This week on the show: Mark Zuckerberg's superyacht arrives in Seattle the same day Meta discloses nearly 1,400 local layoffs, robot pizza startup Picnic flames out and sells to a mystery buyer, and corporate America confronts the rising cost of AI, including the leaderboard-gaming practice known as "tokenmaxxing." And we return to the theme of billionaire yachts for our trivia challenge.

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. 

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On this special episode, Eric Ries, author of the 2011 bestseller "The Lean Startup," discusses his new book, "Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great."

Ries explains why he's redefining profit as the maximization of human flourishing, reveals his role advising Anthropic's founders on their corporate structure, and makes the case that the era of shareholder primacy is already over. He also discusses the fall of Whole Foods, the Musk v. OpenAI trial, and why he believes mission-controlled companies dramatically outperform.

GeekWire's Todd Bishop recorded this conversation with Ries after interviewing him on stage at Seattle Flow Startup Day on May 15. 

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This week on a supersized Memorial Day Weekend edition of the GeekWire Podcast: A massive IPO filing from SpaceX includes new details about Elon Musk's Starlink business and its satellite factory in Redmond. Jeff Bezos talks about wealth, inequality and eventually tech in an hour-long CNBC appearance. John goes to World Cup ticketing hell and turns to ChatGPT and Gemini when FIFA's support falls short. And a special Sam Altman/Seattle startup edition of GeekWire Trivia.

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.

Related Links:

• SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing
• From the archives: SpaceX founder Elon Musk reveals new $10B 'Space Internet' plan at private Seattle event 
• CNBC: Jeff Bezos blasts New York City school spending: It doesn’t get better outcomes
• Jeff Bezos describes his $38B startup Prometheus for the first time: ‘Nothing to do with robotics’
• Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption
• Seattle, we've got an image problem
• The view from Bellevue: Seattle has the foundation for future growth — if it can fix its taxes
• Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has a new gig — startup CEO
• Why this Seattle-area startup is putting its name on the front of an English Premier League soccer team
• CEO of Paul Allen’s $3.1B science and tech fund steps down less than a year after launch
• Award-winning Business Journal photographer Anthony Bolante dies at 58
• 'Soma' Somasegar, 1966-2026: Microsoft and Madrona leader was a champion of developers and startups

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Brian Evergreen worked in AI at Microsoft from 2016 to 2023, including a role helping Fortune 500 executives develop their AI strategies. He kept seeing the same pattern: most of those projects were failing. He set out to figure out why, and the answer became his book, Autonomous Transformation. In this live recording for GeekWire's Agents of Transformation series, presented by Accenture, Evergreen explains what companies keep getting wrong, and why vision matters more than technology.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.

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This week: As the Musk v. OpenAI trial heads to the jury, we dig into what Microsoft's internal board memos and executive testimony revealed about the origins of the company's massive bet on AI, and why this case matters beyond the billionaire drama. Plus, Howard Schultz, a former Washington governor, and the tech community weigh in on whether Seattle is squandering its edge as an innovation capital. And Todd owes John and the United Kingdom an apology.

RELATED STORIES AND LINKS

• Microsoft's CTO testifies about email at the heart of Elon Musk's allegations against the tech giant
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's stake in Helion Energy draws scrutiny in Musk trial and on Capitol Hill
• 'Strong, strong no': New filing reveals who Microsoft favored — and opposed — for OpenAI's board
• Musk v. Altman: Satya Nadella was worried about Microsoft being 'the next IBM' in OpenAI deal
• Are we on a Road to Nowhere? Seattle's growth masks deeper anxieties about its future
• Microsoft's multi-agent AI system tops Anthropic's Mythos on cybersecurity benchmark
• Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made (Wall Street Journal, by Howard Schultz)
• Association of Washington Business 2026 Spring Summit (TVW, featuring former Gov. Chris Gregoire and former AG Rob McKenna)

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook

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This week on the show: Conversations with finalists and special guests at the annual GeekWire Awards about AI, innovation, startups, and the forces reshaping their industries, plus a special trivia challenge marking GeekWire's 15th year hosting the event. Guests include:

