Todd Bishop

Yoodli’s next act: AI that can teach workers almost any job skill

The company formerly known as Grammarly is moving out of a coworking space into a South Lake Union office with 50 desks and room for 80. Its careers page lists 12 open positions that can be based in Seattle.

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

Executives from Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic and Stripe described AI agents stepping between companies and their customers, without settling who keeps the customer relationship or the data that comes from it. Also: why most companies are far behind Anthropic's own gains from AI, and a split over relying on a single AI provider.

Ture Armas, the new leader of JPMorganChase's Seattle Tech Center, says AI is pushing engineers to work more closely with the business, changing how the bank hires. The center has more than 400 people and about 50 openings in AI, cloud and cybersecurity.

AI House brought investors from Boston, New York, Colorado, the Bay Area and other cities to Seattle for a demo day where 25 early-stage startups pitched, many of them from outside the incubator's own portfolio. The goal was to bring more outside capital to local founders.

Microsoft is moving communications out of its marketing group and under Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, as CEO Satya Nadella calls for a fundamentally new approach that makes employees a bigger part of how the company tells its story.

Augmeta assigns an AI agent to each of a company’s key business metrics, watching the numbers around the clock and investigating when they move. The startup, whose anchor customer is Tractor Supply, raised $3 million in a seed round led by Depth Ventures.

Amazon announced new AI tools for its independent sellers, led by a plugin that lets them run their Amazon businesses from Anthropic's Claude or Amazon's own Quick assistant.

Amazon's decision to block Meta's Muse AI agent from shopping on its site raises questions about whether the big platforms will agree on rules for agents, how money will change hands, and whether shoppers want agents in the first place.