Latest AI and tech news

For as long as there’s been software, it’s been built for one kind of user: a person. That’s changing fast, but unevenly. Coding agents like Claude Code and Codex went from experiment to everyday tool in less than two years, while the systems underne...

The AI-native enterprise, a company running at machine speed without the limits of a human-only workforce, is as tantalizing as it is elusive. Even the most AI-pilled leaders acknowledge persistent security gaps standing in the way....

One prediction keeps surfacing in go-to-market conversations: autonomous AI agents will replace SDRs within two years. If it is right, founders should stop hiring them now. If it is wrong, the companies that cut will run short of pipeline as competit...

Someone in Australia, over the summer, asked Claude to get them into a gym class they were on the waiting list for. Claude ended up finding a vulnerability in the gym’s booking system, removing someone else from the class, and putting them in. It’s a...

This past week Madrona hosted its fifth annual IA40 Summit, where we celebrated the winners of the IA40 (the top 40 private AI startups as voted on by our VC peers) and heard from AI leaders and builders like Rahul Patil (CTO Anthropic) Charles Laman...

The AI buildout is creating unprecedented demand for compute, memory, and the hardware needed to support it. As that demand grows, the ability to design and quickly validate hardware is becoming an important bottleneck. We believe physics is that lay...

For most of the past three decades, enterprise software has been in the business of telling people what happened. Systems of record captured the transactions, analytics tools turned them into reports, and machine learning eventually got quite good at...

Affordability has become the organizing principle of how a huge and growing share of Americans shop. Buywander turns one of retail’s biggest headaches — returns — into a daily treasure hunt for exactly that consumer. We’re proud to lead their Series ...

Today’s best startups are building AI solutions that uplift human agency more, not less. They work to deeply understand the needs of a particular user group, documenting the most acute frustrations and challenges, and then automate the parts of the w...

Every so often you meet a founder whose next act is obvious in hindsight. Mohit Aron has built two decacorns. Before that, he was one of the lead engineers behind the Google File System, the distributed storage layer that made it possible to index th...

Over the past year, the applied AI market has put an increasing emphasis on delivering tangible value and has seen a significant rise in compelling outcomes. SpaceX acquired Cursor for $60 billion, Google acquired Wiz for $32 billion, OpenRouter was ...

Highspot has reached an incredibly important and exciting milestone: the closing of its multi-billion-dollar merger with Seismic, which officially closed on Tuesday, August 18, after receiving regulatory approval the week before....

Today we’re excited to share a new, deeply researched analysis of the latest patterns in AI adoption among the enterprise. As every AI builder is striving to find durable and scalable market positions, these insights demonstrate the common obstacles ...

Recorded live at Seattle Tech Week, this episode of Founded & Funded brings together two people who track the AI capital markets from different vantage points: PitchBook EVP of Research & Market Intelligence Nizar Tarhuni, and Madrona Partner Sabrina...

Seattle Tech Week started on a Monday night with pickleball in SoDo and ended, five days later, somewhere between a rooftop happy hour, a Lake Union cruise, and a Mariners game. In between: roughly 250 events across boardrooms, incubators, coworking ...

By now, almost everyone has AI somewhere in their workday: a chat tab open, a copilot in the sidebar, the odd summary or draft. Far fewer have watched it change the shape of the work itself. That distinction, between a tool that helps you get through...