
“I’m honored to join and partner with this incredibly talented team, advocate for our incredible customers, and help showcase the real-world impact of automation and AI,” Bayne said on LinkedIn.
— Christin Camacho is now head of go-to-market for BuildQ, an AI platform for clean energy development and due diligence. Camacho joins the company following nearly seven years at LevelTen Energy, a Seattle-based clean energy marketplace, where she served as vice president of marketing. She previously worked at Redfin.
“BuildQ’s AI accelerates every stage of development for large wind, solar, and storage projects. Ultimately, that means more clean energy projects get built, faster, and that’s a mission I’ve dedicated my career to,” Camacho said via email.
In her new role, Camacho will work with Maryssa Barron, a former LevelTen colleague and founder and CEO of BuildQ.
— Lowell Bander, founding general manager of Seattle’s 9Zero, is changing roles at the climate tech entrepreneurial hub. Bander is taking the title of ecosystem advisor as the organization looks for a new leader. Bander is also an advisor on Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s transportation and environment transition team.
— Nate Frazier is now community liaison for the Oregon AI Accelerator. The Portland organization aims to coordinate the state’s entrepreneurial groups, investors and universities to foster AI innovation.
— The Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology has named the first cohort for its SeaBridge Fellowship, a research training program. In March, the effort received a $10 million grant from the Washington Research Foundation. The scientists will receive two years of financial support plus funding for career development, mentorship training and networking. They include:
New year, new Startup Radar.
We’re back with our regular spotlight on early stage startups sprouting up in the Seattle region. For this edition, we’re featuring Axel AI, DrunR, Eluum, and profileAPI.
Read on for brief descriptions of each company — along with pitch assessments from “Mean VC,” a GPT-powered critic offering a mix of encouragement and constructive criticism.
Check out past Startup Radar posts here, and email me at taylor@geekwire.com to flag other companies and startup news.
Founded: 2025
The business: A self-described “reasoning layer” for retail media sales teams that aims to translate messy data into commercial narratives and proposals. The idea is to help sales teams spend less time on manual analysis and preparation. The bootstrapped company officially launched its MVP at CES and NRF 2026 earlier this month.
Leadership: CEO and co-founder Bobby Figueroa previously founded Gradient, another Seattle-based commerce insights company that was acquired by Criteo. He was also an exec at Amazon. Axel’s leadership and advisory team includes former sales and advertising leaders at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Mean VC: “You’re targeting a real friction point — sales teams juggling fragmented data with limited time to craft a compelling narrative. The pedigree helps, but long-term success will hinge on whether your product drives actual revenue lift, not just cleaner decks. I’d focus on embedding directly into the sales team’s existing workflow — don’t make users open another tool, make yours the one that quietly does the heavy lifting behind the scenes.”
Founded: 2024
The business: A nutrition app that provides personalized guidance based on users’ goals and preferences, particularly while dining out or ordering food online. DrunR is running a closed beta in Seattle with restaurants and users, including people using GLP-1 medication. The startup is part of the WTIA Founder Cohort 13 program.
Leadership: Founder and CEO Yaya Ali is a financial analyst at Perkins Coie and previously worked for King County and Amazon. He also has food operations experience. David Greene, the company’s CTO, is a software engineer at Capital One and previously worked at Moody’s.
Mean VC: “The intersection of nutrition, personalization, and GLP-1s is timely — especially as eating habits shift alongside new weight-loss drugs. The challenge will be making the app feel essential day-to-day, not just ‘nice to have’ after a restaurant meal or clinic visit. I’d zero in on a high-frequency use case — something that keeps users opening the app daily, not just when they’re thinking about dinner.”
Founded: 2024
The business: A new take on social media with a product that helps people organize their personal memories, stories, and digital artifacts into one user-controlled system. Built on community-driven moderation and works across different platforms. The bootstrapped company is onboarding early users and plans to launch a MVP later this year.
Leadership: CEO and co-founder Bilkay Rose was a VP at tax software company Avalara and a director at Clearwire. Other co-founders include CTO Dale Rector, who spent three decades at Microsoft, and Jennifer Gianola, also a former exec at Avalara.
Mean VC: “The concept taps into a real emotional need — people are overwhelmed by digital clutter and increasingly skeptical of algorithm-driven feeds. The key will be showing how your platform earns daily use without relying on dopamine loops. I’d push to define a sharp use case first — memory curation is broad, so lead with one thing people urgently want to preserve, then expand once you’ve earned their trust.”
Founded: 2024
The business: A business data layer for developers building AI-native chat, copilot, and agentic tools for go-to-market. Its platform tracks more than 10,000 signals across more than 10 million companies and 500 million professionals. The company, which was previously a sales AI agent product called Truebase, has raised $2 million in funding.
Leadership: Founder and CEO Wissam Tabbara has sold two startups and spent more than six years at Microsoft in the 2000s.
Mean VC: “The shift from product to platform is smart — selling infrastructure to power GTM copilots has stronger upside than building another agent. But you’ll need to show that your data isn’t just broad, but relevant and timely enough to drive meaningful in-app decisions. I’d focus on becoming the plug-and-play GTM brain — make integration dead simple, and let other tools build magic on top of your stack.”
Overland AI, a Seattle-based startup that develops autonomous driving technology for rugged terrain, is expanding its reach beyond military applications.
