Автор: coder

What can Seattle learn about Amazon from Luxembourg? At first glance, there aren’t many similarities between the Pacific Northwest tech hub and the small European nation, a financial powerhouse tucked between France and Germany. But we share a few things in common: a strong space sector, a taste for global innovation — and the outsized presence of Amazon in our local economies. That last one made Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden’s visit to Seattle this week especially intriguing. Luxembourg is Amazon’s European headquarters, home to more than 4,250 employees, making the company the country’s second-largest private employer, and the four-largest overall. Its workforce in Luxembourg spans Operations, Stores, Devices, and Amazon Web Services, including many of Amazon’s European and international leaders. Illustrating its deep economic footprint in the country of 660,000 people, the tech giant says it invested €1.8 billion in Luxembourg in 2024 alone.

As part of a broader interview with GeekWire during his current West Coast tech tour, the prime minister explained how the country manages the relationship with the tech giant — describing Amazon as “a very good corporate citizen,” and explaining that he views the company as a “strategic partner.” His comments stand in contrast to Amazon’s history in Seattle, where elected leaders have often wrestled with the impact of the company’s growth, and where the tech giant has at times threatened to slow hiring or relocate operations in response to proposed regulations. “We consider Amazon almost to be a Luxembourg company,” Frieden said. “They use all the opportunities that we give to them, and that is my advice for other countries, as well. We are business friendly, we are open, we are stable, [and] we are predictable.”

That business-friendly approach isn’t new for Frieden. The 61-year-old prime minister, who was Luxembourg’s finance and justice minister before spending a decade in private legal practice, returned to lead the country in 2023 on a platform of maintaining Luxembourg’s competitiveness while strengthening its sovereignty. Luxembourg is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, and a founding member of the European Union. It’s known for a business-friendly tax environment that has attracted many international companies — making it one of the wealthiest and most connected nations in Europe.

Frieden’s trip was framed in Luxembourg media as a high-stakes working visit to “court leading AI firms” in Seattle and the Bay Area. As reported by RTL Today, the official purpose was to “strengthen economic, technological, and scientific partnerships” with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. As part of his Pacific Northwest tour, Frieden visited companies including Microsoft, Boeing, and Amazon and met with a variety of Seattle tech, business, and venture capital leaders. His visit came as businesses in the Seattle area and Washington state grapple with a slate of new state and local taxes, raising long-term questions about the region’s economic competitiveness. GeekWire spoken with Frieden at a corner table inside Redmond’s Woodblock restaurant, where his motorcade outside prompted some passersby to ask if U.S. immigration forces had descended. Nope, just the prime minister of one of the world’s friendliest nations. But we’re not the only ones curious about the Amazon relationship. Frieden was also questioned about it during an Oct. 7 appearance before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Alex Agius Saliba, a Member of the European Parliament from Malta, asked in his public comments how Frieden could reconcile Luxembourg’s goals for digital sovereignty — ensuring critical data and digital services remain under national or European control — with the fact that Amazon, a U.S. corporation, is such a big employer and a key part of its tech and economic infrastructure. The prime minister didn’t get a chance to address the question during his European Parliament appearance, so we put it to him in our interview. He rejected the idea of a conflict. “No,” Frieden said, “because I think digital sovereignty does not mean that you cut yourself off from the rest of the world. It’s only about having some control over your data, and that is a legitimate goal, I think, for any government, for any region.” Frieden, whose U.S. trip also includes a visit to Silicon Valley, cited Luxembourg’s partnership with Google as an example of how digital sovereignty can be maintained in collaboration with U.S. tech giants. That initiative, called Clarence, is a joint venture between Luxembourg’s LuxConnect and Belgium’s Proximus that provides a sovereign cloud solution for sensitive workloads while using Google Cloud technology. Luxembourg’s financial regulator recently adopted the platform to develop AI applications with full data sovereignty, and Google has also partnered with the University of Luxembourg on research initiatives.

