Microsoft's big buyout, Amazon's trillion-dollar future, and an AI wearable reviews our show

This week: Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, including some executives. We discuss what's behind the offer, why buyout stories draw so much interest from readers, and how it fits with a blockbuster quarter that included $10 billion in reven…

Exit interview: Microsoft’s comms chief on CEOs, reporters, what he got wrong, and stories that stuck

This week: Microsoft’s longtime communications chief, Frank X. Shaw, looks back on nearly three decades of telling the company’s story as he prepares to leave at the end of the year. Joined by veteran Microsoft reporter and GeekWire contributing writer Mary Jo Foley, Shaw talks about working for Bi…

Amazon’s new AI wearable, Booking's return to Expedia's backyard, and LinkedIn’s not-so-Seattle startup list

We start this week's GeekWire Podcast by opening the listener mailbag, highlighting some recent comments and emails that set a new standard for critical feedback, in different ways. We discuss Vayo, the AI travel venture Booking Holdings is launching in Seattle, home of its biggest rival, Expedia.…

White House vs. Microsoft, AI fighter jets, and a visit to a startup founder's Seattle recording studio

This week, we take the GeekWire Podcast to Front Burner Studios near Pike Place Market, where our host is studio co-owner Seth Paul, who's also co-founder and CEO of the Seattle security startup Qinsay. We discuss the White House crackdown on Microsoft’s green-card sponsorships, hours before Presi…

Seattle and San Francisco: Big tech, political backlash and the AI boom

This week, GeekWire co-founder John Cook joins University of Washington historian Margaret O'Mara, author of "The Code," and San Francisco journalist Jonathan Weber, author of "City on the Edge," for a live joint taping with the Blue City Blues podcast at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. With…

Live show: Amazon, Meta and the fight over the future of AI; Plus, is Seattle still the place to build?

This week: Amazon is blocking Meta's new Muse AI assistant from shopping on Amazon.com, saying the agent doesn't identify itself and violates the site's conditions of use. We explain why the standoff is an early sign of a much bigger fight over whether AI agents can use websites and apps on people'…

AI meets real estate, with Zillow's engineering SVP Toby Roberts

On this week's show, recorded live at Atmosphere Seattle on the shores of Lake Union, Zillow Senior Vice President of Engineering Toby Roberts joins us to talk about what AI is doing to the business of buying and selling homes. The show was recorded in partnership with Real Estate At Work, the net…

Study warns Seattle over-relies on Big Tech; Seattle Times v. Microsoft; Apple's iPhone Duo echoes the past

This week: A study commissioned by the City of Seattle warns that the city is not in decline but is in danger, finding that 10 companies, nine of them in tech, pay three-quarters of the payroll tax on large employers, and that the tax structure uniquely penalizes the hiring of senior, high-compensa…

NBA's Ballmer crackdown echoes Microsoft antitrust, SF vs. Seattle housing, and a Seahawks tech twist

This week: The NBA suspends former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a year and hits the Clippers with $30 million in fines and five lost draft picks over allegedly sham endorsement deals for Kawhi Leonard, drawing comparisons to the Microsoft antitrust era. A new Redfin report says San Francisco's …

Bill Gates in his own words: How he's using AI, and why he's worried about the future

This week: Bill Gates published a new essay warning that the AI industry is crossing the safety lines it set for itself, and that nobody is preparing for what's coming. At 70 years old, he also uses AI more than most people half his age, and he finds it enthralling, as you'll hear in highlights fro…