Silverback Therapeutics prices IPO at $21/share, will raise $241M in 4th Wash. state IPO of 2020

SIlverback Therapeutics CEO Laura Shawver. (Silverback Photo) Silverback Therapeutics will raise $241.5 million as the Seattle biotech company goes public Friday. Silverback priced its IPO on Thursday evening at $21 per share, which exceeded the high end of its expected range ($17 to $19). The company is selling 11.5 million shares. Founded in 2016,...

7h

President Trump signs an executive order guiding how federal agencies use AI tech

Artificial intelligence is expected to be an increasingly important policy issue. (Bigstock Illustration / Andrey Popov) President Donald Trump today signed an executive order that puts the White House Office of Management and Budget in charge of drawing up a roadmap for how federal agencies use artificial intelligence software. The roadmap, due for...

9h

Washington state ranks No. 2 nationwide for annual video game industry economic output at $11.6B

(Halo Infinite Photo) Washington state’s video games industry overtook Texas last year and claimed the No. 2 spot for total economic output as the U.S. video game industry grew to new heights yet again. Those are two takeaways from a new report published by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the games industry’s trade organization in the...

11h

AAA’s GIG car-sharing service expands in Seattle, filling void left by ReachNow, car2go, Lime

GIG CarShare will have nearly 400 Toyota Prius hybrid cars on Seattle’s streets. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Car-sharing is slowly making a comeback in Seattle. AAA’s GIG Car Share service launched this summer, filling a void left by ReachNow, car2go, and Lime — which all shut down in recent years after struggling to build a profitable business....

13h

NASA agrees to purchase moon rocks for $1 in a deal that may involve Blue Origin

An artist’s conception shows the uncrewed cargo version of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. (Blue Origin Illustration) NASA has selected four companies to collect material on the moon and store it up as the space agency’s property, for a total price of $25,001. And one deal stands out: a $1 purchase that may rely on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Blue...

15h

Amazon and YETI file lawsuit against alleged counterfeiters as tech giant continues fraud prevention battle

(GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Amazon is teaming up with YETI in a lawsuit that accuses two U.S.-based defendants of selling counterfeit YETI products on Amazon. The case is Amazon’s latest bid to eliminate counterfeiting on its marketplace and part of the company’s ongoing strategy to portray a tough-on-fraud image. The lawsuit, filed Thursday...

15h

Washington State U. launches ‘Spinout Space in Spokane’ incubator for life sciences startups

(WSU Photo) Washington State University is launching a new life sciences incubator in Spokane, Wash., designed to help startups grow out of the university while also connecting regional entrepreneurs to faculty experts. Spinout Space in Spokane (sp³nw) is getting off the ground with a $250,000 anchor grant from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation,...

16h

Microsoft doubles down on cloud data with new products, makes new appeal to Amazon’s rivals

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduces the company’s new cloud data products. (Screenshot via webcast) Microsoft is rolling out new cloud technologies for wrangling, protecting and analyzing large amounts of corporate data, escalating its competition with Google, Snowflake and Amazon in the $25 billion global market for data analytics and business...

16h

Bill Gates calls for creation of National Institutes of Energy Innovation to better address climate change

Wind power in Washington state. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) In the midst of one global disaster, Bill Gates is thinking about how to prevent the next. And while the world clearly wasn’t prepared to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Microsoft co-founder thinks there is one solution that could help address climate change. In a new GatesNotes...

17h

After reaching $40B in revenue in record time, Amazon Web Services hints at its own reinvention

Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy with a chart showing AWS revenue growth at the company’s virtual re:Invent conference this week. (Screenshot via webcast) Kicking off the annual Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference this week, AWS CEO Andy Jassy pointed to a major milestone for the tech giant’s cloud division: AWS has officially surpassed $40...

18h