Beyond cloud infrastructure, Frieden addressed one of the most pressing tech policy challenges facing both Europe and the United States: artificial intelligence regulation. On that front, he expressed concern about the U.S. government’s fragmented approach. Europe has its AI Act, while the U.S. has an emerging patchwork of federal initiatives and state laws. “It’s the wrong approach, because AI is by nature global,” Frieden said, arguing that Europe and the U.S. need to get on the same page. “That is why I believe that we have to work with the U.S. as Europeans to make sure that the rules are more or less aligned.” While he considers the EU’s AI Act a more comprehensive attempt to regulate AI, Frieden is among the European leaders pushing for simplification. “Like in many areas of European regulation, it is a little bit too complicated,” he said. “That’s why I am among those heads of state and government who have asked the Commission to simplify the rules.” With tech companies pouring billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, we asked if Frieden is concerned about the risk of a global AI bubble and its potential economic or environmental consequences. Frieden said he focuses on the positive aspects and welcomes the investments. While acknowledging that AI’s environmental impact needs to be managed, he drew a comparison to aviation — another industry he engaged with during his visit to Boeing. Just as the aviation industry works to reduce emissions rather than halting flights, he argued, AI’s side effects can be addressed while allowing the technology to flourish. He compared the current AI revolution to past breakthroughs. “Every few decades there’s a major evolution in mankind, and that evolution always comes due to technology,” he said, citing electricity and the internet as precedents. AI, he said, “will have a huge impact on the way we live together, we work together.” The challenge for political leaders is choosing whether to “support the fear of the people, or whether they encourage people to embrace technological change.” Frieden places himself firmly in the latter camp: “Every technological innovation has brought positive changes to mankind.” The prime minister’s visit also highlighted another Seattle-Luxembourg connection: space. Luxembourg has been a global leader in the field for decades, building on its 40-year history as a satellite hub for companies like SES and Intelsat. The country established the SpaceResources.lu initiative for space mining and recently announced “Project Oasis,” a partnership with Kent-based Blue Origin — the commercial space venture founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — to map lunar resources. Frieden emphasized that Luxembourg’s space, science, and technology initiatives are interconnected, not competing priorities. “We developed three strategies: an AI strategy, a data strategy and a quantum strategy,” he said. “Space is part of some of those strategies as well.” One sign that Luxembourg’s approach might be working? We’ve heard anecdotally that when U.S. tech workers — especially from Amazon — are assigned to Luxembourg from Seattle or the Bay Area, they often don’t want to return. The prime minister attributed this to Luxembourg’s high quality of life, including its safety, its diverse population — half the country’s residents are foreign nationals — and its proximity to major European cities like Paris and Amsterdam. “It’s a very peaceful country,” Frieden said, noting that this combination of factors makes Luxembourg particularly attractive to international tech workers.

Seattle-based electric-bike maker Rad Power Bikes, which grew into the leading e-bike seller in North America during the pandemic, is fighting for survival as it faces “significant financial challenges,” the company confirmed on Monday.

Rad filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the Washington state Employment Security Department on Friday. A company spokesperson told GeekWire the filing was part of “advance written notice of a potential cessation of operations that could occur as early as January 2026.”

The closure would spell the end of the company and mark a stunning collapse for Rad Power Bikes, which was once Seattle’s highest-profile consumer hardware startup, riding pandemic-era e-bike demand to unicorn status.

According to the WARN filing, a shutdown would impact 64 jobs at Rad’s headquarters location in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Affected positions include the company’s CEO, CFO, multiple director-level roles, customer service reps, and bike mechanics. Rad also operates retail locations in nine cities in the U.S. and Canada.

“No final decisions have been made, and these notices are precautionary,” the Rad spokesperson said. “Rad’s leadership is actively pursuing all viable options to keep the company operating.”

Those options include funding to keep the company moving forward or an acquisition of Rad, which has raised more than $329 million to date. One “very promising deal” was close to completion and appeared likely to close, but did not “come to fruition.”

In a letter to employees (below), the company said that it “did not anticipate the sudden drop in consumer demand from Covid-era peaks” and that in addition it was dealing with challenges “in the form of tariffs and the macroeconomic landscape.”

According to the letter, a collective mantra has emerged at the company: “Save Rad.” For years, the slogan of choice has been “Ride Rad.”

The company is still selling bikes on its website and promoting deals for Black Friday. The filing with the state is in compliance with Washington’s Mini-WARN Act, which went into effect July 27, and “requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees in the state to provide 60 days’ advance written notice for mass layoffs or business closures impacting 50 or more employees.”

Rad was conceived in 2007 by co-founders Mike Radenbaugh and Ty Collins, who met as students at Humboldt State University in Northern California and built their first e-bike together. After years of doing custom conversions of traditional bikes to electric, they launched their company as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2015.

Rad saw big demand amid the pandemic as more people bought e-bikes. Its sales and workforce surged and it raised more than $300 million from investors in 2021. The company was valued at $1.65 billion that year, according to PitchBook, making it one of a handful of “unicorn” startups in the Seattle region at the time.