The company this week revealed a partnership with The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), which is testing the use of Overland’s technology for wildfire response.
CAL FIRE used two of Overland’s self-driving 4-wheelers for resupply (food, water, battery delivery) and wildfire logistics missions at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. It’s the first time CAL FIRE has evaluated autonomous ground vehicle tech for its firefighting operations.
“When we started this company, we always saw our technology as being inherently dual-use — meaning that it could be used for both military and civilian applications,” said Stephanie Bonk, co-founder and president at Overland. “This is the first time we’re actually demonstrating that.”
Bonk said Overland’s technology “thrives” in a rugged environment where wildfires often occur.
Fire departments are testing various technologies to help manage wildfires, including AI-trained cameras that spot plumes of smoke.
Overland spun out of the University of Washington in 2022 and has inked various military-related partnerships, including a $18.6 million contract with the U.S. Army and Defense Innovation Unit. Overland also works with the U.S. Marine Corps and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a unit of the Department of Defense.
Last year the startup announced a $32 million funding round and opened a 22,000 square-foot production facility in Seattle.
The company is led by Bonk and CEO Byron Boots, a robotics researcher who leads the UW’s Robot Learning Laboratory and is the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
Overland is ranked No. 14 on the GeekWire 200, our list of top privately held startups across the Pacific Northwest. Its investors include 8VC, Point72 Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Ascend, Osage University Partners, and Caprock. The company has 101 employees, up from 58 people a year ago, according to LinkedIn data.
AIM Intelligent Machines (AIM), a Seattle-area startup developing software that lets bulldozers and excavators operate on their own, announced $4.9 million in new contracts with the U.S. Air Force to build and repair military bases and airfields.
Founded in 2021, AIM got its start in mining and construction, and is now expanding to defense applications. AIM’s technology works with existing equipment and is designed for dangerous or hard-to-reach places, including areas where equipment might be dropped in by parachute. One person can remotely manage an entire site of working vehicles.
For airfield repairs, the company’s tech can scan the area using sensors to create a 3D map of damage. Then autonomous machines clear debris and can repair the runway — all remotely and without people on the ground. Military advisors say the approach could speed up construction, reduce risk to personnel, and make it easier to deploy equipment in tough conditions.
Founded in 2021 and led by longtime engineers, AIM raised $50 million last year from investors including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Human Capital. The company is led by CEO Adam Sadilek, who previously spent nine years at Google working on confidential projects.
In a LinkedIn post this week, Sadilek wrote that “we’re asking the wrong questions about AI and work,” arguing that automation will enable construction companies to build more with their existing teams.
“The top line grows, but the bottom line doesn’t get ‘optimized’ into oblivion,” he wrote. “For example, each autonomous dozer we deploy uncovers, depending on the mineral type and current market price, between $3 million and $17 million in additional ore each season. Rather than replacing people, that gives them leverage. And yes, cost savings show up – fuel, maintenance, wear – but they’re not the main event.”
He added: “Instead of focusing on whether AI removes jobs, we should be focusing on whether we’ll use it to finally do more of the things we’ve always wanted but never had enough capacity to build.”
A three-person clean energy team in Seattle is chasing China in pursuit of an increasingly popular alternative to traditional lithium-ion batteries. Emerald Battery Labs, a startup working out of the University of Washington, recently raised just under $1.1 million in a pre-seed round to continue scaling its sodium-ion battery technology.
The burgeoning energy storage option avoids the use of lithium, which is highly sought, difficult to extract and has limited U.S. production. Sodium, by comparison, is much cheaper and comes from the same element that’s in table salt. The sodium-ion batteries also last longer and present fewer fire concerns.
Battery demand is rising rapidly as these systems pair with renewable, intermittent sources like sun and wind; enhance hydro dam capacity; provide backup power for data centers; power drones and defense devices; and work with EV charging stations to reduce grid strain during peak demand.
“As battery chemistries evolve, as technology evolves, people are going to find new ways to use energy storage technology,” said David Bell, Emerald’s co-founder and chief product officer.
A recent Sightline Climate survey of investors and entrepreneurs in climate tech selected sodium-ion batteries as a top-pick for a 2026 breakthrough technology, coming in just behind the use of AI for clean tech materials discovery.
But there’s already a clear leader in the space.
“China, with its powerful EV industry, has led the early push” into sodium-powered batteries, according to MIT Technology Review.
Chinese auto and battery makers Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., or CATL, and BYD are in hot pursuit of the technology, MIT reports. CATL claims to have a sodium-ion battery line operating at scale, while BYD is building its own massive production facility.
U.S. competitors include Peak Energy, Nanode Battery Technologies and Unigrid.
While this alternative chemistry offers numerous benefits, there’s an important trade off: it’s less energy dense — meaning sodium-ion batteries need to be larger than competing technologies to deliver the same amount of power.
Emerald is operating out of the UW’s CoMotion Labs and using the university’s Clean Energy Testbeds for fabrication work. The startup is scaling production and looking for partners to pilot test its products.
It plans to hire additional employees in the coming year. Emerald’s investors include Seattle-based E8, a network of angel investors that backs clean-tech companies; E8 members who directly invested; and an undisclosed family venture office.
Emerald’s founders bring deep battery experience:
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