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Seattle Tech Roundup: Key Stories from September 14, 2025

This week’s top technology and startup news from Seattle, as reported by GeekWire.

Amazon Shifts Fulfillment Strategy: The e-commerce giant is ending its ‘commingling’ policy, a longstanding practice of combining identical products from various sellers. This change aims to improve order accuracy and customer satisfaction.

Apple Acquires WhyLabs Team: Apple has welcomed the founding team of WhyLabs, the Seattle-based startup, marking a strategic move in the company’s data analytics efforts.

LumiThera’s Vision-Saving Technology: LumiThera continues to develop a device designed to improve vision and combat age-related macular degeneration, offering hope to patients with this condition.

New Leadership at Read AI: Justin Farris, a seasoned product leader from Zillow and GitLab, has joined Read AI as Vice President of Product, bringing valuable experience to the growing startup.

Tin Can’s Growing Popularity: The innovative Tin Can toy has gained significant traction, resonating with parents, children, and now attracting investment from venture capital firms.

Ethosphere Secures Seed Funding: Ethosphere, a Seattle startup specializing in voice AI for retail, recently raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round, demonstrating the strong interest in AI solutions in the retail sector.

Seattle Leads AI Investment: Data reveals that Seattle is now ranked as the fourth-largest recipient of AI funding in the United States, reflecting the city’s burgeoning tech ecosystem.

Seattle as a Hub for AI Life Sciences: Seattle is increasingly recognized as a premier location for building AI-driven companies in the life sciences field.

AI Assistant Howie Streamlines Meeting Scheduling and Secures $6 Million in Funding

The startup Howie, an AI-powered scheduling assistant, has publicly launched and already boasts over 1,000 paying customers. The tool, designed to eliminate the back-and-forth of traditional email scheduling, operates within users’ existing email inboxes. Howie proactively coordinates meeting times, adds events to calendars, and even flags potential scheduling conflicts.

Initially, the company, based in Seattle, secured $6 million in seed funding, led by True Ventures. Notable investors also included Jason Calacanis, Aravind Srinivas (CEO of Perplexity), and Rahul Vohra (Superhuman). The software works by allowing users to simply cc Howie on email threads, automating the entire process.

Howie caters to a diverse clientele, including startup founders, venture capitalists, journalists, and consultants. The system learns users’ preferences through customizable documents, allowing it to tailor scheduling to specific needs – for example, automatically setting pitch calls to 25 minutes and utilizing Zoom.

Behind the scenes, Howie utilizes multiple advanced language models, escalating complex cases to human reviewers to ensure accuracy and reliability. The service is offered at $25 per month for the standard plan and $95 per month for the premium version, which includes features like renaming Howie.

Founded by Austin Petersmith and Dave Newman, the team initially developed the concept in 2015, recognizing the right market opportunity now. The nine-person team includes experienced founders and alumni from Y Combinator. The company has experienced impressive growth, with monthly recurring revenue and usage increasing by an average of 50% month-over-month as of 2025.

Seattle Cybersecurity Engineer Finds Speed and Stress Relief in RC Car Racing

Dan Rico, a senior security engineer at Truveta, a Seattle-based health data company, channels his passion for speed and stress relief through a surprising hobby: remote-control car racing. Growing up in New York, Rico credits his father, a Microsoft Certified technician, with sparking his interest in engineering and the need for disconnecting from work.

Rico’s passion began at age 13 when he started working at a local hobby shop, immersing himself in RC planes, helicopters, and cars. Moving to Seattle five years ago, he reignited this hobby, seeking an escape from the demanding pressures of his cybersecurity role.

Today, Rico competes in 1/10 and 1/8 scale stock cars, both nitro and electric-powered, at Die Hard RC Park in Snohomish, Washington. He’s even involved in designing and constructing race tracks and enjoys contributing to the racing community, frequently assisting other racers with their “pit crew.”

More than winning, Rico values the sense of camaraderie and the opportunity to apply skills honed in racing to his cybersecurity work. He describes the constant adjustments and problem-solving required in both fields as “incident response without actually responding to incidents.” This hobby provides a vital balance, allowing him to maintain focus and apply lessons learned to his professional life.

Interested in sharing your own out-of-office passion with GeekWire? Contact [email protected].

Seattle Startup Spotlight: AI-Powered Solutions for Recruiting, Cooking, and More

Seattle continues to be a hotbed for innovative startups, and our latest Startup Radar highlights companies tackling key challenges across various industries. From automating email marketing campaigns to digitizing recipes and building AI agents, these ventures are making waves.

CookShelf

Founded in 2024, CookShelf brings cookbook collections into the digital age. The app allows users to search their own books by ingredient or dish, directing them to the correct page. It respects author copyrights and doesn’t reproduce full recipes. The bootstrapped company acquired Eat Your Books last year and launched its app for $39.99/year or $4.99/month. Katie Thacher (formerly at Amazon on Kindle apps and Amazon Music) is CEO, with Jane Kelly (co-founder of Eat Your Books) as COO, and Venkat Ramamurthy (former Amazonian) leading engineering.

Dripwave

Established in 2024, Dripwave provides an AI-powered email campaign generator for e-commerce brands. It helps companies boost open rates and conversions. Danlesh Badlani (previously a product manager at Microsoft), Aidan Rosswood (former Meta engineer), and Chong Sun (former machine learning specialist at Chewy and Amazon) lead the bootstrapped company, currently in private beta with brands and email marketing agencies.

Mayura

Launched in 2025, Mayura is described as ‘your personal AI workforce,’ offering custom-built AI tools, including multi-agent workflows and document analysis. Targeting small businesses, the company works with three entrepreneurs and two startups. Matt Savarino (nearly six years at Microsoft, including roles at Disney) is founder and CEO. Aditi Bendre (director of engineering at Microsoft) is CTO.

Skillsheet

Founded in 2025, Skillsheet is a candidate-sourcing platform using video profiles to surface communication and problem-solving skills, with real-time privacy-preserving identity verification. The bootstrapped company has a handful of paying customers. Aniket Naravanekar (previously at avante and CHEQ, and over 11 years at Microsoft) is CEO, and Aditi Bendre (director of engineering at Microsoft) is CTO.