Rad operates out of a headquarters and flagship retail location on NW 52nd Street in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

The company is currently led by CEO Kathi Lentzsch, who previously ran Bartell Drugs as CEO before the company sold to Rite-Aid in 2020. She also led companies including Gump’s and Elephant Pharmacy, and held exec roles at Enesco, Pottery Barn and World Market.

Lentzsch replaced Phil Molyneux, the former Sony president who stepped down earlier this year after leading Rad for more than two years. Seattle entrepreneurs Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon, who helped grow online retail giants Blue Nile and Zulily, invested in Rad in 2019.

The company raised $25 million in 2020, led by Vulcan Capital and Durable Capital Partners LP, and by May of that year as the pandemic took hold, Rad was fielding a 297% increase in demand due to rapid changes in consumer transportation and exercise habits.

As the global electric bike market exploded, Rad took on another $150 million in 2021 from big-name investors such as Counterpoint Global (Morgan Stanley), Fidelity Management & Research Company, The Rise Fund, the global impact investing platform managed by TPG, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.

Later that year, as ridership surged, Rad raised another $154 million. In April 2022, the company began a series a layoffs, slashing 100 jobs from its 725-person workforce as part of what it described as a restructuring. Another 63 employees were cut in July, and more followed in December.

Radenbaugh stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Molyneux, who was hired as president and COO earlier in 2022. Collins had resigned in 2021.

Layoffs continued into 2023 and 2024, and the company stopped selling its bikes to customers in the United Kingdom and European Union. Rad’s struggles come amid a broader cooling of the e-bike market. Europe’s VanMoof filed for bankruptcy in 2023, while Belgium-based Cowboy and other rivals have struggled to find sustainable footing after pandemic-era highs. Rising costs, tariffs and other factors have forced several electric-bike makers to downsize or seek buyers.

Copy of the letter the company sent to Rad Power Bikes employees:
As you are aware, Rad Power Bikes Inc. (“Rad”) has faced economic challenges following the pandemic impacts. Like other companies in the traditional and e-bike industry, Rad did not anticipate the sudden drop in consumer demand from Covid-era peaks. Rad has made significant progress in selling down the substantial excess inventory of finished goods built up during Covid and has been working to minimize its liabilities for raw materials purchased during or shortly after Covid. However, Rad continues to face significant financial challenges, including in the form of tariffs and the macroeconomic landscape. For the past several months, executive leadership has explored different ways to continue Rad’s business, including strategic partnerships with other companies that could acquire the company or provide funding so the company could keep moving forward. Until recently, one such option seemed very promising and appeared to be likely to close. Unfortunately, that did not come to fruition.
Leadership is still working to find other viable options to keep the Rad brand alive. The collective mantra has been and will continue to be, “Save Rad.” Rad is nothing without its people and wants to ensure that all employees are taken care of and provided for to the fullest extent feasible. Executive leaders are hopeful that a viable solution will be found to ensure that Rad team members remain gainfully employed for the foreseeable future. However, to be fully transparent, despite our collective efforts, it is possible that this may not happen, and Rad may be forced to cease operations. In the event that occurs, Rad is providing this notice to you to satisfy any obligation that may exist under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act and the State of Washington’s “mini-WARN” Act (collectively “the WARN Acts”). While Rad hopes this notice is ultimately unnecessary and does not concede that the WARN Acts apply or that notice is required, the company nonetheless wishes to provide as much notice of the potential closure as possible.
To be clear, Rad’s leaders are still fighting to find ways to continue and emphasize that the cessation of Rad’s operations is not a foregone conclusion. What we do now as a team can impact the mission to Save Rad. Rad needs every team member to keep providing excellent service to keep fighting. In the event the company is forced to close, Rad would be required to cease operations on January 9, 2026 or within 14 days thereafter. In that case, Rad expects that any cessation of operations will affect all locations and departments, will be permanent in nature, and that all employees will be terminated effective January 9, 2026. The cessation of Rad’s operations would not be the result of relocation or contracting out the company’s operations or the affected employees’ positions. The affected Washington state employees (listed below) are not represented by any union and there are no bumping rights applicable to the affected employees.
Pursuant to the WARN Acts, this notice is applicable only to those employees assigned to the Seattle office located at 1121 NW 52nd Street, Seattle, WA 98107, or remote employees reporting to the Seattle office. However, Rad has elected to notify all employees, regardless of location, and provide the same information regarding Rad’s financial situation and potential next steps. All other locations employ less than 50 individuals and are not subject to the WARN Acts’ formal notice requirements.
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