• Luis Poggi, CEO of HouseWhisper AI, winner of CEO of the Year
• Tracy Drinkwater, founder of the Seattle Universal Math Museum, STEM Educator of the Year honoree
• Ryan James, CEO of Dopl Technologies, finalist for Startup of the Year
• Laura Ruderman, CEO of the Technology Alliance
• Ross Finman, CEO of Augmodo, finalist for Hardware/Robotics/Physical AI of the Year
• Mohammad Rastegari, CEO of ElastixAI, finalist for Startup of the Year

Related stories

• 2026 GeekWire Awards revealed: Big winners — and big love for Seattle — at annual tech celebration
• Photos: Inside the 2026 GeekWire Awards

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop

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This week on the show: Todd reports from inside the Oakland federal courthouse where Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft, with jury selection revealing just how hard it is to find anyone neutral about Musk these days.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership the same morning the trial began — and less than 24 hours later, OpenAI's models landed on Amazon's cloud.

Then, Microsoft and Amazon both dropped blockbuster earnings, with Azure up 40%, AWS posting its fastest growth in 15 quarters, and the two companies combining for nearly $400 billion in capital spending this year alone.

We also discuss a wild Semafor story about a serial entrepreneur who handed his entire life over to an AI agent that now emails people as him, sets up meetings without his knowledge, and even ordered him a computer.

Plus, John tells the story of how Seattle's Flying Fish Partners — a VC firm with less than $250 million under management — hustled its way into a $1.1 billion seed round alongside Sequoia, Google, and Nvidia.

And we tackle the quickly debunked rumor that Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook might buy the Seahawks. And finally, the return of the GeekWire Trivia Challenge.

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Bill Hilf has spent decades enterprise tech, open-source technologies, and AI, from IBM and Microsoft to running Paul Allen's portfolio as the CEO of Vulcan. He now chairs the Allen Institute for AI and American Prairie. His debut sci-fi novel, "The Disruption," imagines AI gone very wrong, and implicitly challenges the industry to think differently about how it's building our real future today.

With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.

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Microsoft is offering a voluntary retirement program for the first time in its history, with thousands of U.S. employees eligible. GeekWire's Todd Bishop joins KIRO Newsradio hosts Angela Poe Russell and Mike Lewis to break down the details, what makes this so unusual in the tech industry, and what it says about the company's approach to managing costs in the AI era. 

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, a week of Seattle-area startup news shows how the AI era is reshaping the regional tech scene. Q1 venture numbers reveal bigger checks going to fewer companies, with Seattle slipping behind the likes of Austin and Miami on deal volume.

And yet the distributed nature of modern startups is complicating what it even means to be a regional tech hub. (Does a mailbox in Pioneer Square really count as a Seattle headquarters?)

Founders and CEOs are navigating the shakeout in different ways. Those with enough cash in the bank are eyeing strategic acquisitions, including opportunities to absorb startups caught up in the AI shakeout.

Meanwhile, many startup leaders are completely rethinking how they hire and expand. More than a third of the GeekWire 200, our ranking of the top Pacific Northwest startups, saw year-over-year employment declines, as agents boost individual productivity and start to reshape the workforce.

Plus: Andy Jassy's shareholder letter signals Amazon is making bets again, in areas including chips and robotics. Driving home the point, the tech giant's ambitious Globalstar acquisition effectively means it's inheriting Apple's satellite roadmap.

And of course we have to talk about Allbirds. The sustainable shoe brand, which once challenged Amazon over knock-off sneakers, pivoted to AI infrastructure and saw its stock soar.

In our final segment, a trivia challenge on the No. 1 companies in GeekWire 200 history.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit's 2 Line as we ride the world's first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle's Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft's campus in Redmond.

Along the way, we talk tech news, chat with fellow passengers, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering from Sound Transit's Henry Bendon.

After arriving in Redmond, we sit down with Microsoft President Brad Smith to talk about the company's two-decade role in making the Crosslake Connection a reality — and hit him with a trivia question he didn't see coming.

We also discuss Anduril's autonomous warship facility on Seattle's ship canal, golf star Bryson DeChambeau's acquisition of Bellevue-based Sportsbox AI ahead of the Masters, and more.

With GeekWire's John Cook, Todd Bishop, and Kurt Schlosser. Edited by Curt Milton.

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